College basketball: UConn coach Geno Auriemma not a fan of men’s game

Geno Auriemma thinks men’s college basketball isn’t very entertaining right now, though he admits the women’s game isn’t either.

“As a spectator watching it, it’s a joke,” the UConn women’s coach said about the men’s game during a conference call on Wednesday. “The game’s a joke, it really is. I don’t coach it, play it. I don’t understand its ins and outs.”

He said he was speaking more as a fan than a basketball coach. But he said he knows people are deciding what to do with their money for entertainment and he doesn’t think it’s entertaining from the fan’s standpoint.

The numbers back up his claim.

For only the second time in the past 15 years, teams in the women’s NCAA Tournament are outscoring their male counterparts. Women’s basketball teams are averaging 69.5 points a game in the first four rounds while the men’s teams are averaging just 67.8 points.

The differential has been getting closer since 2007 when the men were scoring six points more a game then the women, according to STATS.

Auriemma’s Huskies lead the country in scoring at 89.7 points a game, but he said the women’s game isn’t much better than the men’s, down three points a contest.

“Women’s basketball is behind the times. Men’s is further behind,” he said. “Every other sport in the world has taken steps to help people be better on the offensive end of the floor. They’ve moved the fences in baseball, they lowered the mound. … The NFL you touch a guy and it’s a penalty.”

In 2013, the women outscored the men by nearly half a point. It was the first time that had happened since 2000. Now the gap is widening a little bit.

During the regular season, men outscored the women by three points a game — the closest it’s been over the past 15 years. Men’s scoring is down four points a game over that time.