I decided to be patient when women’s basketball coach Kay Yow said in early November her team’s six freshmen would be unavailable to speak to the media for an indefinite period of time.

“I want them to become [a part] and get into the swing of things and be [a] solid part before they just start speaking on our behalf,” Yow said on Nov. 2.

Now, 77 days later, this is no longer a short-term issue. It’s turned into an ongoing denial of access. Half the season’s finished already — still with no media access to the freshmen. At this rate, who’s to say this keeping of first-year players from reporters won’t last all season?

If Andrew Brackman had been unavailable to talk to the media during his freshman campaign or if men’s basketball freshman Dennis Horner wasn’t allowed to address media this season, there would be an outcry.

It’s time to do the right thing and let us hear what these players are experiencing and thinking about their first year on campus.

Just because it’s women’s basketball doesn’t mean our paper will hold the coaches to a different standard than we would hold a football or men’s basketball coach.

It is surprising that this team, usually one of the most open squads in dealing with the media, has said we can’t interview almost half the players on its roster.

And as Yow is now undergoing cancer treatments and has missed 14 games, Mark Kimmel of Media Relations said he and interim coach Stephanie Glance do not want to give Yow something else to worry about in deciding when the freshmen will be available to speak to the media.

That’s certainly reasonable, but that doesn’t mean someone else — namely Glance — can’t release freshmen to talk to the media.

Yow may have originally made the decision, but there are plenty of other decisions that have been handed to Glance since she stepped in for Yow. This shouldn’t be any different.

In addition, four of the team’s six freshmen have played in at least 16 of the team’s 18 contests thus far — and the only two who haven’t (Chanita Jordan and Megan Zullo) have battled injuries. One of those first-year players — Nikitta Gartrell — has started 15 games and has averaged 19 minutes per contest while averaging 6.2 points per game.

To me, that meets Yow’s standard set before the season of these players becoming a “solid part” of the program.

This week, our paper planned to run a story to let people know a little more about who Gartrell is both on and off the court. But that story — and any other truly engaging story about these players — will have to wait until someone steps up and puts a long-overdue end to this silence.