Women's college basketball continues to carve its niche firmly into the sports landscape. Perhaps no NCAA sport in fact has come so far so fast. But while the times appear to be healthy for a sport about ready to celebrate its 25th anniversary, it isn't an occasion for those who have invested their professional lives in the game to rest on their laurels.

There remains room for women's basketball to grow. With that in mind, women's basketball leaders want to make sure they define what the game is all about and not leave it up to others to decide how the sport should be promoted and marketed.

"We're at a critical time for the championship and for women's basketball in general," said Sue Donohoe, NCAA vice-president for Division I women's basketball. "We've got to identify and cultivate women's basketball fans during the regular season, not just during the month of March. Just because it is tournament time doesn't mean someone is going to automatically become a women's basketball fan."

Donohoe said that means the game needs to grow on campuses and at the conference level, too. There are any number of women's basketball hotbeds locally, but there's room for the women's game to take on a more national scope. "If we are able to create fans of the sport and not just of the tournament," Donohoe said, "we will see the growth in our game and in our championships. From a Women's Final Four standpoint, we're about as healthy as we can be. Do we need to get healthier in the preliminary rounds? You bet we do. That's going to take rolling up our sleeves, getting out and working hard at it."

The marching orders include the development of the game's unique attributes that have been delivered to athletics directors, marketing directors, sports information directors and coaches as a consistent message to preach (see related story, page A2).

"If you don't define who you are, somebody else will," said Lynn Parkes, the chair of the Division I Women's Basketball Committee and an associate athletics director at the University of Memphis. "That's part of taking ownership of the game and directing how you want to be perceived. The committee and the coaches have taken that to heart. I think it is an exciting time, because we're in the process of defining who we are. It's certainly a special sport, and the general public has become more attached to it and has an ever-increasing appreciation for the game. We're reaping the benefits of all of that."

The plan to grow the game isn't designed as a short-term initiative, either. The strategy, which has been in place for several years, figures to live long into the future. Already, though, the steady implementation of growth initiatives such as increased television exposure and championship format modifications has taken the game to lofty levels, as evidenced by the ongoing success of the Women's Final Four. For more than a decade, that event has been a sellout no matter the size of the arena.

This year's tournament, however, was the first to have eight predetermined sites for the first and second rounds. That was a major shift for the women's committee to make, since it moved the tournament away from the previous comfort zone of 16 host schools that would guarantee attendance -- but who also gained a competitive advantage by playing at home. The new format went from 16 sites to eight, and while many of the sites still included a host school as one of the eight participating teams, the format nonetheless created more neutral-site games and thus a greater championship atmosphere.

That allows sites to focus more on a big-picture approach rather than just enticing fans to come out and support the local team.

"A fan can go in and spend the day there," Donohoe said of the current preliminary-round format. "The morning can open up with breakfast and an 11:07 tip. They can stay there for the day and see four great games of women's basketball."

It also allows ESPN, the television partner for the NCAA tournament, to prepare for its broadcast more diligently instead of finding out the host sites a few days before the competition begins. As a result, pregame and postgame news conferences from the preliminary-round sites were uplinked on ESPNews and oher national media outlets for the first time, which created even more immediate exposure.

From a competitive standpoint, many of the coaches enjoyed the neutral sites as opposed to having to play a true road game. The new format contributed to some early-round upsets that the tournament hadn't been known for in the past. For example, Liberty University, a No. 13 seed, captured national attention with upset wins over Pennsylvania State University and DePaul University to reach the Sweet 16. Both games were played on a neutral court in College Park, Maryland.

"From that standpoint, the new format is a no-brainer," said Stephany Smith, the former coach at Middle Tennessee State University and the current coach at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. "You finally have an opportunity for a neutral-court environment."

Smith pointed out that the concerns all along about going to more neutral courts have included attendance, but she thinks competitive equity trumps those anxieties. Smith's Middle Tennessee club, which was a No. 12 seed, posted a first-round upset of its own when the Lady Raiders beat fifth-seeded North Carolina State University in Dallas.

Proponents believe the neutral-court sites can create the anything-can-happen dynamic that has become a staple of the men's tournament.

"That previously had not existed on the women's side," said Doug Bruno, the coach at DePaul and a candidate to be the next president of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association. "Now we have the same excitement with the possibility for upsets. That's huge, and it goes to the predetermined sites moving ultimately to neutral sites, but also the opportunity to be viewed. The basketball fan now gets Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday with the men and they get Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with the women. You have a six-day total, so the overall basketball fan gets more of a hit."

ESPN has expanded its television coverage of the women's tournament to the point where all 63 games are seen on either its primary network or ESPN2. In the past, ratings were driven by successes of the more familiar teams. For example, the 2004 championship game between the University of Connecticut and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, set ratings records for the cable network.

This year, though, first-time championship-game participants Baylor University and Michigan State University clashed in the final. While the game wasn't a ratings boon like the Connecticut-Tennessee matchup was, ESPN's Carol Stiff said it was a positive attribute to have other teams involved in the championship game.

"It allows other teams to know that anyone can win this on any given night," said Stiff, ESPN's director of programming and acquisitions. "The Baylor story was a good one. Who can't fall in love with (Baylor coach) Kim Mulkey-Robertson? She brought the game energy. I view it as a positive. We did have Tennessee in the Final Four, which people know and knew further from the coverage Pat Summitt was getting along the way (for surpassing Dean Smith's all-time win total)."

But fans were introduced to some new faces in the 2005 tournament as well, such as Baylor all-American Sophia Young, who will be back to make another run at a championship next season.

Fans also have more time to become familiar with women's players, since not many leap to the pros before they complete their degrees. Since women's professional basketball doesn't offer the same kind of financial security as the NBA does for the men, fans usually can watch a player for her entire four years of eligibility. Janel McCarville of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, was the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft last month and will make around $41,000 as a rookie. NBA first-round draftees are guaranteed three-year multi-million dollar contracts.

"The first step for fans is to fall in love with the team in their back yard," Stiff said. "Then as we broadcast more games and tell more stories and use all of our platforms, people will start to want to watch other players in the conference. So if I'm watching a Big Ten game and I live in Michigan and fall in love with Michigan State this year, I would want to know who took them down in the regular season. Let me check out Penn State, let me check out Purdue. The last step is following the tournament, the bracket and the Women's Final Four."

Calling on coaches

Next March, the women's tournament selection show will be on Monday, a change from recent years when the show was on Sunday and sandwiched between the end of the Big 12 Conference men's tournament final and the start of the men's selection show on CBS. In past years under that format, the women's show had sometimes been compromised because the lead-in game ran long. This year, for example, the show was only 44 minutes, and it was even shorter in 2004.

"Selection Monday" will eliminate that problem.

"There are real benefits to it," Parkes said. "That particular day will go through a process of growth as well. In part, that is why we've delayed the decision or delayed the implementation of that decision for a year. It gives us an opportunity to 'own the night.' I think ESPN is committed to making this a women's college basketball night and promoting it that way. We think it will be an exciting time and look forward to the outcome of it all."

The committee already has moved the Women's Final Four to a Sunday-Tuesday format, which means the last college game played for the last three years has been the one to crown the best women's team in the land.

But it isn't just format changes that are being relied on to encourage growth in the game. The game's spokespersons also are going to have to step up. That means coaches will be asked to do more than just their own Xs and Os. For the sport to grow, it will take just as much hard work away from the court as it does on the recruiting trails, in practice and in games.

"When you look at women's basketball coaches, and you get through their initial fix on competition, which I think we are somewhat addicted to, the understanding of growing the game has a very equal motivation for coaching," Bruno said.

The "call to action" probably comes as no surprise to most coaches who already are champions for the sport. Those who choose to enter the women's basketball coaching profession usually do so with a sense of giving back to the game.

"It's what you sign up for, and it is part of it," Smith said. "We could sit back and do our jobs, the basketball and the recruiting and coaching aspects of it and hope the rest takes care of itself. But women's basketball is still a work in progress. Whether the responsibility should or shouldn't fall on the head coach, the reality is if you want to continue the evolution of the game and the sport, it has to fall on the coach. If you can't shoulder that responsibility, then how can you expect someone else to?"

There certainly seems to be enough incentive for coaches. Seeing new teams like Baylor, LSU, Michigan State and Minnesota in the Women's Final Four the last couple of years sent a ripple of hope throughout the nation. It's not that most coaches don't appreciate what Tennessee and Connecticut, perennial signature programs in the sport, bring to the table in terms of recognition, but it's good to see that other institutions can build excitement, too.

Baylor's championship run showed a program doesn't always have to have the blue chip recruits to have success, either. Young, a native of the West Indies, wasn't on the radar screen for many of the top programs, but she is an all-American who will see a banner raised in her home arena.

"We're starting to see, with the grass-roots growth of the number of young girls competing, how much better the whole talent pool is from the ground up," Bruno said. "This growth is creating a larger pool of talent. This year was a great example of people saying, 'Who's that (Kristin) Haney kid from Michigan State? Who is that kid Young that plays for Baylor?' They want to know where they came from as opposed to the premier teams.

"You don't want to detract from the positive impact that the Tennessees and the UConns have had. They created a storyline. That storyline in turn has created interest."

Bruno said it appears time to share the wealth of talent. "The traditional top 10 to 15 programs can't take everyone," he said. "They can only have a finite number of the best players."

There doesn't appear to be a cap, though, on how popular the women's game can become. Those who have nurtured the game's growth over time are pleased with its current state, but they also know there's ground left to plow.

"We are where we need to be right now, but we're not where we need to be or where we want to be in five years," Donohoe said. "When we get to the five-year mark, then let's set another mark. It's about being proud, taking ownership and joy about where we stand today. In five years we still have to have all the things that make us unique, but we have to move the needle some."