I Feel Bad for the MU Women's Team
Blockton, Davenport, Hiedemann, King, and Wilborn....here is a group of players that have all played together for four years. All five of them started as freshmen, and each year the team improved.
This year MU breaks into the Top 10 and is absolutely dominant in many games throughout the season. It is a potential Elite Eight and possibly even Final Four team.
And then Davenport tears her ACL.
It is still a very talented team. It is still a team that could make it into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. A Sweet 16 is not out of the question. But no matter how far the team gets in the Tournament, unless it wins the National Title (extremely unlikely) the players, coaches, and fans will always wonder, "What if.....?"
If the team loses in the first round, everyone will wonder, "What if Davenport had not torn her ACL?" Even if the team advances to the Elite Eight and then loses, the question will be modified to, "If Davenport had not been injured, would this team have made it to the Final Four?"
The problem, of course, is such questions are unanswerable. But the other reality is that those questions will continue throughout each player's life. When they are 65, they will still wonder, "What if....?"
Fans, too, will wonder. It's been a decade, and I still wonder how far MU's 2008-2009 team might have gone had DJ not broken his foot.
Hell, I'm still asking a couple of other questions nearly 50 years after the fact, such as, "What if Al had not chosen to go to the NIT instead of snubbing the NCAA? Could that team have made it to the Finals? Could it have won the National Championship?"
Or for that matter, "What if Chones had not decided to leave for the ABA near the end of his junior year?" Could MU have made it to the Finals? Could it have won the whole shebang?"
Those types of questions don't go away over time. They're still lurking in my mind nearly 50 years later. I am pretty damn sure that Ric Cobb and Jeff Sewell and Joe Thomas, as well as Larry McNeill, Allie McGuire, and Marcus Washington still think about "what might have been."
I wish the women's team well in the upcoming tournament. I truly hope they make it into the second weekend. But even if they do, they will always wonder what might have been had Davenport been able to play.
This group has been a joy to watch. It plays exciting, entertaining basketball. All five of these young women ideally would have been able to complete their college careers without the cloud of injury. Too bad it didn't happen.