UConn Preview
January 06, 2004 03:25 PM | General
January 6, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia takes on an angry and determined UConn women’s basketball team Wednesday night at the WVU Coliseum.
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| West Virginia is facing returning national player of the year Diana Taurasi. (Big East photo) |
Connecticut lost for the first time this season last Saturday to No. 4 Duke, 68-67 on a last-second shot in Hartford. The loss snapped Connecticut’s 69-game home winning streak that tied Tennessee for the longest consecutive home winning streak in NCAA women’s history.
“They had a 16-17-point lead and they let them come back and in a close game anything can happen,” said West Virginia coach Mike Carey.
Duke also snapped Connecticut’s 76-game regular season winning streak and stopped the Huskies’ 39-game win streak at the 16,294-seat Hartford Civic Center.
The Huskies drop out of the top spot in the national ratings for the first time this season, falling to No. 4 behind Duke, Texas Tech and Texas in this week’s AP poll. Connecticut is also looking to avoid back-to-back losses for the first time since 1993.
“What can you say about Connecticut?” asked Carey. “They’re going to come in here fired up. They’re not going to want to lose two in a row.”
On the flip side, Connecticut (9-1) is looking to extend its Big East conference regular season winning streak to 44 games against a Mountaineer team that has not defeated Connecticut in 12 meetings since they joined the Big East before the 1995-96 season.
Prior to Mike Carey’s arrival in 2002, WVU dropped games to Connecticut by margins of 32 and 45 in 1996, 37 and 20 in 1997, 17 in 1998, 40 and 72 in 2000 and 63 in 2001.
Just once during that span did West Virginia give Connecticut a game in the 1998 Big East tournament when West Virginia lost to Connecticut 84-82 in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament in Piscataway, N.J.
Carey’s two games against Connecticut in 2002 and 2003 showed more respectable losses of 89-60 and 78-58.
Yet the coach understands his team has another tall order Wednesday night facing a UConn team that has every starter returning from last year’s NCAA championship team – the school’s fourth since 1995.
Returning national player of the year Diana Taurasi leads Connecticut with an average of 20.3 points per game. The 6-foot senior guard is shooting 56.5 percent from the floor while averaging 31 minutes of action.
Six-foot sophomore forward Barbara Turner averages 14 points and 5.5 rebounds per game to join 6-foot-2 sophomore Ann Strother (11.7 ppg.) and 6-foot-3 junior center Jessica Moore (10.5 ppg.) in double figures.
UConn coach Geno Auriemma is also expected to start 5-foot-9 senior guard Maria Conlon, who averages 5.1 points and 3.5 rebounds per game.
Connecticut’s top player off the bench is 6-foot junior forward Ashley Battle, who averages 6.7 points and 4.3 rebounds per game. Battle prepped at Linsly Institute in Wheeling, W.Va., and should have a strong contingent of fans at the WVU Coliseum for the game.
“We’re not going to come in here intimidated,” said Carey. “Do they have more talent? Yes. Are they deeper? Yes. But we’re not going to back down from them. We’re not going to walk the ball up just to keep the score close. We’re going to do the things that we do and we’re going to try and fight and battle and try to do the best we can against them.”
West Virginia (9-3) is coming off a 65-58 win over Pitt last Saturday in its Big East opener. The Mountaineers jumped out to an early 16-0 lead before the Panthers were able to get back into the game.
Injuries and attrition have forced West Virginia to go primarily with eight players. Six-five junior center Yelana Luchanka was expected to make an impact against teams like Connecticut, but has since been shelved for the season after having knee surgery.
Because of that, West Virginia has been forced to use a smaller lineup featuring just one player standing taller than 6 feet in its starting five in 6-foot-2 senior Michelle Carter.
Carter is coming off one of her best games of the season against Pitt, scoring 12 points and grabbing 8 rebounds. The Little Rock, Ark., native is averaging 8.6 points and 5.0 rebounds per game.
Junior Ramika McGee is listed as a reserve in West Virginia’s game notes but her availability for Wednesday’s game is questionable. The 6-foot-2 center has been limited by a knee injury and hasn’t seen game action since the Wright State game back on Dec. 4.
Six-one Latitia Williams has given West Virginia some valuable minutes in spots, scoring 20 against Wright State and contributing 12 in a loss at Delaware State, but only played one minute in West Virginia’s last game against Pitt.
As it has been for the past three years, West Virginia’s offense revolves around the three-guard trio of Kate Bulger, Sherell Sowho and Yolanda Paige.
Bulger is coming off a season-high 28-point effort against Pitt to boost her overall scoring average to 16.3 points per game. After struggling in her first two games against Connecticut in 2001 and 2002, last year Bulger scored 25 points on 10 of 20 shooting.
“We’re going at them. Anything can happen. They make mistakes just like we do,” Bulger said. “We’re going to have to have a perfect night: make every shot and make every defensive possession good and see what happens.”
Paige and Sowho have also played well against Connecticut. Paige scored 18 points as a freshman in 2002 and handed out 10 assists against Connecticut last year; Sowho scored 22 in her only game against Connecticut in 2002.
Touted freshman Meg Bulger has been giving the Mountaineers key time off the bench playing both the power forward and wing guard positions. The 6-foot freshman has appeared in six games after being slowed by an ankle sprain and is averaging 5.8 points and 5.2 rebounds per game.
On Monday, she was named Big East rookie of the week for her play in wins last week against Missouri-Kansas City and Pitt.
“It’s going to be weird playing against players I’ve seen on TV but a couple players on that team I’ve played with at Nike camp,” said Meg. “I’m definitely not going to back down from anybody and we belong on the court just as much as they do.”
Game time is 7 pm and MSN’s radio coverage will air on WAJR in Morgantown and Clarksburg and through Yahoo! Sports in the Internet.
Connecticut Public Television will broadcast the game back in Connecticut and WVFX in Clarksburg will replay the game at midnight following West Virginia’s men’s basketball game at Notre Dame.
Notebook: West Virginia is still looking for its first win against a nationally ranked team since Mike Carey took over the Mountaineer program, having gone 0-13 since 2002 ... West Virginia is just 4-78 all-time against AP rated teams; WVU's last victory against a ranked team came on March 22, 1992 when the Mountaineers defeated No. 20 Clemson in the second round of NCAA tournament play ... Kate Bulger is 14 points shy of moving past Georgeann Wells for seventh place on the WVU career scoring list with 1,484 points ... Wells, of course, was the first women's player to ever dunk a basketball in a game ... Yolanda Paige is now 60 assists away from becoming just the third player in school history to register 500 career assists ... during the last 10 years, Connecticut owns a 167-5 record in Big East regular season play ... the Huskies have gone undefeated five times in conference play since 1995 ... West Virginia's only victory in the series against Connecticut came on Jan. 22, 1982 in Storrs.
