It’s an Iowa State-Texas rematch in Big 12 women’s final (at new, improved site)
The Big 12 women’s basketball tournament’s championship game on Tuesday is a run-it-back affair between Texas and Iowa State.
With one major exception.
The 8 p.m. game between the No. 2 seed Longhorns and third-seeded Cyclones is being played four blocks away from last year’s site. The women’s tournament moved from historic and cozy Municipal Auditorium to modern and spacious T-Mobile Center this year.
The shift was generally well-received when it was made official last year, but there was some trepidation, too. After his team won last season’s tournament, Cyclones coach Bill Fennelly said he’d miss the building that opened in 1935 and had played host to the Big 12 women’s event 14 times — more than any other building.
But Fennelly and other coaches and players have been won over by the new site and its atmosphere. The upper half of T-Mobile Center was curtained off, creating a more intimate setting.
Crowds like the 5,219 that attended Monday’s semifinals would have represented a higher percentage of capacity in 10,000-seat Municipal, but it wasn’t swallowed up in T-Mobile.
“It’s a great atmosphere,” Fennelly said. “I loved Municipal and everything about it. But this is a phenomenal facility.”
T-Mobile Center opened as Sprint Center in 2007. The Big 12 men’s tournament was played there that season, in 2008, and every year since 2010. Until the Big 12 tournament, the only major college women’s events in T-Mobile were regionals held in 2010 and 2018.
Oklahoma’s All-Big 12 guard Payton Verhulst, who attended Bishop Miege and scored 23 points in Monday’s loss to Iowa State, said she grew up going to games at T-Mobile Center.
“It was really surreal for me to play here in front of my family and friends, and little girls who were watching the game,” she said.
Vic Schaefer said he’s wanted to move the event to T-Mobile since he became the Longhorns’ coach four years ago.
“I’ve been fighting to get this tournament in this building ever since I took the job,” Schaefer said. “It’s so unjust for our kids to be playing in Municipal all those years while the guys were over here.
“This is where our kids deserve to play. Our kids were like, ‘Why aren’t we playing over there?’ Our kids deserve to play in this building. I don’t think you can tell any difference in the atmosphere between this building and Municipal ... This is what our sport deserves, what it warrants.”
The building itself isn’t the only benefit for the teams, said Kansas coach Brandon Schneider.
“It’s terrific that our young women have this experience to play in this building, even the locker rooms and their size, and the police escort (from the hotel to arena),” Schneider said. “Young people will remember the games, but they’re going to remember a lot of the other things, too, when it comes to the experiences they’ve had here.”
Texas advanced to Tuesday’s tourney final by defeating Kansas State 71-64 on Monday. The Cyclones beat top-seeded Oklahoma 85-68.
Iowa State seeks its fourth Big 12 tournament championship. Texas, in its final year in the Big 12 before moving on the SEC, was the 2022 champion and has won the event twice.
