by John Baradell

Created on: March 16, 2009   Last Updated: March 20, 2009

It is so common in sports to anoint a current brilliant team as the "best of all time" that the premise has become trite and meaningless. Anyone that viewed the Old Dominion University Lady Monarchs in the late 70's knows well their complete dominance over every team that they played; this has never been duplicated. During that era, ODU, Louisiana Tech, and upstart Tennessee were the prevailing powers. In the waning days of AIAW (pre-Title IX renaming to NCAA women's basketball), ODU won two national championships behind All-Americans Nancy Lieberman and Inge Nissen; they went 72-2 during this period. They won again under the NCAA banner in 1985.

The coach, Pam Parsons, recruited these players and made them the focus of a team that was close to unbeatable. When she was suceeded by future National Coach of the Year Marianne Stanley, Anne Donovan and Medina Dixon joined the team, later to become All-Americans themselves Also retained was alum and current 24-year coach Wendy Larry as a graduate assistant; the trio helped to continue the tradition, winning another title in 1985. Connecticut has an incredible team, but the Lady Monarchs were not only true pioneers, but more likely the best of all time.

As an example of their utter domination of the women's game. in 1980 the #1 Lady Monarchs hosted the #2 UCLA Lady Bruins in a much-anticipated East-West match up. ODU won by over 50 points in a game that, unbelievably, was not considered by many experts to be even that close.

As Title !X (a provision mandating equal funding of men's and women's sports) became heavily established in the next decades, smaller schools like ODU and Louisiana Tech found it harder to compete for the best players, much as Immaculata and Stephen F. Austin had previously. Still, the 70's-80's were a golden era for women's basketball. and ODU positioned itself as the leader by demanding excellence by hiring and recruiting the best in the sport to play at a well-funded mid-sized Division I school.

Connecticut deserves great praise for its commitment to supporting a women's basketball team of the highest quality. They have a long-standing tradition of excellence, are deservedly revered at present, and will likely be for all time. That said, to consider their 2008 squad to be the best in history is a highly dubious argument at best; the idea is highly disrespectful of the ODU Lady Monarchs during their heyday, who more rightly deserve the accolade.

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