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You couldn't. From a purely statistical standpoint, the information in your morning box score could just as easily be for a men's game as a women's game. The scores aren't that different. The shooting percentages aren't either. Rebounds, assists, fouls are all pretty much the same.

But there are clearly differences between the two games, and since the Associated Press had fortuitously assigned me to cover games on back-to-back days at the University of San Francisco -- one women's and one men's -- I had a perfect opportunity to tease out just what those differences are.

Just to make sure no bias would creep into my analysis, I sat in the same spot on press row, right next to the court at War Memorial Gym. On Sunday, I watched the women upset No. 22 Oregon; on Monday, I watched the men hammer a University of Wisconsin-Green Bay team that was missing its top two scorers, leading rebounder and leading assist man.

Neither game packed the gym. The women drew 764, the men just over 2,200 -- or at least that's what they said. It didn't look like that many people to me, but crowd counts aren't my specialty.

The national anthem for the women's game was played right before the game began. The next night, it was played seven minutes before the tipoff, with neither team on the court. The pep band (all five of them) was on hand Monday. The stat crew wore matching sweaters for the men's game, and the announcer wore a suit -- such sartorial elegance was not on display for the women.

There was one less radio broadcast for the men's game, but reporters for both San Francisco dailies showed up to watch the 10-1 men. I was the only representative of the press for the women, even though a ranked team was involved.

As for what went on between the lines, it was clearly the same game. The 35-second clock for the men had a slight impact, allowing for a little more offensive patience -- which the USF men utilized by running flex, an offense that was all the rage in the women's game about five years ago.

Sure, the men were bigger, but that wasn't nearly as important as their ability to leap. Hang time allowed them to be a lot more creative, and of course block more shots. I must also confess I haven't seen a goaltending call in any women's game this year, but I'm not sure if that counts as a major addition to the quality of the game.

The men were also a lot quicker. There were balls rolling toward the sideline that I thought were obviously going out of bounds that were easily recovered -- but since the players on both sides were quicker, it didn't really affect the way the game was played.

That quickness, and the leaping ability, did, however, add to the entertainment value. Few women's games feature a lot of plays that make the fans go "ooooh," but even this rather nondescript encounter between the Dons and the Phoenix had several spectacularly athletic moves.

Beyond that, though, I confess I saw less difference than I expected. I had thought I would be dazzled by the athleticism of the men, and how much faster the game was -- but it didn't turn out that way. In fact, I should have been prepared: If the women's games were that much slower, they wouldn't be scoring as many points as the men.

The intensity was evident on the court but not in the bleachers.(AP)

And the main attraction of sport is impervious to gender. Human beings love narrative, and even if they don't exist, we impose narratives on this confusing world to make sense of it. Team sports are an entangled web of individual and group narratives that are played out in public, and the fascination comes from the fact that no one knows how they will turn out. Whether it's men's basketball or women's soccer, we watch in fascination to find out who wins, or how our favorite player did, or whether the coach will get fired.

The more familiar these narratives, and the more of them we know about, the greater the attraction, regardless of the sport. Baseball, for example, is a game that makes bird watching seem thrilling, but its entwined narratives are so deeply embedded in our national consciousness that tens of millions watch, entranced, as a large man spends most of the game staring at a squatting man 60 feet away.

Women's basketball is still a newcomer to the story line, and so the narratives don't run that deep -- at least for the casual fan. Sure, some might remember Lynette Woodard in her glory days in Kansas, but for most, women's basketball began with Rebecca Lobo (which is one reason her story is so over-hyped).

But every year, another layer is added. More memories are stored, more highlights are shown on Fox, and more narratives become common knowledge.

Sure the men are faster and jump higher. And yes, they will do more wonderfully athletic things than the women -- but that's really about it as far as significant differences go. The narratives that bind the men's game so tightly into the sporting consciousness won't go away, but the women are weaving their own, game after game, upset after upset, year after year.

And 20 years from now, when Bird and Magic and Dr. J are as distant as George Mikan and Bob Cousy are today, who's to say that Chamique Holdsclaw won't be as much a household name as Allen Iverson? A superstar is a superstar regardless of gender -- and the narratives, for them and their teams, are just as compelling.