Pitt Preview
February 26, 2008 10:15 AM | General
February 26, 2008
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| Meg Bulger |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – With an NCAA Tournament bid all but wrapped up, the 22-4 West Virginia women can now focus on improving their seeding for the Big East and NCAA tournaments. The first step begins tonight with an important league game at Pitt. Another victory and WVU can clinch third place in the league standings.
Two weeks ago, West Virginia knocked off the Panthers 56-35 in Morgantown in the middle of Pitt’s four-game skid. Pitt’s recent stretch of games has been difficult with the Panthers facing Notre Dame, West Virginia, Connecticut and Marquette in succession to drop to 18-8, 8-5.
“Pitt needs a win because they’ve lost four in a row in the conference so there’s no doubt in my mind that they are going to come out and give everything they have,” said West Virginia coach Mike Carey.
West Virginia has had success against the Panthers, winning six of its last seven and the last three in a row in Pittsburgh.
Last year in Pittsburgh the Mountaineers came away with an important, 57-46 victory at the Petersen Events Center. Pitt has only scored more than 60 points once against West Virginia in the last six regular season games (62-58 in 2006) and that was the only victory the Panthers have managed against Carey since 2003.
“If we’re playing our defense it won’t be a high scoring game,” Carey said. “If it’s a high scoring game then that means we’re not playing good defense.”
West Virginia is coming off an impressive performance last Saturday in a 76-55 home victory over Villanova. Center Olayinka Sanni scored 21 points and grabbed six rebounds and Meg Bulger returned to the starting lineup for suspended guard LaQuita Owens to score 12 points on 4 of 5 shooting from 3-point range.
Bulger is playing in front of friends and family one final time in Pittsburgh. Carey said Monday that he doesn’t plan on saying anything special to her before the game.
“I really don’t bring it up because I know that will add pressure to her,” Carey said. “There’s no doubt that a lot of her family will be there and a lot of her family’s friends will be there. There will be a lot of people there rooting for Meg and I’m sure she will come in and try to have a great game. Hopefully she does because when she has a great game we play pretty well.”
Carey indicated that Owens is once again practicing with the team and he will make a game time decision whether her suspension will be lifted for violating team rules.
“She might play and she might not play,” Carey said.
West Virginia will bus up this afternoon in time to face the Panthers at 8 pm in a game that will be televised nationally on CSTV.
“We’ll go up like a business trip, go there and play them, and come back to West Virginia,” Carey said.
Hopefully, the Mountaineers will return home with another victory under their belts.
