Welcome back to the No Cap Space WBB Monthly Mailbag! We decided that we would hold it until after the NCAA Tournament ended to allow for some retrospective questions, if need be.

Speaking of which, congratulations to our No Cap Space WBB Bracket Challenge winners!!

In 1st… PracticalMagic24’s Bracket!

In 2nd… ESPNFan2139366211’s Bracket!

In 3rd… BigTiffTho’s Bracket!

To claim your prizes, simply email [email protected] with proof that it was indeed your winning bracket in our pool so we can get your address for your Homefield prizes as well as a paid subscription to the Ball-Knower’s tier!

And if you’re considering getting a paid subscription to No Cap Space WBB, now is the time! We have a lot of great and specialized content coming your way as well as inside info regarding some transfer and coaching change news. Oh, and the WNBA Draft is on Monday. So the season is about to start again anyway!

Now, to the mailbag…

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I still can’t thank everyone enough for all the upfront support with getting our paid subscription tier off the ground. When I say we couldn’t have sent our team to Tampa without you, I genuinely mean it. It’s a pretty great thing to be able to cover things like hotels and gas so our crew can get as much content as possible to keep you informed, entertained and along for the ride with us.

Some other funds from this month allowed us to keep the business afloat as we filed our annual LLC tax, which helps us remain a media company and allow us to work on more strategic partnerships that can make our stuff even better.

Expect to see some phased in upgrades to everyone’s home studios starting with Tyler. That type of thing includes new cameras for a sharper picture quality that works better for those that cast our video shows onto TV’s as well as professional microphones and stands to give you the best sound quality we can find. It’s all a part of our initiative to make our YouTube/Video/Podcast offerings more broadcast network-y in nature. So if you start to see some improvements there, know that it doesn’t happen without your help and support.

Linked to the article is the podcast with my answers to your questions. In case you’d rather scrub to your question quickly, we have some handy time stamps for you…

0:00 - Show Introduction

1:45 - Where your funding is going (in pod form!)

12:43 - Johnny Baze asks… “Do you think the portal has the potential to rob freshmen of developing and improving with the school they committed to and in their careers?”

22:49 - Palak asks… “Do you think Tennessee’s new system will improve player development (bench players) or worsen development/conditioning (starters) or a combination of both, especially in terms of projecting to the WNBA level?”

28:14 - GM asks… “Curious what u all think about the players tribune piece by Hannah Hidalgo…

And as sports journalists what do u think about the player's tribune in general - some of the articles on there are really powerful, A’ja's and Stewie's come to mind.”

40:48 - Sopia asks… “Off that, (and I know you’ve talked some about this already!) what do you think is the responsibility of media to cover these stories? Where did it go wrong this season and where did it go right?”

1:02:35 - Johnny Baze asks … “Wish I thought of the question for the mailbag before just now but does anyone know if Dawn actually had guard recruits that were expected to be similar to an A’ja or Aliyah Boston? I think about Allisha Gray or Zia Cooke who both took 15 shots in their final games as a gamecock so they were clearly given a long leash. Ty Harris is in the league, Allisha was an all star, and Zia is still in that 4 year incubation phase that a lot of both high and low guard prospects seem to go through (not to mention the curt miller of it all with her). Idk. Not saying Dawn is doing everything perfect with her guards but was the expectation that they turn into all stars? She’s only had 2 bigs do that so far lol with Kamilla potentially being up next.”

1:11:05 - Andrew’s Music of the Month -

London Grammer - Missing

Erykah Badu - Didn’t Cha Know

1:14:22 - Andrew’s Meal of the Month - Pad See Ew

Okay, now to our questions that wanted written answers…

Jo Asks…”When you look at the four teams that made the Final Four, they have four discrete playing styles but lots of depth and collective buy in. I feel like this is the first year in recent years where all four teams are pretty deep, do you think other teams can replicate or take some of these four teams' strategies to effectively build a championship caliber team?”

I think depth is the biggest component here and it’ll only become more challenging as the transfer portal continues to entice younger players to leave. Take UCLA, for instance, who has never been accused of being a bad culture for kids. The reality is they are probably bleeding off guards over playing time. It’ll be hard for teams to continue to develop their depth by doing that. As far as I’m concerned, the only way you’ll be able to do this is by having a deep NIL/Rev Share bag or your coach is generationally gifted at maintaining relationships and connections. As of right now, the only two coaches that fit the latter bill are Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley. Basically everyone else has fallen victim to some sort of churn each year. Texas is one of the deepest pocketed athletic departments in America and will always be able to keep their stars by virtue of what they can offer monetarily.

The big wild card are the coaches like Mark Campbell, Brenda Frese and now Kelly Graves who seem to look at their entire roster as one year projects. Can you theoretically build a team with enough depth to make a Final Four or does that style of construction have an Elite Eight ceiling? It’ll be fascinating to see this year as TCU and Maryland have already made big moves while Oregon pokes around to see who else can augment their roster (also important to note, no early portal exodus for the Ducks this year…). On some level, you can replicate the depth by being able to stave off the vultures who want to pull underclassmen off your roster or be able to negotiate with the kids well enough that they can enter the portal but maybe withdraw and come back to you.

The reality though is that we’re probably destined for a wide chasm between the 4-5 best teams in the country every year and the rest of the field. In essence, it’s the same as it ever was. The only issue now is that the middle tier of the power conferences will be able to build their depth at the expense of mid-majors. My big concern after this tournament is if this is what the future is going to look like: a whole lot of chalk because the depth is so centered around the power programs that can pay?

The Collective Chat Asks… “What actually went down at Stanford with their exodus of star players?”

So this question has come from a few people so I decided to just label it ‘the collective chat’.

I wanted to put this question in written form because I've gotta be pretty careful about how I bring us back to that time in Palo Alto. There’s a lot I’ve been given off the record, some on background and some fully on the record. So while there is additional context to some of what I write here, there’s parts I just can’t go into detail to out of respect for my sources. But what I can tell you, I’ll share here.

For starters, and I’m sure this will come as a shock to no one, it’s important to understand who Tara Vanderveer is. She’s as old school of a coach as they come. What I mean by that is that a certain generation of coach kept a healthy distance between being an authority figure and being a friend. In past decades, head coaches were usually folks that brought you into practice, told you what to do and then went back to their office. Relationship maintenance was sometimes handled by assistants and there was a healthy space between players and coaches. Now, it’s important to note that that isn’t always the case and can sometimes vary player-to-player. But one of the things you’ll notice is that the traditionally hard-ass coaches have either started to retire (Tara, Muffet) or readjusted how they handle things (Geno, Dawn, Kelly Graves).

My understanding of the last years under Tara was that she still very much adhered to that belief and standard. The only issue was that the assistants didn’t fill the gap as well as they needed to. Sometimes legendary status can create an environment where everyone can be in service to that one individual. The balance here is tricky because Tara absolutely earned that. In the same way that you’re going to South Carolina for Dawn, you’d go to Stanford for Tara. But where I think Dawn has struck a good balance with her players is knowing that there is a reciprocal relationship that keeps the kids happy. You have to make that connection and build trust if you’re going to do things that kids might not understand. It’s why MiLaysia Fulwiley will probably end up staying with SC while Stanford had an exodus.

In short, Tara’s system was rigid and ascribed players to certain roles. But the coaches, by some accounts, didn’t do enough to build a bond and trust for players to believe it was in their best interest. Conversely, sources on the other side of the equation have indicated to me that there was a bit of a locker room rift and a debate over how much basketball mattered to certain players. If you’re a coach that has given your whole life to this, it would make sense that seeing kids pursue NIL and marketing opportunities as getting in the way of basketball especially if it doesn’t feel like they’re doing what you need them to do on the floor. That’s where some of the recollections can turn into he-said she-said’s and the likely middle ground of missed opportunities to effectively communicate to one another.

Ultimately, my read having heard both ends of the story is that Tara was likely burnt out from the portal and NIL. What seems to have happened is that coaches stopped wanting to entertain that part of the game and sort of circled the wagons around a coach that wanted nothing to do with it. For young student-athletes that only knew of a sport with those things in it, read the situation as a ‘my way or the highway’ approach that was antiquated and treated players as commodities rather than people. So now you end up in this place where there is sniping happening on both ends of the equation. And I will say this, for our Stanford subscribers in this tier, who think there’s been a bit of a public hatchet job on Tara lately: while she’s taken some licks publicly, the players have also gotten theirs privately. It’s an unfortunate situation but one where no one comes out fully clean. The end came about the way a lot of toxic scenarios do, with a lack of effective communication and one (or both) ends of the equation not willing to come to center and hash it out. How much of that dynamic has changed with Kate Paye is to be determined. I’m curious to see as time goes on but saying you won’t have any transfers and then turn around and watch Tess Heal put her name in the portal not 36 hours later is a bit concerning…