Post by rainman on Jan 9, 2008 6:25:22 GMT -5
COLUMN: UConn women far from ordinary
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN — It may have happened to you, public schools being what they are.
You’re a little kid, maybe second grade, heading for the school cafeteria, lunch money in your hand when one of those big fifth-graders, looking as if he’d been on steroids for months, a three-day growth of stubble on his face, a set of brass knuckles in his hand, approaches.
“Gimme your lunch money or I’m gonna knock your block off,” he says in his best Tony Soprano voice.
You pull out those shiny quarters your mom gave you a few hours back, and decide you weren’t very hungry, anyway.
Now you know how West Virginia University’s women’s basketball team feels today as it heads for Storrs, Conn., to play the biggest bully on the women’s basketball block, No. 1 UConn, a team that has every intention of eating the Mountaineers’ lunch.
Not that these Mountaineers are anything to sneeze at, mind you. They hold a No. 16 national ranking, which carries no small amount of prestige with it. It’s just that this isn’t any old No. 1 team they are running into.
Consider a couple of items of interest:
• Connecticut has outscored its opponents by 100 points. No, not combined in its 13 consecutive victories, just in its last two.
• Had Purdue, its last opponent … eh, make that victim … scored as many points as the previous three teams beaten by Connecticut, the Boilermakers still would have lost by 5 to UConn instead of 50. That’s right, Villanova, Hartford and Army combined for 95 points while Purdue gave up 100 to the husky Huskies. By the way, Purdue gave up 61 points to No. 14 Notre Dame and 53 to No. 13 Duke.
• Connecticut’s average margin of victory this year is 43 points. To put that in some kind of prospective, WVU has already played one No. 1 team this year, Tennessee, and managed to score only 49 points in that game.
Let’s put the level of this challenge another way. After UConn had defeated Villanova, a rather good, defensive minded Big East team, 88-38, (yes, that’s 50 points), the Wildcats coach Harry Perretta offered WVU coach Mike Carey a bit of advice.
“He told me I might as well start working on my scouting report for the next game,” said Carey with a slight laugh.
Now let’s get something straight right now. Mike Carey is not one to throw in the towel before he’s used it to dry off from a post-game shower and neither are the ladies who play for him. West Virginia is more than just a talented team. It is a team with courage and with heart, a team that two years ago fought its way to the final of the Big East Tournament despite possessing a losing record and being without its injured star, Meg Bulger, losing by only six to UConn in the tournament final.
It is a team that last year, again without Bulger, came back from a season opening 64-25 mauling at the hands of LSU to not only qualify for the NCAA Tournament but to take that same LSU team down to the final minutes of 49-43 loss in the second round.
If this turns out to be simply a matter of Carey leading his lambs to slaughter, it will be terribly surprising and show just how special this Connecticut team that coach Geno Auriemma has produced really is.
“I expect us to compete. I expect us not to be intimidated. We’re going there to play basketball,” Carey said. “Please don’t think I’m backing down from them. We’re going there to beat them.”
His players feel the same way.
“This is an opportunity to show what we have,” said Yinka Sanni, the Mountaineers’ high scorer with a 17.6 per-game average but faced with battling against the country’s strongest inside game, led by Tina Charles.
The fact that this game appears to be such a mismatch on paper exposes the intrinsic problem that remains with women’s basketball and that is a lack of parity. While college football has reached a point where the talent pool is spread evenly throughout so that you can have a two-loss national champion and while men’s college basketball has a reached a point where mid-majors can beat anyone on any given night, women’s basketball is still dominated by a few elite schools.
Because there are fewer premier impact women’s basketball players than there are similar athletes in other sports, the talent can’t spread out as it does elsewhere.
“A lot of the best players still want to go where the tradition is, where they are assured of playing in the NCAA Tournament and having a shot at the national championship,” said Carey. “It’s not way as much on the men’s side. It’s starting to change with more women’s AAU and with the WNBA but right now there’s only a small number of great players.”
As a reminder of how difficult it is to recruit the best players, Carey will be facing Rene Montgomery with Connecticut, a former West Virginia prep star. When he lost to then No. 1 Tennessee earlier this year, he had to contend with Alexis Hornbuckle, another West Virginian who opted to go elsewhere.
“I think it will change someday,” added Meg Bulger, who has come back from a year and a half off to average 14.7 points a game. “I think you are finding more and more players who want to take a program to the next level. When that happens, it will be more competitive.”
Until then, however, maybe it would be wise to go home and eat during lunch break.
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN — It may have happened to you, public schools being what they are.
You’re a little kid, maybe second grade, heading for the school cafeteria, lunch money in your hand when one of those big fifth-graders, looking as if he’d been on steroids for months, a three-day growth of stubble on his face, a set of brass knuckles in his hand, approaches.
“Gimme your lunch money or I’m gonna knock your block off,” he says in his best Tony Soprano voice.
You pull out those shiny quarters your mom gave you a few hours back, and decide you weren’t very hungry, anyway.
Now you know how West Virginia University’s women’s basketball team feels today as it heads for Storrs, Conn., to play the biggest bully on the women’s basketball block, No. 1 UConn, a team that has every intention of eating the Mountaineers’ lunch.
Not that these Mountaineers are anything to sneeze at, mind you. They hold a No. 16 national ranking, which carries no small amount of prestige with it. It’s just that this isn’t any old No. 1 team they are running into.
Consider a couple of items of interest:
• Connecticut has outscored its opponents by 100 points. No, not combined in its 13 consecutive victories, just in its last two.
• Had Purdue, its last opponent … eh, make that victim … scored as many points as the previous three teams beaten by Connecticut, the Boilermakers still would have lost by 5 to UConn instead of 50. That’s right, Villanova, Hartford and Army combined for 95 points while Purdue gave up 100 to the husky Huskies. By the way, Purdue gave up 61 points to No. 14 Notre Dame and 53 to No. 13 Duke.
• Connecticut’s average margin of victory this year is 43 points. To put that in some kind of prospective, WVU has already played one No. 1 team this year, Tennessee, and managed to score only 49 points in that game.
Let’s put the level of this challenge another way. After UConn had defeated Villanova, a rather good, defensive minded Big East team, 88-38, (yes, that’s 50 points), the Wildcats coach Harry Perretta offered WVU coach Mike Carey a bit of advice.
“He told me I might as well start working on my scouting report for the next game,” said Carey with a slight laugh.
Now let’s get something straight right now. Mike Carey is not one to throw in the towel before he’s used it to dry off from a post-game shower and neither are the ladies who play for him. West Virginia is more than just a talented team. It is a team with courage and with heart, a team that two years ago fought its way to the final of the Big East Tournament despite possessing a losing record and being without its injured star, Meg Bulger, losing by only six to UConn in the tournament final.
It is a team that last year, again without Bulger, came back from a season opening 64-25 mauling at the hands of LSU to not only qualify for the NCAA Tournament but to take that same LSU team down to the final minutes of 49-43 loss in the second round.
If this turns out to be simply a matter of Carey leading his lambs to slaughter, it will be terribly surprising and show just how special this Connecticut team that coach Geno Auriemma has produced really is.
“I expect us to compete. I expect us not to be intimidated. We’re going there to play basketball,” Carey said. “Please don’t think I’m backing down from them. We’re going there to beat them.”
His players feel the same way.
“This is an opportunity to show what we have,” said Yinka Sanni, the Mountaineers’ high scorer with a 17.6 per-game average but faced with battling against the country’s strongest inside game, led by Tina Charles.
The fact that this game appears to be such a mismatch on paper exposes the intrinsic problem that remains with women’s basketball and that is a lack of parity. While college football has reached a point where the talent pool is spread evenly throughout so that you can have a two-loss national champion and while men’s college basketball has a reached a point where mid-majors can beat anyone on any given night, women’s basketball is still dominated by a few elite schools.
Because there are fewer premier impact women’s basketball players than there are similar athletes in other sports, the talent can’t spread out as it does elsewhere.
“A lot of the best players still want to go where the tradition is, where they are assured of playing in the NCAA Tournament and having a shot at the national championship,” said Carey. “It’s not way as much on the men’s side. It’s starting to change with more women’s AAU and with the WNBA but right now there’s only a small number of great players.”
As a reminder of how difficult it is to recruit the best players, Carey will be facing Rene Montgomery with Connecticut, a former West Virginia prep star. When he lost to then No. 1 Tennessee earlier this year, he had to contend with Alexis Hornbuckle, another West Virginian who opted to go elsewhere.
“I think it will change someday,” added Meg Bulger, who has come back from a year and a half off to average 14.7 points a game. “I think you are finding more and more players who want to take a program to the next level. When that happens, it will be more competitive.”
Until then, however, maybe it would be wise to go home and eat during lunch break.
