SWISH!!! Stacy Frese for three! Jayme Olson pivots at the baseline, pitches the ball at the rim, it’s good!

The Iowa State women’s basketball team has had an unbelievable season. They’ve gone from finishing 2-25 in 1993 to 23-6 this year, taking the Big 12 North Division title and looking forward to exciting NCAA tourney action.

But you’ve only read about their home games in the Daily, because their away games are not deemed important enough to cover by the Associated Press.

All of the men’s Big 12 games are covered by the AP, the wire service that provides news to newspapers all over the country. That’s why you see stories about men’s b-ball in the Daily after every game, even the away ones. When our sportswriters can’t go to the games themselves, we can just pick up the Associated Press stories and keep our readers happy.

But that’s just not the case with women’s games. Despite calls to the service begging them to cover these games, they won’t. You might wonder how the Cyclones are ranked in the AP Top 25 poll, since it’s a good bet the AP sportswriters have never seen a Cyclone women’s game.

Many readers have written in about this travesty. They’re upset (and rightly so) that the women are not getting the equal coverage they deserve.

It’s true that men’s sports are better supported and attended than women’s sports. At Iowa State, for example, the average attendance at women’s games this season was 3,017 people. At men’s games, an average of 10,717 people attended each game.

However, women in athletics are slowly and surely building a name, and a fan base, for themselves.

The women’s Olympic hockey and soccer teams, professional women’s basketball — women all over the country are proving that they are every bit as talented and athletic as men.

They deserve the respect of every sports fan across the nation, and the Associated Press should be ashamed for ignoring talented women.

But the AP isn’t alone in degrading the achievements of female athletes. In fact, people intimately involved with women’s sports are also responsible for its “lesser” status.

Last week, Nykesha Sales, the star of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team, took an uncontested layup at the start of the UConn-Villonova game to break the school scoring record.

Only one problem: the shot was a sham.

Sales had torn her Achilles’ tendon during the previous game, but in order to let her break the record, UConn and Villonova arranged to start the game with Sales standing under the basket alone, waiting to take her record-breaking shot. After she scored the basket, she sat down, Villonova got to score an uncontested basket of their own, and the game commenced for real.

The worst part of this whole escapade came afterward. In defending his approval of the arranged shot, Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese said he would not have allowed the stunt if the players had been men.

“It’s a women’s sport; this was a female player. I am a man. I am not going to pretend to handle decisions on [men and women] the same way,” he said.

So since Sales was a girl, it was OK to bend the rules and allow her moment of glory.

But in most sports, or at least men’s sports, glory is not assured, even for the best players. Part of the game is the risk of being hurt and not realizing all of your dreams. Hurt players, missed chances, lost records; they’re all a way of life in athletics, both men’s and women’s.

Comments like Tranghese’s diminish the integrity and virtue of women’s athletics, and in essence make excuses for women. “It’s OK that she missed the shot; after all, she’s only a girl.” “Well, she can’t run quite as fast; she is only a girl.” “She needed a little help breaking that record, since she’s only a girl.”

And, these comments also give the Associated Press a reason to not cover women’s games. After all, if an NCAA commissioner doesn’t think women have to follow the rules like men, why should their games be considered as important as men’s?

Tranghese’s idiocy and the Associated Press’s apathy are obstacles women don’t need in their pursuit of athletic greatness. When female players so obviously merit respect, it should be given them.

Just like the boys.

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Sara Ziegler is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Sioux Falls, S.D. She is the opinion editor of the Daily.