Connecticut Preview
January 08, 2008 11:02 AM | General
January 8, 2008
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia had just won its first conference-opening road game in 12 years at South Florida last Saturday night and the team was feeling pretty good about themselves when Coach Mike Carey issued this warning: “Congratulations, the reward for winning this game is now you get to go play Connecticut at Connecticut.”
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| Meg Bulger drives to the basket during last Saturday's 78-73 victory at South Florida in Tampa.
AP photo |
The No. 1-rated Huskies have one of their strongest teams in years, recently coming off a 50-point win over Purdue and also producing blowout victories over Duke, BYU, Virginia, South Carolina and Villanova. Carey believes this might be one of Coach Geno Auriemma’s strongest teams ever at Connecticut.
“I think my first year here when he had Sue Bird and four girls drafted in the first round - that was a pretty good team,” Carey said. “But this is the strongest team next to that.”
The closest any team has come to Connecticut this year was Stanford’s 12-point loss to the Huskies on Nov. 22 in the Virgin Islands.
“They are embarrassing people right now,” Carey said. “We need to make a decision, are we going to go up there and get embarrassed or are we going to go up there and compete?”
Since joining the Big East in 1996, West Virginia has never beaten Connecticut losing all 16 times to the Huskies. Last year at UConn, the Mountaineers played Connecticut tough before falling, 58-50 at Gampel Pavilion.
“They’ll have us well scouted and we have them well scouted,” Carey says. “It comes down to execution on the floor.”
Naturally Connecticut is at or near the top of every statistical category in the Big East. The Huskies are averaging 84 points per game and are giving up a conference low 40.9 points per contest for a staggering 43.1 points-per-game margin of victory.
Connecticut has the best front line in the country with 6-foot-4-inch sophomore center Tina Charles teaming up with the nation’s No. 1 recruit Maya Moore, a 6-foot freshman from Lawrenceville, Ga.
“They’re very athletic, big and strong: Tina Charles inside, Maya Moore and (Renee) Montgomery,” said Carey. “Then they come off the bench with good players, too. It’s not like the pressure lets up when their starters come out.”
Carey says a major difference between Connecticut and No. 2 Tennessee, a team the Mountaineers faced earlier this year, is that UConn is much bigger and more physical in the paint.
“They come at you with so many things,” Carey said. “They run a lot of triangle stuff with really three post players. They’ve got great size but they’re also very athletic. It’s going to create a great challenge for us. We got into foul trouble against South Florida so that’s going to be a key. We sure can’t afford having Yinka (Sanni) or Chakhia Cole getting into foul trouble or we will not match up at all.”
For the first time ever West Virginia goes to Connecticut nationally ranked. The 11-2 Mountaineers are 16th in one poll and 17th in another.
West Virginia’s only losses this year have come away from the Coliseum against Tennessee in Charleston and at Indiana right before Christmas break.
Sanni is ranked sixth in the Big East in scoring this week averaging 17.6 points to go along with 6.8 rebounds per game. Senior Meg Bulger has recovered nicely from two knee surgeries to rank 15th in the conference with an average of 14.7 points per game. LaQuita Owens is 24th in the league averaging 12.7 points per game.
The Mountaineers lead the Big East in 3-point shooting percentage at .401. The Mountaineers are going to have to make some outside shots Wednesday night to put themselves in position to pull off a big upset. Connecticut is playing well above the rest of the league right now but that’s not necessarily an indictment on the strength of the Big East, according to Carey.
“This whole Big East, if you look at the scores of the non-conference games, the league is very strong once again this year,” he said. “(Wednesday) we have another opportunity to play the number one team in the country in front of great fans.”
Tip off is schedule for 7:30 pm. The game will be televised on Connecticut Public Television and will also be carried live on West Virginia Public TV in the Mountain State.
Fans can also listen to MSN’s radio coverage free on the Internet through MSNsportsNET.com.
