The greats of the past few years aren’t so great anymore. This season in women’s college basketball has been one like none other. I know most of you will read the last sentence and think, “Women’s basketball, who cares about that?” Well, you might not care, but it is interesting to see how this season is shaping up so far and what that can mean for women’s basketball in the future.

This season has been what the so-called experts are calling “full of parity.”For once, there is no unbeaten team left, and it is only the beginning of February. Something like that doesn’t happen very often in women’s basketball. In the past, a few teams have ruled supreme, mostly UConn and Tennessee, just to name a few.

In the past nine years, those two teams have combined to win seven national championships. The championship game for the last two years featured these two teams facing off, with UConn beating the Volunteers both times.

The women’s game in the past has not seen much change. It was never a surprise to see Connecticut or Tennessee as the last two teams standing, or to see three out of the four number-one seeds make it to the final four.

This season, it looks like there will be a lot of change in the NCAA finals.

Men’s basketball has been lauded because of the many surprises that come in March, with number-one teams being upset by lower-ranking teams.

Well, so far this season, plenty of top-ranked teams have been downed by lower or even unranked teams.

Rutgers, at that time unranked, took out three top-10 teams in one week, No. 1 LSU, No. 8 Tennessee and number three Texas, and then still lost to unranked teams.

Villanova, an unranked team, beat a No. 3 Notre Dame squad, but then lost to 14th and 16th ranked teams, and some that aren’t even ranked. Unranked TCU beat a then third ranked Georgia and upset a 13th Michigan State. UCLA beat fourth ranked Texas, who had just beaten the number-one Lady Vols. The 10th ranked Tennessee team upset second ranked Stanford with a last-second three-pointer. Connecticut has snapped its 112 home game Big East win streak, losing to Notre Dame, and is now ranked 11th, their lowest ranking in years.

Now, you might be asking, what does this all mean for women’s basketball? It means that between now and the NCAA tournament in March, a lot could happen.

While it doesn’t look probable that UT and UConn will meet up in the finals again, or that they will be placed as one seeds, anything could happen. This year it looks doubtful that three out of four one seeds will make it to the Final Four, and lots of upsets could occur.

Women’s basketball in the past has not been noted for the parity that men’s basketball has seen. With the changes that have occurred this season, maybe more people will think of women’s basketball with more respect than they have in the past-they deserve it.

I grew up in Tennessee, where watching women’s basketball was a staple in my house. I have seen some of the best basketball played with some of the best players, including seeing, in person, a female basketball player dunk the ball in a game.

While I hope my Lady Vols will be able to hang on throughout the rest of the season and win another National Championship, I know that this year they have less of a chance than in the past, and I know that what is going on is a good thing for women’s basketball.

This means that it will be more difficult to choose who will win in the office NCAA bracket pool, (if any office ever did pools for women’s basketball) and will make watching the finals a little more exciting.

While things might be evening out, with Tennessee sneaking back up the ratings, there is still much of the season left; and with teams deep in conference play, when March rolls around, hopefully more people will be tuning in to watch the end of a season that has been like no other before it.