I got a call Wednesday night from my editor at ESPN.com, Melanie Jackson. She's the one who puts together all those chats and diaries, who coordinates if Beth Mowins is doing this, and Nancy Lieberman-Cline is doing that and which body part I might be having a discussion with.

Anyway, we talked about what I'd be doing this weekend, and as the conversation ended, I thought, "Gee, she sure sounds tired tonight."

Thursday before taking off for Spokane, Wash., and the Wild, Wild West Regional -- whatever happened to the Escape Club, anyway, are they still headin' for the '90s? -- I logged into e-mail to find out Mel and husband Kevin have become mom and dad. The little rascal couldn't wait until after the NCAA Tournament ended to be born.

Naturally, I set about wondering if they'd name her after a current basketball player (Gwen Jackson? Deanna Jackson? Jennifer Jackson?) or a past player (Tia Jackson is a neat name) or maybe that lone holdout among the real "Charlie's Angels" who never wore a bikini while chasing a bad guy, Kate Jackson.

Anyway, word of the tot's name hasn't reached Spokane yet, so I'll just refer to her for now as Li'l Mel. (Editor's note: Melanie and Kevin decided on Jillian Rowan).

I don't know exactly how you define generations, but Mom Mel is, I guess, a half-generation younger than me. As in too young to remember Billie Jean King playing Bobby Riggs but old enough to remember the Reagan-era "I can't hear your questions because of the helicopter" trick.

		When Li'l Mel is 10, in 2011, maybe the women's NCAA first and second rounds will be at neutral sites. Maybe the regional semifinals and finals will be spread out over a four-day period. Maybe the dunk will be somewhat commonplace. Maybe ACL injuries won't be.

And since Mom Mel and I have the same opinion on both those topics, we get along wonderfully.

I'm sad about other younger women who are so afraid of the word "feminist," who've been tricked into thinking that being pro-women is being anti-men, who don't realize that nothing's more critical in human relationships than respect, who don't know that Susan B. Anthony was right when she said, "Failure is impossible," who didn't get choked up when they saw millions of Australians last September going bonkers over an Olympic victory not just by an Aboriginal athlete, but an Aboriginal woman athlete.

So you wonder what things will be like for Li'l Mel.

The day after BJK won that tennis match, I was talking with my fellow third-grade geeks at recess about how neat it was that she had won. But I wish it wouldn't have had to happen. That men and women never had to be pitted against each other in such a fundamentally silly way. That people didn't think men had to lose something for women to gain something.

BJK's point was never that the best female tennis player could beat the best male tennis player. It was simply that the best female tennis player could beat about 99 percent of the people on Earth -- no, not the 1 percent who were the best men -- and that was pretty darn good.

Beating old-man Riggs wasn't much of an athletic achievement for BJK. But socially, it was mammoth, because she made a lot of women start to believe in themselves. Even as a kid, I knew that it meant a great deal.

But in 1973 I didn't dream of VCRs, e-mail, the Internet, 800 TV channels (OK, I did dream of that, but never thought it would happen) and women's basketball on television several times a week. Or even once a week.

When Li'l Mel is 10, in 2011, maybe the women's NCAA first and second rounds will be at neutral sites. Maybe the regional semifinals and finals will be spread out over a four-day period. Maybe the dunk will be somewhat commonplace. Maybe ACL injuries won't be.

When Li'l Mel is 20, in 2021, maybe she'll be playing in an NCAA Tournament game on her birthday. Maybe I'll write another column about her, if I haven't been herded into early retirement. Maybe they'll have a machine by then where we don't actually have to type in what we want to write, we just have to think about it and it will show up on the screen. Truly frightening technology.

When Li'l Mel is 30, in 2031, maybe she'll win another WNBA championship ring, every hotel room will have ESPN2 (not only will it be 8:37 freaking a.m. here in Spokane when TV coverage of Sweet 16 Saturday tips off, but the media hotel offers C-SPAN2, Local Government Channel and Speedvision, but not the Deuce) and I will, in fact, have been herded into late retirement.

And maybe they'll stop blowing things up in the Middle East, and sports-talk radio won't be testosteroney morons, and dogs will live as long as people do, and some dingy sportswriter will ask coach Tyler Summitt, "Is it true you were almost born in an airplane?"

Sweet 16 stuff
East: This won't be the first time Missouri has faced a Bayou state team in the NCAA Tournament. Mizzou lost to LSU in 1984 and Northeast Louisiana in 1985. This time, it's Louisiana Tech, the longtime juggernaut that once again most of us haven't paid a whole lot of attention to after the non-conference season was over. Can MU win three in a row from the underdog spot?

As for the second game, Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma paid a big compliment to Kay Yow in 1998. After N.C. State beat UConn in the East Regional final that year, Auriemma said if he had to lose such a big game, at least he lost to someone like Yow. But needless to say, he doesn't want to see it happen twice.

Mideast: Of course, we all remember Xavier almost taking down UConn in Storrs in the second round in 1999. Does it have a shot vs. Tennessee? Xavier, of course, has gotten even less pub than La. Tech this year.

In the second game, keep your eyes on all those freshmen for Texas Tech and Purdue. You'll be seeing plenty of them in the next three years.

Midwest: If anybody's waiting for Notre Dame to have a bad game ... they're in for a long wait. The Irish won't beat themselves.

	Angie Welle scored 28 Tuesday as Iowa State pulled off its biggest win vs. a ranked team.

And in Game Two: What a treat! Two honest-to-goodness centers going against each other. Not centers who want to be point guards. Not centers who think they're actually shooting guards. Two kids who will get on the low block and say, "Feed me the dang ball, please."

Iowa State's 6-foot-4 Angie Welle doesn't give up two inches very often, but she will against Vanderbilt's Chantelle Anderson. Anderson is No. 1 in the country in field-goal percentage, Welle No. 2.

If those two cancel each other out, it will be a matter of which sharpshooters are sharpest. I've been wrong about these things before (only hundreds of times), but this could be the best game of the day.

West: Somehow, a lot of people will have gotten from Springfield, Mo., to Piscataway, N.J., to Springfield, Mo., to Spokane, Wash., in a week's time.

Southwest Missouri State fans were great travelers even before the kid from Claflin, Kan., arrived. But the Jackie Stiles brigade will be a sight to see, just the same.

So will the matchup between two such gifted players: the senior Stiles and Duke freshman Alana Beard. All year, the talk has been that Duke might be vulnerable inside. So you can bet the Blue Devils are as hip to Carly Deer and Erika Rante as they are to Stiles.

Then in the late, late show, Oklahoma will face its second Pac-10 opponent in a row, as Washington makes somewhat of a surprise Sweet 16 appearance.

By the way, the "Spokane Express" I said Florida should book before the tournament began? Hope those tickets are refundable.

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached via e-mail at mvoepel@kcstar.com.