A sample of Louisiana Tech fans' ire about the column in which I suggested that foul call at the end of Tech's 66-65 second-round victory over Vanderbilt on Monday wasn't the best way for that game to end:

"Your article stunk." ... "You are a great example of everything that's wrong with journalism." ... "You must have gone to Vanderbilt." ... "Are you blind?" ... "Are you an idiot?" ... "You're proof women shouldn't be sportswriters." ... "How did you ever get your job? Change careers, you need to." ... "You should be ashamed of yourself." ... "Your story was terrible." ... "I think you have done a poor job." ... "Once again, like many of your articles, this one sucks. Sorry about the language."

It's OK, I hear a lot of that language, and use a bit of it, too. Oh, and I didn't go to Vanderbilt, but did drive through Nashville once, about seven years ago.

Anyway, many Tech fans were hopping mad about the column; not surprisingly, Vanderbilt fans and other fans had a slightly different view.

The bottom line, though, is -- as I e-mailed one Tech fan -- writers should not deny it when they don't do a good job of making their points. And in this case, I probably did not.

Further, if that many people think you're full of cra ... crabapples, you should take their views very seriously and see where you went wrong by them. So let's try it again, sort of.

Tech fans made several good points, including about the disparity in fouls called -- 16 against Vandy and 22 against Tech. They also noted the important fact that Vandy took its lead at 65-64 on free throws after a questionable perimeter foul. A few said they thought the officiating was inconsistent all night. Others said I did not describe the final sequence well.

I agree with all of that. The column should have addressed those things and didn't. They're very valid criticisms.

My point was that based on responses I have gotten from readers over the years, there is a perception that women's basketball perpetuates its own success stories. And that late-game officiating is part of that.

Whether that's fair or not, to some, perceptions are reality. That was the point I was trying to make, but based on most Tech fans' response, I just did a lousy job of making it.

Because there is another perception out there: that the media dislikes Louisiana Tech. It's more my experience that the media just doesn't pay a fair enough amount of attention to Tech, in large part because of its location and because a lot of its Sun Belt conference games are not particularly compelling.

Again, that isn't Tech's fault -- just as it's not the fault of Old Dominion that its Colonial Athletic Association games tend to be such snoozers. However, ODU and Tech do suffer because they don't have many conference games on television, and everyone just sort of expects them to cruise through their leagues.

The more media outlets that are near a program -- Connecticut is most fortunate in this department -- the better coverage it's going to get. Combine success and media proximity and you've got UConn. Combine much more success and not much media proximity and you've got Louisiana Tech.

However, I was genuinely unaware of how deeply disrespected many Tech fans feel. I knew they felt it a little bit, but not to the extent they seem to. It was surprising to me, because it's hard to spot an inferiority complex in a program you'd never thought of as inferior.

The first college women's basketball game I ever saw was the 1982 NCAA championship, and the image of Kim Mulkey and her braids running all over the court is my first lingering memory of a women's hoops superstar.

Seeing Mulkey's daughter -- same braids -- in her little Tech warmup suit before Monday's game made that memory come back. When you walk into that gym with all its banners, you pretty much think this is the image everyone has of Louisiana Tech.

When Leon Barmore said something about how no one thought his team could win the title, I asked a local reporter, "Does he really think that?" And he said, basically, that was the feeling Barmore and Tech have always had. It was reinforced by something like Tamicha Jackson and Betty Lennox being named third-team All-Americans by the Associated Press, while UConn's Shea Ralph and Svetlana Abrosimova were first team picks.

Now, back to the game. Many people who disparage women's hoops tend to pound on the fact that the first two rounds of the tournament are on home sites. I was frustrated after the game because I was already anticipating hearing that rap again.

Plus, one of the criticisms that those who cover women's sports hear is that no "hard" stories are written or told. Meaning, everything is positive, everything is "rah-rah," and there's never any attempt to confront anything that could be perceived as negative.

I thought a "Barmore and Tech won, isn't that terrific" kind of story would prompt some to say it was gutless to not address whether that foul should have been called. No one asked Barmore in the postgame news conference, but that was not unexpected. Most of the media there was local, and the atmosphere was more that the media was part of the Tech celebration. That would be the case pretty much anywhere, not just in Ruston.

But I asked Barmore outside in the hallway if he was surprised a call was made because some referees won't do it at that point in a game.

He said, "A foul's a foul. You've got to call it no matter when it happens during a game."

Then, of course, it was a totally different atmosphere when Vandy came into the room, and the foul was much of what Jim Foster and players were asked about. As I was writing immediately after the game, I thought that the perception nationally was going to be that Vandy got a bad break, Tech would get demonized for it and some fans would basically be rooting against Tech for that, and that it would throw more fuel on the neutral-courts issue.

A few Tech fans e-mailed to say they also feared that might happen, but most ... well, you could tell from above what most thought.

Maybe my premise was off-base. But it wasn't formulated from an anti-Tech or pro-Vandy mindset. The issue of how contact in the final seconds was called or not called was hashed over both in UConn's loss at home to Tennessee and Vandy's loss at home to Tennessee, both games televised.

It's understood that there is probably never a consensus opinion on any call. But it's also understandable why Tech fans were angry about what I wrote.

Putbacks