If you had any access to a television during the past week and a half, you have probably heard about March Madness and Kentucky’s potential undefeated season.

But what you probably did not hear about, for a variety of unfortunate reasons, was that there were two undefeated college teams entering the tournament: Kentucky, the talk of college basketball since last August, and the Princeton women’s basketball team, which won the Ivy League and finished the regular season 30-0.

On Monday, No. 8 seed Princeton’s run for perfection ended with an 85-70 loss to Maryland in a fast-paced and well-played game. After a closely played first half, Maryland held a four-point lead, but it started the second half on a 17-2 run that Princeton could never recover from, largely because Maryland made seven second-half three-pointers.

Despite the outcome of the Maryland-Princeton game and the subsequent end of Princeton’s extraordinary season, the average college basketball fan is unaware of its season in general.

There are many unfortunate reasons why women’s basketball is less popular than men’s basketball, and many of these reasons are self-fulfilling. It is natural that fewer people will watch a women’s game on ESPN2 when a men’s game is featured on ESPN, given more pre-game promotional airtime and increased media coverage.

However, even though Princeton lost, a quick look at the box score suggests that basketball fans may want to redirect some of their passion for the men’s tournament to the women’s. Though it was seeded eighth, Princeton shot a respectable 46 percent from the field and only turned the ball over nine times, while Maryland shot a phenomenal 53.4 percent and surrendered just 12 turnovers.Contrast that with two of the top men’s teams that had quick exits this past weekend: Virginia and Villanova.

While no fan would mistake Virginia, a second seed and regular season champion of the ACC, for an offensive powerhouse, its 29.8 percent shooting and 11.8 percent shooting from behind the arc in its 60-54 loss to Michigan State on Sunday was reprehensible. The Cavaliers also went over 11 minutes without a made basket in the second half and were limited to just 18 points in the first half.
It was just a brutal game to watch.

Villanova did not fare much better. The No. 1 seed team shot 31 percent in its 71-68 loss to North Carolina State, which featured 43 fouls and 50 free-throw attempts.

If anything, the contrast between these men’s games and Princeton’s defeat produces a reminder that all sports fans need to hear from time to time: Not all close games are good games.

Princeton may have seen its streak end at 31 wins, but at least it played well in the loss; Maryland was simply the better team and the matchup was a high-quality game of basketball.

With so many analysts and journalists illustrating the perceived problems in men’s basketball, with its lack of scoring, drearily slow pace and horrendous officiating, the positive differences in the women’s game are seemingly going ignored.

For example, the 30-second shot clock in the women’s game, which is five seconds shorter than in men’s basketball games, naturally leads to more possessions. Even if teams choose to drain the shot clock, having five more seconds per possession adds up over the course of a game, and with more possessions comes a greater potential for scoring.

Furthermore, to help the pace of the game and reduce the lag created by the excess of television timeouts, there are scenarios in women’s basketball in which a called timeout can replace a scheduled television timeout instead of leading to two separate breaks in play that are extremely close together.
Obviously, in the money machine that is March Madness, this will never happen, because CBS and Turner Sports will take every dollar they can possibly get, But, from a fan’s perspective, it would be a fantastic change in men’s college basketball.

As Kentucky continues its quest for a perfect season, we ought to pay homage to the one that recently ended. But to truly do justice to the Princeton women’s team, and to women’s college basketball as a whole, we should not only pay it more attention on television and in media, but whenever possible, we should also learn from it to improve the men’s game as well. Because as Villanova and Virginia proved to America this weekend, sometimes the women know how to play just a little bit better.

Michael Ippolito is a sophomore in the College. THE WATER COOLER appears every Friday.