NEW ORLEANS — They’ve been underdogs so long that they relish continuing in the role even at the Final Four, and especially after dispatching one of the biggest names in the sport.

The Louisville Cardinals — Undercards? — do have a -2 figure beside their name on at least one Las Vegas sports betting line going into Sunday’s national semifinal game against California.

For the Golden Bears, reaching the Final Four for the first time isn’t as much as a surprise as an affirmation that women’s basketball in the Bay Area doesn’t have to be synonymous with Stanford.

Cal faces Louisville in what’s considered the undercard, both in scheduling and marquée appeal. But being regarded merely as the opening act for UConn-Notre Dame IV disregards what the two programs, and the two coaches in particular, represent for the long-term future of the sport.

UConn’s Geno Auriemma and Muffet McGraw of Notre Dame have 19 Final Four trips and eight NCAA titles combined in a rivalry that will be contested for the fourth time this season — with all previous games Notre Dame wins — and the last time in the soon-to-be-dismantled Big East.

Lindsay Gottlieb has taken Cal to its first Final Four at the age of 35.

But Cal’s Lindsay Gottlieb and Louisville’s Jeff Walz personify a younger, rapidly ascending generation of coaching stars in a sport that has been dominated by a small handful of icons for years.

In her second season in Berkeley, Gottlieb has pulled together a southern California-centric core of players who have endured plenty of heartbreak away from the court, and who aren’t shy about personal expression.

“I’m very secure in the fact that they play for the California across their chest,” said Gottlieb, from a family of lawyers in Scarsdale, Calif. “I’m okay that one of them has a mohawk (starting guard Layshia Clarendon) and another one has pink braids (starting forward Gennifer Brandon). It’s a really unique group that is just comfortable in their own skin and playing for Cal.”

While Walz has been to the Final Four before — the Cardinals fell to UConn in the 2009 NCAA title game — Louisville’s stunning 82-81 upset of defending NCAA champion Baylor and player of the year Brittney Griner in the Sweet 16 still prompted many of the questions during Saturday’s official press conference.

Walz, 41, could have gone all Belichick and rattled off a load of coach-speak and refused to talk about any opponent but the next one. But in savoring the long afterglow of what may be the biggest upset in the history of the NCAA tournament, Walz revealed a glimpse of a coaching style that’s as open and free and easy as it is intense and demanding.

Starting with the open-collar shirts on the sideline, a dramatic difference from Rick Pitino’s pricey Italian threads, because “I can’t stand to wear a suit and a tie.”

“It’s comfortable, I enjoy it,” Walz said of his sartorial preference. “And I’m going to continue to wear it. I’m trying to start a trend, it just hasn’t picked up.”

But it’s his work with high-maintenance, big-personality players that’s notable. While Walz inherited Angel McCoughtry, the mercurial All-American and centerpiece of the 2009 team, he recruited openly cocky junior guard Shoni Schimmel, who hails from the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon.

Shoni Schimmel has fueled Louisville's improbable run to the Final Four.

In the heat of an already-heated game against Baylor, Schimmel drove on the break against Griner, whipped out a behind-the-back dribble, then flipped in an over-the-shoulder layup that scaled Griner’s reach and bounced off the glass and in. When Griner pulled herself up off the floor Schimmel met her, eye-to-eye, emitting something like a primal scream.

“I just had to do the little circus shot because I just mess around in practice sometimes doing it and it worked out for me,” she said.

Which is just fine with Walz, whose younger sister is Jamie Walz, a hotshot guard in her playing days who became a Kentucky high school basketball scoring legend. He said Schimmel’s maturity this season has led to better decision-making.

“She came in with flair, that’s what she does,” he said. “I understand how she plays. I recruited her. I let her play. I let kids play. I work them hard in practice but when it comes to the game, they’re going to take some shots that aren’t great shots. And that’s okay.”

It was 22 years ago at nearby Lakefront Arena that Auriemma and UConn experienced a Final Four for the first time. On Friday, he and McGraw gave Gottlieb what she called “the most genuine hugs” in joining some select company. When asked if he still enjoys it, Auriemma was wistful and sarcastic at the same time.

“Leading up to this is getting harder and harder and harder for me every year,” Auriemma said. “And Lindsay doesn’t know it yet, but 10 years from now she’s going to look back on this this year and go, ‘Man, that’s when it all turned for me. I used to love this game.”

DENVER — Ken Starr was thumbing his smartphone as Kim Mulkey speculated about the response to Baylor’s NCAA women’s basketball championship Tuesday night.

“At Baylor they used to not let the Baptists dance,” Mulkey said. “I’ll bet they’re dancing now.”

Kim Mulkey with daughter Makenzie, a Baylor team member, and son Kramer.

Starr, the Baylor president, guffawed with the audience of reporters as Mulkey, perhaps more than anything else, just wanted to take a deep breath and relax.

Baylor had just flattened Notre Dame 80-61 in one of the most dominating defensive performances in NCAA history.

The Lady Bears became the seventh NCAA women’s team to go undefeated and the first to go 40-0. National player of the year Brittney Griner was in devastating form, with 26 points, 13 rebounds and 5 blocked shots.

With Griner and the nucleus of Baylor’s team, including another punishing defender, All-American point guard Odyssey Sims, returning next season, Baylor is occupying the space normally reserved for UConn and Tennessee.

And having to answer a similar battery of questions. Such as:

How do you top perfection?

“You’re making me embrace this now instead of letting me enjoy this,” Mulkey said. “We’re going to embrace it. I don’t think you guys are going to let me hide it.”

She could have been excused for sounding exasperated, but if she did, Mulkey hid it well. All season long she urged her players to get comfortable with being the strong favorite to win the title. Along the way, Lady Bears took down Notre Dame, Connecticut, Tennessee, a rugged Big 12 Conference, Tennessee again in the Elite 8, Stanford in the national semifinals and the Fighting Irish for a second, and convincing, time.

Yet the Irish trailed only 34-28 at halftime. Griner had just nine points as Baylor couldn’t take advantage of foul trouble to center Devereaux Peters and poor shooting from its backcourt trio that keyed Notre Dame’s semifinal win over UConn.

All that changed in the second half as Griner went to work on the Irish, with Peters sitting down with four fouls. She reeled off 11 points in a nearly four-minute span midway in the period as the Lady Bears pulled out to a 69-50 lead.

Amid the flurry was a splendid sky hook shot from right side of the basket, as smooth as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and just as effective. Baylor, which shot a sizzling 63 percent in the second half, got 19 points from Sims and 12 from Destiny Williams.

“When I hit that little hook, it just got me energized,” Griner said. “I was kind of shocked it went in, but it definitely got me going.”

A shell-shocked Notre Dame (35-4), which lost to Texas A & M in last year’s championship game, got 20 points from its All-American guard, Skylar Diggins, but little else. The Irish simply had no answer for the 6-foot-8 Griner, who was named the Most Outstanding Player at the Pepsi Center.

“I think she’s one of a kind,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. “I think she’s like a guy playing with women. There are so many things that she can do that I’ve not seen a lot of women [do].”

McGraw’s comments were amplified on ESPN and greeted by some on social media outlets with contempt (the team’s publicist issued a clarified statement by McGraw on Twitter), but not by Griner. “I definitely take it as a compliment,” she said.

While Baylor’s exploits set a new mark in NCAA annals, this team isn’t the first to win 40 games in a season. In 1979-80, Louisiana Tech notched a 40-5 record, getting extra games in a state tournament that was a hallmark of the AIAW era, and winning a third place national consolation game.

That was the season before Mulkey’s arrival as a player. In her first two seasons, the Lady Techsters absolutely dominated, going a combined 69-1 and winning AIAW and NCAA national titles.

As a coach, Mulkey has Baylor poised for similar greatness. She’s not picky about a won-loss record as long as she gets the same result next season.

“If we lose two,  three, four, five or we go 30-10, I don’t care. But that’s what we want, another national championship.”

As for another national championship coach who’s already expressed the desire to aim for perfection, Mulkey offered a brief thought, perhaps in a be-careful-what-you-wish-for vein:

“I saw Calipari wants to go undefeated. Good luck to him.”

DENVER — She has one eye that barely blinks and a side of her mouth that doesn’t move because of a recent diagnosis with Bell’s palsy.

None of that deters Kim Mulkey from looking the questioner straight in the eye and telling her exactly what she thinks. Especially if the question is meant to put her just a little bit on the spot.

On Monday, the day before her Baylor team faces Notre Dame for the women’s NCAA basketball championship, Mulkey was asked if she understood why there are those — primarily women’s sports activists — who find the Lady Bears’ nickname offensive.

Mulkey, a self-professed “country girl from Louisiana,” didn’t hesitate to reply, and in a gentle Southern manner hinting at deeper subtleties the questioner may not have fully understood.

Baylor, with coach Kim Mulkey and player of the year Brittney Griner, could become the first 40-0 NCAA women's team if the Lady Bears defeat Notre Dame in Tuesday's national title game.

“We’re from the South. We still say yes ma’am and no ma’am. I think it’s a tradition of respect, believe it or not, than it is disrespect from people on the outside.”

Mulkey also wondered aloud that “too much is made of it.”

She wasn’t the only one, given the enormous stakes on the line Tuesday at the Pepsi Center.

The Lady Bears — for that is what they call themselves — are 39-0, matching the record of Tennessee’s 1998 NCAA title team and UConn championship squads from 2002, 2009 and 2010. In going 40-0, they would set a new mark for wins by a title team.

With the 2005 NCAA title in tow and most of her core team returning next season, including national player of the year Brittney Griner and All-American point guard Odyssey Sims, Mulkey has the makings of a dynasty in Waco, a true threat to the dominance UConn and Tennessee have enjoyed since the mid-1990s.

Who cares about a nickname?

USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, does, as she continued her longstanding diatribes against anything the women’s sports establishment finds “demeaning.” During her 161-word question/Women’s Sports Foundation gospel reading (give or take a dozen contractions), The Stenographer of the Sisterhood was sure to mention Title IX and laud Mulkey as a “role model” for young girls and women.

For all of her unvarnished advocacy for women’s sports and complaints about a lack of media coverage of women’s basketball, Brennan might have done better to familiarize herself with the Southern culture of the sport, and Southern society in general. For Mulkey is steeped in the deepest traditions of a game that for girls in her native Louisiana and elsewhere in Deep South was embraced more than it was rebuffed.

A diminutive fireball with braided pigtails, Mulkey arrived at Louisiana Tech out of Hammond, La., in 1980, playing for the flamboyant Sonja Hogg, with her silvery hair, snappy attire and keen sense of marketing and branding. She changed the women’s nickname to “Lady Techsters” from the school’s generic “Bulldogs,” famously quipping that ”I just didn’t want us to be the Lady Bulldogs. I could hear people saying, ‘There comes Coach Hogg and all of her little bitches.’ ”

During the final years of the AIAW era, Louisiana Tech battled Old Dominion for dominance, as the power centers of the sport were shifting from small schools like Immaculata, Delta State and Wayland Baptist and ultimately to Tennessee, UCLA and Texas in the early NCAA years.

As a freshman, Mulkey was the starting point guard for the 1981 AIAW national champions who went 34-0 and prompted Tennessee coach Pat Head (now Summitt) to declare that Louisiana Tech “has the two best teams in America.” In 1982, the Lady Techsters went 35-1 and were crowned the first NCAA champions.

Asked Monday if her present team was better, Mulkey unabashedly declared that it is: “We kick their butt. I’m on that team. I’ll take Odyssey Sims on any day. But I don’t compare teams. I don’t compare generations.”

Mulkey played on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team coached by Summitt, then became an assistant to Leon Barmore, Hogg’s co-coach and sideline wizard, as Tech won another NCAA title (its last) in 1988.

When Barmore retired in 2000, she was offered the job, but with only a four-year contract. Insistent on job security and demanding no less than five, Mulkey turned it down, and went to Baylor, where Hogg was her predecessor but had been only 7-20 in her final year.

In five years, the Lady Bears were NCAA champions, the result of Mulkey’s relentlessness in every aspect of her job. Her memoir, “Won’t Back Down,” describes the tenacity that led her to be the first person to win an NCAA championship as a player, assistant coach and head coach.

Along the way, her Southern swagger — a combination of the ultra-confidence fostered at Tech, her occasional outspokenness, a fiery sideline demeanor and her penchant for eye-catching game outfits — has become the embodiment one of the sport’s giant coaching personalities.

“She tells me all the time she could beat me one-on-one and she could take me to the hole,” says Sims, a rugged sophomore and designated defensive stopper. “I just tell her ‘Your days are over, you don’t do that any more.’ We joke around about crazy stuff but coach is always going to talk noise. We just get a kick out of it. She always tells [Griner] she can take her to the hole too.”

For all the bluster, Mulkey proudly regards her persona as “old school.” The divorced mother of a daughter, Makenzie Robertson, a reserve Baylor player, and Kramer Robertson, who will attend LSU on a baseball scholarship, the 49-year-old Mulkey disdains “all that social media junk.” She ignores blog comments and message board material that truly demean players (especially Griner), far more than calling a female basketball player a “Lady” ever will.

“This is someone’s child,” Mulkey says, with motherly passion rising in her voice. “This is a human being, people. She didn’t wake up and say: ‘God, make me 6-8, make me have the ability to dunk. This child is as precious as they come. She just makes me happy.”

Slow-talking and plainspoken, Mulkey understands the outside image others have of her. She says that raising children changed her life, and that it helps with her Baylor players.

“Really, I’m not tough, that’s what’s so funny,” she says. “You see me on the sideline and that’s what I do. I get a little bit of an advantage because I have to deal with my own children and what motivates them, and they give me some insight because they’re the same age as the athletes I get to coach.

“But yeah, I could coach them. In fact, I could make some of them a little bit tougher than they are.”

DENVER — On a night when the undercard trumped the main event, two players barely mentioned in the buildup to the Women’s Final Four were the unexpected, and undisputed stars.

Fifth-year Notre Dame senior Brittany Mallory was left open by UConn not just once, but twice, in overtime of Sunday’s first semifinal game, and she burned the Huskies both times with critical 3-point baskets.

Stanford dared another senior, Baylor’s Terran Condrey more times than that in the finale, and she made the Cardinal pay for the repeated gamble nearly every time.

Notre Dame and Baylor reached Tuesday’s national championship game for plenty of other reasons, but their multiple-threat attacks caused UConn and Stanford to take some calculated risks.

The Huskies’ gambit paid off for about 43 minutes, even after Mallory, a hard-nose defensive specialist, buried a trey early in the overtime period that would prove to be the final go-head basket.

It wasn’t until Irish All-American Skylar Diggins’ block of Bria Hartley’s attempted layup with 1:43 to play, and her kickout to Mallory for another 3, that Notre Dame got the momentum it needed. In winning 83-75, the Irish took down their Big East rivals for the third time this season.

“Sky told me to keep shooting,” said Mallory, who finished with 11 points on 4-of-9 shooting and who never felt more confident than on her last bucket of the game. “I  took a deep breath and I let it go and I was thinking to myself this one’s going in. I was so happy, I couldn’t believe it. I was so happy.”

Said Notre Dame center Devereaux Peters: “She almost cried.”

UConn coach Geno Auriemma wanted to cry too. “Brittany Mallory made two huge shots, and that’s who we wanted to shoot the ball. And God bless her, she stepped up and made the shots.”

In unbeaten Baylor’s gutty 59-47 win over Stanford, Brittany Griner and Odyssey Sims, the Lady Bears’ All-Americans, weren’t at full tilt, at least offensively. With the Cardinal sagging and doubling down on Griner and making sure to have a body on Sims, Condrey found plenty of room to shoot mid-range jumpers. She scored 10 of her 13 points in the second half, converting 5-of-9 field goal attempts, and matched Griner’s output in scoring.

For only the third time this season, Condrey scored in double figures, coming up one point shy of her season high.

“Brittney Griner is the face of women’s basketball right now, and we embrace that,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. “But our team is not just Brittney Griner.”

Stanford had a moderately successful game plan, with All-American Nneka Ogwumike driving right at Griner most of the night. Ogwumike scored 22 points but didn’t get the help she needed from the Cardinal’s perimeter scorers, who were 2-for-17 from 3-point range.

And in the second half, Baylor turned up its defensive pressure and made a steady march to the free throw line, hitting 19 for 26.

“Defensively to me wasn’t the problem, except for our fouling,” said Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, whose team has come up short in five consecutive Final Fours. “I just felt like we needed other people besides Nneka.”

People like Condrey and Mallory.

DENVER — One of the most refreshing storylines about this Women’s Final Four is the fact that for the first time since 1989, all No. 1 seeds have advanced.

In a sport where the handwringing over the lack of parity is an abiding concern, should “chalk” be applauded?

Absolutely, because of  the star power that Baylor, UConn, Notre Dame and Stanford bring: The talent on the court, coaching wizardry and personality on the sidelines and the brand names of their programs.

Yet novelty abounds despite the dominance and familiarity. In the first game tonight, there’s the fourth Big East meeting of the year between Notre Dame and UConn. The Irish are 2-1 in head-to-head meetings but los the Big East Tournament final to a Huskies team that for the first time in years doesn’t feature an All-American.

In the finale, there’s the dunking, game-changing player who is Brittney Griner of Baylor, which would become the first NCAA basketball champion to go 40-0. The Lady Bears will be opposed by Stanford’s sensational sister duo of Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike, and coach Tara VanDerveer’s bid for a first NCAA title in 20 years.

While VanDerveer and Muffett McGraw of Notre Dame and VanDerveer are models of coaching probity on the sidelines, contrast that with the sideline operatics and wisecracking of Baylor’s Kim Mulkey and Geno Auriemma of UConn.

Mulkey, diagnosed just this week with Bell’s palsy, has a partially paralyzed face and admits to being blinded by the bright lights and bothered by loud pep band sounds. But as she said during Saturday’s press conference:

“As far as the distortion or whatever you want to call it of the face, hell, I’m just another ugly coach. It is what it is. And I’m not vain, it doesn’t matter.”

A year ago, the sport was basking in the novelty of a new name — Texas A & M — winning the national championship. During this season, great stories coming out of Delaware, St. Bonaventure, Gonzaga and Wisconsin-Green Bay had us wondering if one among them might become the first mid-major to reach the Final Four since Jackie Stiles and Southwest Missouri State in 2001.

While I do wish the women had the early-round upsets that helped build the popularity of the men’s NCAA tournament and March Madness, the sport just isn’t there yet, and it may not be for quite a while.

While we are wonderfully deluded by the desire to have a Butler, a VCU, a George Mason of distaff hoops, the reality is that the more burning desire is for the sport to be showcased as strongly as it can.

This Women’s Final Four has all the ingredients for that to happen.

It has been duly noted that the Kentucky-Kansas men’s final Monday night features the winningest teams in NCAA history. A “titanic battle,” in fact.

Nobody’s complaining about that, nor should anyone.

The same goes for what transpires in the Pepsi Center tonight, and on Tuesday.

INDIANAPOLIS — The national championship matchup that few had in their brackets turned out to be one of the better finales in years.

Texas A & M got 30 points and nine rebounds from Women’s Final Four Most Outstanding Player Danielle Adams and shot 68 percent in the second half to down Notre Dame 76-70 before a crowd of 17,473 at Conseco Fieldhouse.

It was the first NCAA championship for the Aggies (33-5), who were  in downtrodden shape when coach Gary Blair arrived from Arkansas in 2003. Notre Dame (31-8), playing in front a friendly partisan crowd, was vying for its second national title, 10 years after capturing its first crown in an all-Indiana affair over Purdue.

Without the more familiar names of UConn, Tennessee and Stanford, some pundits bemoaned the supposed lack of star power.

In what proved to be a prelude to a riveting Women’s Final Four, A & M put out Stanford in the national semifnals after trailing by 10 points late in the second half. Then Notre Dame, fresh off a stunning Elite Eight win over Tennessee, crushed UConn’s bid for a third consecutive title.

“I hope Tony Kornheiser was watching this,” said Blair, referring to one of the ESPN TV host. “Women’s basketball perhaps needed this game more than Texas A & M and Notre Dame did.”

After battling foul trouble and a seven-point lead early in the second half, the Aggies took the lead for good at 58-57 with 8:30 to play on a jumper by Tyra White. But it was her 3-point shot with 1:07 left, and as the shot clock expired, that essentially put away Notre Dame as A & M led 73-68.

“That was a knife in my heart,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. “That was the game, that play right there.”

The Aggies, who beat Big 12 rival Baylor in the Elite 8 after losing to the Lady Bears three times, then roared past Stanford in the semifinals, looked like they might crack when both Adams and point guard Sydney Colson were whistled with three fouls.

But Adams, the Barkleyesque power forward who shed 40 pounds before the season, stopped taking long jumpers and worked in the paint in the second half. She scored 22 points after halftime on 9-for-11 shooting, putting Devereaux Peters, Notre Dame’s top post defender, in foul trouble.

“I had a little voice in my head that said, ‘Don’t let this team down,’ ” Adams said. “And I just took the game over. I wasn’t going to let my team lose. They’ve been doing everything for me, so I decided to take them on my back and just let them ride on my back.”

Diggins led the Irish with 23 points while Peters scored 21 and pulled down 11 rebounds. They’re part of a Notre Dame nucleus that loses only starter for next season.

A & M parts with Adams and Colson, returns White and starting guard Sydney Carter and welcomes South Carolina transfer center Kelsey Bone and the top recruiting class in Aggies’ history.

“Either one of us deserves this trophy, but we played just a little bit better in the second half,” Blair said. “We found a way.”

In-Game Tweets on @wparker

INDIANAPOLIS – On the massive Texas A & M campus in College Station, Tuesday has been designated as a “maroon out,” in which students, faculty and staff are asked to wear school colors.

A game featuring A & M’s Top 10-ranked baseball team will be moved up to a late afternoon first pitch.

A healthy slice of Aggie Nation will grind to a halt by mid-evening Tuesday as that part of the deep heart of Texas will be euphoric about the rare chance to see their school compete for a national championship in a major sport.

The Texas A & M women’s basketball team wasn’t the only Aggie program that was moribund when Bill Byrne became athletic director in 2003 and made Gary Blair his first hire.

But it might be the most unlikely team for which those students and alumni will be wearing Aggie maroon Tuesday.

When Texas A & M (32-5) meets Notre Dame (31-7) at Conseco Fieldhouse with an NCAA championship on the line, the game will feature two teams that knocked out all the No. 1 seeds in the tournament and deprived a repeat of last year’s final between UConn and Stanford.

“I think I know we screwed it up for ESPN,” said the amiable, but rambling Blair, who’s been here before, with Arkansas in 1998. “But it’s good for the game of basketball right now. Right now for our sport to grow we need Texas A & M and Notre Dame in this game.”

It’s a refrain that’s heard every five years or so, when the dominant powers in the game get tripped up along the way. A & M took care of Baylor and Stanford, while the Fighting Irish pulled off a rather notable feat, eliminating Tennessee and UConn in successive games.

“This is my week for exorcizing demons,” said Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw, who had never defeated the Lady Vols before and had posted only four previous wins over UConn in 32 tries.

In the last two weeks, what Blair and McGraw have done is to give hope that the UConn-Tennessee lock on the sport’s dominance doesn’t have to be permanent.

But since UConn won the first of its seven NCAA titles in 1995, only four teams other than the Huskies or Lady Vols have claimed titles.

One of them was Notre Dame in 2001, when McGraw’s team famously overcame a double-digit halftime deficit to overpower UConn in the national semifinals.

The push toward parity

During most of the 1990s, a number of programs new to the Final Four elevated hopes that suspense in March was just around the corner. UConn reached its first Final Four in 1991, laying the groundwork for a dynasty.

In 1993, the Final Four featured four first-time teams in Texas Tech, Vanderbilt, Iowa and Ohio State. But none of them have returned.

Neither have Alabama in 1994, N.C. State and a Blair-coached Arkansas in 1998 and Penn State in 2000, when the Huskies reeled off the first of six NCAA crowns in nine seasons.

At the same time, Purdue, North Carolina and Notre Dame moved into the elite ranks by winning national championships. Duke, LSU and Rutgers were to follow, but national titles have eluded them. More recently, Baylor in 2005 and Maryland in 2006 captured NCAA crowns with young teams.

Since then, it’s been Tennessee and UConn. That would have been the national semifinal matchup had both reached the Final Four, and the renewal of a bitter rivalry that no longer is contested during the regular season.

“Like I said, ESPN didn’t envision it,” Blair said of the Notre Dame matchup. “But the thing is we’re both No. 2 seeds. We’re both in the Top 10 all year. So what’s the big story? We’ve both done what we were supposed to do all year long.”

Notre Dame’s McGraw thinks it’s been “a good thing to fly under the radar. I don’t think that anybody was talking about us.”

A model to emulate

Beating the elite powers of the sport on the floor on a regular basis, and not every few years, is the only way to reach the competitive balance that coaches and others in the sport say they desperately crave.

And with the onset of recruiting parity in the late 1990s have come commitments to upgrade facilities and lay out money — some serious money — to lure top coaches and provide resources to recruit, travel and win.

Blair makes a reported $800,000 annually, but he’s far from being the higest-paid coach in the Big 12. Baylor’s Kim Mulkey, Sherri Coale of Oklahoma and Texas’ Gail Goestenkors are in low seven figures.

“The salaries, are they justified? You betcha,” he said. “And I want everyone to feel good about their sport. Does a CEO deserve $65 million? Probably not, but he’s still responsible for that company going to the next level. And if he’s earned it, go ahead.”

The Aggies drew home crowds in the hundreds when Blair first arrived. This season, they averaged 6,104 for home games, putting them among the nation’s leaders. Next year Texas A & M will play host to an early stage of the the NCAA tournament.

Blair says selling his program — whether it’s meeting with small groups, handing out tickets or pushing for more media coverage — requires tireless passion and hustle that goes far beyond the matter of “dollars and cents.”

“It’s getting people out to sell it, because I’m tired of going into airports and seeing all Texas and Michigan and UCLA and even Miami stuff,” Blair said. “Now, I want to sell A & M. I do not have to want to explain A & M to a person from Connecticut or Gonzaga. They’re going to know who we are and what we’ve accomplished.”

The best potential advertisement for that comes Tuesday.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The casual observer may find unusual the declarations of “parity” that ring out when two No. 2 seeds reach the NCAA women’s championship game, as they did Sunday night.

Texas A & M and Notre Dame had already broken brackets by upsetting Baylor and Tennessee, respectively, in the Elite Eight. And then they completely shattered them at Conseco Fieldhouse by putting out Stanford and Connecticut, respectively, considered the favorites to reach the title game, and both in stirring fashion.

No No. 1 seeds remain.

“This is what women’s basketball needs,” Texas A & M coach Gary Blair said after his Aggies stunned Stanford 63-62 in one of the more thrilling Final Four finishes in several years. “It needs games like this to be able to sometimes wake up America, to be able to give us credit when credit is due.”

For the second consecutive game the Fighting Irish, who prevailed over UConn 72-63 despite 36 points from national player of the year Maya Moore, brought down one of the giants of the sport. In ending the Huskies’ bid for a third consective national championship, they might have been even more impressive than in their Elite Eight victory over Tennessee.

In order to get here, the last two teams standing had to beat archrivals who had defeated them three times during the season.

“The key difference was keeping our composure,” said Notre Dame guard Skylar Diggins, who turned in a riveting 28-point performance that UConn could not contain. “In the front of our minds were those three losses. So I just wanted to make sure I stayed poised.”

In both games, the winners went right after their opponents’ weaknesses: A & M’s stifling defensive pressure hounded Stanford’s ill-equipped guards all night, although little-used senior reserve Melanie Murphy made a difference for the Cardinal with her ball-handling and defensive plays.

It wasn’t until after she fouled out in final minutes that the Aggies were able to finally erase what had been a 54-44 Stanford lead. The lead changed hands four more times, culminating with a jaw-droppping pass from Sydney Colson to Tyra White for the final margin with 3.3 seconds left. Then Colson grasped Stanford’s desperation heave, as the first upset of the night was in the books.

“While you all were writing, I guarantee you a lot of you already had your story three-quarters of the way written,” Blair said in the post-game press conference. “And now you’re going to have to change it. Okay?”

Notre Dame figured Moore might have another big night in her, but didn’t want any of her teammates to get a hot hand. Because they didn’t, Moore’s sterling career that featured 3,036 points, two NCAA titles and just four losses came to an end.

“She single-handedly tried to will them back into the game,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. “But I did think we got everybody else to get out of their game a little bit more to force Maya to have the pressure of carrying the team.”

With a very thin margin for error or foul trouble, it worked. UConn used a six-player rotation most of the season, with only one pure post player, Stefanie Dolson. When she got saddled with foul trouble, picking up her third personal moments into the second half and her fourth with 14 minutes left, the Irish went to work in the paint and on the arc, with Natalie Novosel contributing 22 points.

So for only the fifth time in the last 17 seasons, the national champion will be a team other than UConn or Tennessee.

“Nothing’s a given,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “When you play well, you win. When you don’t, you lose. The two teams that played the best today and the two teams that deserve to be playing Tuesday night are the two teams playing Tuesday night.”

In what’s becoming an annual pre-Final Four media routine, Bloomberg has published what I regard as the most essential piece about the finances, marketing and outlook for big-time women’s college basketball that’s been written in some time.

But unlike some previous treatment of the same issue — such as this very good Big 12-oriented account by The Austin American-Statesman before last year’s Women’s Final Four in San Antonio — Bloomberg reporter Curtis Eichelberger’s examination goes beyond an emphasis on money and revenues and explores the realities facing those trying to broaden the sport’s appeal.

It’s an effort that’s obviously tied to money, but also illustrates the difficulties that the NCAA, conferences and various college athletic departments have faced in expanding its base audience.

Even Connecticut, which is gunning for its eighth NCAA championship this weekend at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis and has been the only women’s program to turn in a regular profit, is awash in red ink. Top programs are budgeted typically around $2 million to $4 million, with coaches like UConn’s Geno Auriemma and Pat Summitt of Tennessee pulling down low seven-figure salary packages.

A few excerpts that I think are worth keeping in mind, starting with comments from former NCAA women’s basketball committee chairwoman and Atlantic 10 commissioner Bernadette McGlade, a strong advocate for pushing the women’s game in the direction of profitability:

“There is intrinsic value in being able to carry your own weight. For the amount of resources going into intercollegiate women’s basketball, there’s going to be a time where there has to be a rational decision of, is it worth it? . . . It makes a difference whether you make money. It gives you a seat at the table where the decisions are made.”

Yet despite regular marketing and attendance initiatives, that scenario may not not realistic. Ohio State senior associate athletics director Ben Jay:

“I don’t foresee women’s basketball breaking even. We’d love it to. We are marketing the brand and pushing the program and all the fan experience elements. But we don’t see women’s basketball subsidizing other sports.”

The most important issue facing the women’s game from an exposure standpoint may be renewing the NCAA women’s basketball television package. The current 11-year, $163 million deal with ESPN, which includes a number of men’s and women’s non-revenue sports, expires at the end of the 2011-12 season. McGlade is in favor of pulling the women’s basketball component away from the other sports, Eichelberger reports, “no matter how small, and use that as a baseline to set new goals for developing the women’s television product.”

I certainly agree with that. Assessing the true media value of that product is a necessary step away from the current piggy-backing of women’s games that are tied to conference packages. I’ve had a senior administrator at a major conference tell me that it doesn’t place a financial value on its women’s package that is lumped in its all-sports contract. This individual wouldn’t speculate on what that dollar figure might be.

It’s time for this to change, and for the sport’s advocates to embrace what I’ve referred to as women’s hoops 3.0:

“This sport, and others women play, needs to attract more fans and more corporate and media support in order to gain a more durable foothold in a sports world still feeling the effects of the recession. Those with a professional stake in the advancement of women’s basketball recognize that those gains are no longer possible through political and social activism alone.

“The time in which we’re living now — with a concerted effort underway to ensure that women’s hoops, and women’s sports, will succeed as businesses — will help determine whether those young women will be able to live out their dreams.”

Perhaps I’m far too obsessive about this, and I know I will enjoy the games once they finally get underway Sunday night. I love the matchups that are on tap with Stanford vs. Texas A & M and UConn vs. Notre Dame. The splendid Maya Moore will conclude one of the greatest college basketball careers ever this weekend, with Stanford’s veteran squad, a spunky bunch of Aggies getting here for the first time and the fine young Irish point guard Skylar Diggins also featuring.

But the constant backdrop of social and cultural issues is bearing out my obsession. On Sunday morning’s “Outside the Lines” program on ESPN, the topic won’t be the basketball, or anything I’ve addressed here but the issue of transgender athletes. ESPN got Kye Allums, who is a male-identified member of the George Washington women’s team, to sit for an interview. I’ve been asked to appear on a panel discussion on the same program because of what I posted here last fall.

There’s nothing really new to report here, and I question OTL’s choice of subject matter on the same day of the biggest weekend in women’s college basketball, and that’s a point I’ll need to make on the air.

Especially when trying to bring the women’s game to new audiences remains so vexing, even for girls who already play. Says Rick Risinger, the Indianapolis-area high school coach of current UConn starter Kelly Faris:

“Boys have a tendency to watch a lot of basketball, whereas girls don’t tend to watch as much. The Final Four will open up and expose girls to basketball at a high level. This could set off a spark in some girls.”