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BOSTON - Look how they take care of the ball.
That was always the euphemism, the backhanded compliment, employed by well-intentioned commentators to describe women's college basketball.
They have no first step, can't jump. But gee, they're good teammates, so unselfish. The weak-side movement, the backdoor picks . . . such admirable throwbacks. Didn't John Wooden say he loved to watch the women play, to see them run offenses that tapped into the primeval spirit of the sport?
Well, spare the condescension now, at the 25th edition of the NCAA women's tournament. These are not your mother's basketball players, or even your older sister's. The women at this Final Four are playing very much like the men, which means they never stop running, never stop making stupid mistakes, never stop missing foul shots, never stop launching hopeless three-pointers, even if they're icy cold.
There are hardly any 30-second violations to be found anywhere in Boston. Instead, there are risky passes and reckless fast breaks, a supersonic style of basketball lacking in artistry but never in breakneck speed.
You come to a women's Final Four, and suddenly a Knicks game breaks out.
In the first half of Maryland's 81-70 semifinal victory over top-ranked North Carolina Sunday night, the two teams combined for 26 turnovers, simply because neither school bothered to look around, read the court for an instant.
Together, the Terps and Tar Heels missed 10 of 21 free throws in that first half, 15 of 16 three-pointers while they were at it. Maryland won this game despite its outrageous youthful discretions, its 26 total turnovers.
Ivory Latta, the Tar Heels' brave point guard, went down eight minutes into the game with a twisted left knee, came back on the court again less than three minutes later to lead the charge. She operated at a different metabolic rate than most of her teammates, however, and sometimes just mucked up things even worse. She was outplayed, badly, by first Kristi Toliver and then, by Shay Doron, and now North Carolina goes home after losing only two games all season - both to wild-and-wacky Maryland.
It became a footrace. The Terps were faster and more fearless.
"The three (ACC) teams that are here, everybody plays a fast-paced game," said Brenda Frese, the Maryland coach. "Everybody likes to run. And I think that's a trend a lot in the ACC, everybody is very fast-paced."
Looking back, it probably was Candace Parker from Tennessee who made this transition official at the start of the women's tournament, dunking twice in one game. The women were morphing into something new, more powerful and less meticulous.
When the Maryland players boarded their bus on the journey to Boston, they viewed a videotape with 25 years of NCAA women's basketball history. They saw a very different form of basketball.
"We watched a lot of the games with the old teams, (Louisiana) Tech and Cheney State, watching that style of play," Frese said. "You can see the players are bigger, stronger, quicker, faster, from the weight room. You look at the LSU-Duke matchup with 6-7 Alison Bales and 6-6 Sylvia Fowles, you're not only getting the size now, you're getting the speed and the quickness."
Things were very different in that second semifinal Sunday night. The pace was quick enough, but Duke completely stifled LSU in a 64-45 walkover. Seimone Augustus, the Tiger shooting guard who averaged 23 points during the regular season, was held to exactly zero in the first half. "We weren't moving," Augustus grumped. Duke's defenders took turns denying her the ball in a switching matchup zone. Whenever Augustus shed her various shadows, there was still the intimidating Bales to avoid in the paint.
It won't be so easy to stop or block Maryland, a team that split two games with Duke this year and defeated the Blue Devils last month in the ACC tournament semifinals in Greensboro. "They're young, but they don't play young," said Duke guard Monique Curry.
The Terps will beat Bales downcourt on most occasions. They have several floor generals, can break any defensive scheme or simply throw the ball away trying.
Sometimes, it seems they don't care, as long as they stop the 30-second shot clock before it strikes 20.
Maryland is a little wild, a little crazy. Its games aren't neat and tidy. Wooden probably wouldn't approve.
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(c) 2006, New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
