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AND NOW, BACK TO OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION:

The University of Michigan men’s basketball team is getting lots of attention, as you’d expect. Last night the men won Michigan’s 15 Big Ten title, and their first under second-year head coach Juwan Howard, a former Fab Fiver. They’re better, faster, than just about anyone expected, and will likely be a number one seed going into the NCAA tournament.

But another story is unfolding on the same court, a story that’s at least as interesting, and far more unexpected: The Michigan women’s basketball team. 

The Michigan’s women’s basketball team started in 1973, and played as in independent until the Big Ten sponsored the sport in 1982. Since then, conference teams have won or shared 52 league titles. But Michigan has won exactly zero.

It gets worse: in 37 Big Ten seasons, Michigan has finished as high as second only once, but has finished last 11 times. You get the idea. 

Enter coach Kim Barnes Arico, who took over the lowly St. John’s program when she was just 32 years-old. St. John’s plays in the highly competitive Big East conference, led by U-Conn, which has won a staggering 11 national titles. But  Barnes-Arico pushed St. John’s to the NCAA tournament three straight years, capped by a Sweet 16 finish her last year. Perhaps more impressive, St. John’s broke U-Conn’s 99-game home winning streak, on U-Conn’s senior night no less, and Barnes-Arico won her second Big East Coach of the Year honors. 

Everyone expected Barnes Arico to stay in the Northeast forever. Her family lives in New Jersey, after all, she and her husband already had three young children, and in her sport, the Big East was ahead of the Big Ten. She even had three future draft picks coming back the next year. 

But when Michigan came calling, Kim and her family decided to make the jump.

She said, “Honestly, it was the opportunity to come to one of the greatest universities in the world, and to have the block M on my shirt. I’ve always been a builder, and I thought, maybe I could do something at Michigan that had never been done before.”

And she has, winning 20 games for eight straight seasons – something all previous Michigan women’s coaches had done only four times. Her current team won its first ten games, the best start in school history, and is ranked 12^thnationwide. Her star, Naz Hillmon, scored 50 points in a game, something no Michigan basketball player, man or woman, had ever done. 

But as any big-time coach can tell you, that success comes with a price. A few years ago, she was tucking in Emma, then ten-years old, Barnes-Arico recalls, “she was talking and talking and talking, and wouldn’t stop. Finally I said, ‘Emma, it’s bed time.’ And she said, ‘Mommy, this is the only time I get to talk to you.’I took a breath, and tears rolled down my cheeks.”

To increase their time together, Barnes Arico brought her kids to team meals and on road trips, and will again once COVID passes. She also wants to show the young women on her team that they can have a demanding career and still lead a healthy family. She says, “I have to preach it, and I have to live it.”

Barnes Arico has not only built a winning program, but a loyal following. The women’s team doesn’t draw crowds like the men’s team does, but their fans might be more dedicated. The players stay after games to sign autographs, chat up their fans – often little girls – and even shoot baskets with them.  

Under the leadership of Barnes-Arico, Michigan women’s basketball will continue to get better, and bigger, and more popular. 

But I’m not sure if it will ever be more fun than it is right now.