ESPN.com got the hiring of Courtney Banghart all wrong.

I was almost flabbergasted when reading ESPN’s coverage of Carolina’s new women’s basketball coach. All the supposition and innuendo were off base and the writer showed little knowledge of what has gone at UNC the last 10 years or so.

Why hire Banghart, a 40-year-old Dartmouth grad who coached Princeton to 245-103 record in 12 seasons with the Tigers of the Ivy League? Why not hire Charlotte Smith, who hit the shot heard around the state in 1994 and is now the coach at Elon? Why a conference call with the media instead of a press conference with the cheerleaders, band and fans singing Rah Rah Carolina? And can Courtney take the lady Tar Heels back to the top, where they were for One Shining Moment 25 years ago?

There was also a semi-snide comment about hiring a coach for less money than a big-namer, if there were any out there interested in this soiled program. So let’s answer these backward.

Sylvia Hatchell was making way too much for a Hall of Fame coach who had won 1,023 games but few of significance in the last 11 years. Attendance was weak at Carmichael, which made Hatchell’s demands to make as much money as other coaches who filled their arenas a little laughable. There is a metric at UNC called cost per athlete, which is revenues less expenses divided by the number of athletes in the program. The CPA for women’s basketball was among the highest of our 28 varsity sports, because the program spent too much and made too little. So there was really no comparison to top 10 teams at Tennessee, UConn and more recently Notre Dame, Louisville, South Carolina and Baylor.

Why a conference call to introduce Banghart? Let’s call it putting a program shrouded in controversy the last decade in perspective. Most of the news about women’s hoops lately has been of NCAA investigations and internal reviews. Banghart won at Princeton and she will probably win here, but let’s wait for something special before we have a parade.

Why not Charlotte Smith, who is a Tar Heel hero and obviously a good coach? Maybe it was time to make a complete break and go in a new direction. The last thing you want is to have anything or anyone come out of the woodwork and create another scandal.

As much as Hatchell hated the reality, there is a difference in Chapel Hill between men’s and women’s basketball. That may change some day, but right now it is what it is. And ESPN, of all people, should know better.

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