By DOUG FEINBERG, AP Basketball Writer
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — The Columbia women’s basketball team plays in an intimate 2,700-seat gym nestled in Manhattan that is nowhere to be found on the national sports landscape. Now the Lions and all the other starry-eyed dreamers in the NCAA Tournament are being serenaded just like former national champions UConn, South Carolina or Tennessee.
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And this year, they’re all getting paid to be there.
The star treatment this year goes beyond charter flights, hotel accommodations and coveted swag. For the first time, women’s teams are getting an individual share of the profits, a perk men’s teams have enjoyed for years.
“It should be this way. We should be able to fly charter,” said UNC Greensboro coach Trina Patterson, whose Spartans will take a charter flight to play a game for the first time. “We are all playing in the same March Madness, the treatment for the men and women should be equal. We get a unit!”
That’s correct, each women’s team in the tournament will get a “unit” — money that is paid to conferences when one of its teams appears in the NCAA Tournament. The formula and definition of a unit can be complicated, but the bottom line is conferences will receive $113,000 for each game one of its women’s team plays in the tournament.
Columbia reached the tournament last year, but neither the Lions nor the Ivy League received money for the appearance.
“You got to start somewhere and I think we’ve been so far behind,” said Columbia coach Megan Griffith. “I think of Sedona Prince and it’s really cool to see that she’s still able to play at a high level on a big stage. This is more like the whipped cream. I think the cherry on top is going to keep coming, but this it’s really good so far.”
Prince’s video from 2020 that shed light on the inequalities between the men’s and women’s tournament helped spearhead change in the tournament.
Patterson is now with UNCG but she knows what its like to be one of the marquee teams. She played at Virginia in the 1980s when Geno Auriemma was an assistant at the school. Patterson then went on to be an assistant coach at Stanford for a few years under Tara VanDerveer.
Her 16th-seeded team will enjoy the comforts of the cross-country charter flight from Greensboro to Los Angeles, where they will try to knock off JuJu Watkins and No. 1-seeded Southern California. It’s UNCG’s first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 1998.
This is all new for William & Mary, which is making its first appearance but has the chance to earn two financial units. They are in the play-in game against High Point on Thursday with the winner facing No. 1 seed Texas.
“It should have always been that way. Women’s basketball has been fighting for equality for a very long time,” said William & Mary coach Erin Dickerson Davis, who was the associate head coach at Wake Forest, an assistant at Georgetown and has also coached at Towson, Illinois State, La Salle and Furman.
“I’ve been in this business for many, many years,” Davis said. “I played college basketball, it’s a long time coming.”
It is the Tribe’s first trip to March Madness in either men’s or women’s basketball.
“Everyone is so excited about the experience, going from the bus directly to the plane, everyone was so happy,” Davis said. “Yes, we’re here on a business trip and we want to win. But just to be able to have these experiences for them that no one has done at William & Mary is special.”
Several of the players at Columbia can relate. They aren’t in Chapel Hill for spring break. They are here to win. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t taking time to enjoy the moment.
“It was cool going to the charter and we’ve been taking it all in,” junior Perri Page said. “But it’s a business trip and we have a goal in mind.”
The Lions’ schedule this week has mirrored most schools’ travel itinerary. There was the building anticipation on the bus ride from their New York campus to Newark Airport for their pride-filled one-hour charter flight to Chapel Hill and the giddiness that comes with picking up that tournament swag on Wednesday.
Yes, there is a game to be played Thursday night. A pretty big one at that.
But what a ride to get here — with a paycheck looming to top it off.
“We’ve been enjoying the whole season,” Page said, adding, “It’s great we can make money for the school now.”
Patterson, the former Virginia Cavalier, Stanford Cardinal and now UNCG Spartan summed it up when she said: “It’s great for women’s basketball.”
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