WVU Returns Home Against Friars
February 10, 2009 11:03 AM | General
By Steve Stone for MSNsportsNET.com
February 10, 2009
GAME NOTES
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Coming off a tremendous win over then-No. 5 Louisville, the West Virginia University women’s basketball team looks to continue its momentum in a home matchup against Big East rival Providence on Tuesday evening at 8 p.m. The contest will be televised on WVPBS.
With the memory of WVU’s greatest road victory in program history still fresh in his mind, Head Coach Mike Carey looks to take away several positives from last Saturday’s victory against the Friars (9-13, 3-5 Big East). One aspect that he enjoyed the most was the scoring distribution, as the trio of Sarah Miles, Takisha Granberry and Liz Repella combined to score 64 points on 23-of-39 shooting.
“It was a great win for us. Our girls came out and played hard. We started making shots and that was the difference- we had three girls scoring at one time,” Carey said. “They were scoring and then we started taking the lead and it seemed that when we took the lead our defensive intensity really picked up.”
The Mountaineers (13-9, 2-7) are focused on preventing a letdown against a deceptive Friars squad that owns signature conference victories over then-No. 19 Pitt and most recently Cincinnati, but also shows losses against Quinnipiac and Vermont. With both teams coming off confidence-building wins, Carey is determined to let his team know that it must look forward instead of backwards.
“I told them yesterday in practice, ‘You’re never as good as you think you are, and you're never as bad as you think you are.'” Carey explained. “We’ve got to find a happy medium and build on this. The Louisville win is only a good win if you get the next win. It's very important to come out and try to get this win against Providence.”
Miles garnered Big East Player of the Week honors after having a superb two-game strech at both ends of the floor last week. In WVU’s 55-47 loss to Seton Hall, the San Antonio, Texas, native scored 20 points on 8-of-16 shooting to go along with five rebounds and four steals. She ended her week with a 22-point, 10-rebound performance to help snap Louisville’s 19-game home win streak.
Showcasing her smooth shooting stroke was Granberry, who notched a team-high 27 points on 9-of-15 shooting against the Cardinals. Repella had her eighth double-double of the season with 15 points and a team-high 14 boards. The trio sparked a group that outscored Louisville, 54-34, in the second half and held the lead from the 12:03 mark to the end of the contest.
Providence boasts three double-figure scorers in Chels Marandola (11.3 points), Emil Cournoyer (11 points) and Mi-Khida Hankins (10.3 points). Its fourth leading scorer, Catherine Brove, was named to the Big East Weekly Honor Roll for her 23-point, 4-steal performance against her hometown school in Cincinnati. Bove also canned 6-of-6 3-pointers and totaled four steals and two assists in the winning cause.
Coming off a week layoff since their last contest, the Friars will try to better their 3-7 mark over the last 10 games. Providence has endured close losses to Villanova, Rhode Island and Seton Hall during the span, while losing by 22 points at home to USF.
WVU hopes to find its consistency in the final seven games before the start of the Big East Championship on Friday, March 6, in Hartford, Conn. Last week was a tale of two games as WVU could not shoot efficiently against Seton Hall but found the bottom of the net regularly against the Cardinals.
Couple their most recent shooting performance with a scoring defense that only allows 57.1 points per game, and the Mountaineers know there is plenty of work left in the season in staying competitive against the rest of the conference.
“I'm smart enough to know and have been in the business long enough to know that it's easy to win when you are hitting shots,” Carey said. “You look at our Seton Hall game and we couldn't hit foul shots or shots from the floor. It seemed like in the second half against Louisville we had three girls hitting shots at one time, and good things just happened. Hopefully that will carry over and we will have some confidence. I told the girls, 'It's more fun winning than it is losing.' We’ve got to build on this and go through the rest of the season and win as many games as we can.”
WVU holds a 13-4 all-time advantage against the Friars, winning six of the last seven contests. The Mountaineers defeated the Friars in a close 63-60 decision in last year’s contest at Alumni Hall in Providence, R.I.
