Providence Preview
March 05, 2009 03:32 PM | General
March 5, 2009
GAME NOTES
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia women’s basketball team looks to defeat the Providence Friars for the second time this season when it travels to the 2009 BIG EAST Women’s Basketball Championship at the XL Center in Hartford, Conn.
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| Senior Ashley Powell has the most post-season experience on the team.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
Because of the new format, all 16 teams are now invited to the tournament. The Mountaineers received a No. 11 seed, with Providence receiving the No. 14 seed. WVU opens first round action on Friday, March 6, at 8 p.m.
“You look at the teams they’ve beaten and they beat Pitt and some good teams, so they’re a good basketball team, we just need to play,” Coach Mike Carey said. “We’re going down there to win and we expect to win. Hopefully we’ll get the first one and we’ll worry about the second one after that.”
For Providence (10-19, 4-12), this will be its first appearance in the tournament since 2005 and like West Virginia, played its final two games against Notre Dame and Syracuse. The Friars lost each contest with a 65-56 score against Notre Dame and 78-72 loss to Syracuse.
West Virginia (16-13, 5-11) defeated the Friars in the regular season by a score of 59-50 at the WVU Coliseum. Senior Ashley Powell had 13 points to go along with eight assists, while sophomores Sarah Miles and Liz Repella had 19 and 13 points, respectively.
Although West Virginia only shot 35.7 percent, they played stifling defense and forced Providence in to 19 turnovers.
“After reviewing the tape we did a great job of taking them out of their offense,” Carey said. “That is one thing we need to do defensively and we were able to get some easy points on the fast-break.
“We need to get up and down the floor and take them out of their offense. They run a lot of motion, back door cuts; so we’re going to have to do a good job contesting those.”
Providence's Mi-Khida Hankins scored 15 points against the Mountaineers, but also had a game-high eight turnovers. West Virginia was able to keep Chelsea Marandola and Emily Cournoyer to nine and two points, respectively. Marandola averages 12 per game with Cournoyer averaging just over 10.
“Our defense was phenomenal that game and if we go up their and defend and rebound, we’re a pretty competitive team, very competitive,” Powell said. “It’s just about going back to those things and principles for us.”
For Powell, this year’s No. 14 seed is similar to the Cinderella story West Virginia put together in the 2006 coming into the tournament with the final seed, No. 12.
That season’s tournament was senior Ashley Powell’s freshman season and she helped lead West Virginia to a win over No. 1 seeded Rutgers in the semifinals, 56-40. Powell had four rebounds and three assists in that game. Powell then followed that performance up with a seven rebound, four assist night in a narrow 50-44 championship game against Connecticut.
“They’ve heard it 100 times,” Powell said about telling her young teammates the story. “It was such a great experience. I can see the excitement in their faces when I tell it, they’re familiar with it.”
Joining Powell as the only other player to see any action in BIG EAST tournament play is Repella who played 24 minutes and Miles who played in four minutes last season.
Both players have proved to be major sparkplugs on the offensive and defensive side of the ball this season. Both players have started in all 29 games this season with Repella averaging 16 points per game and Miles at 12.1 per. Repella is second on the team in points with 465, two behind senior Takisha Granberry who averages 16.1 points per game.
And as West Virginia did in 2006, they will be sure to take every game one at a time and be sure to not look ahead.
“If I haven’t learned anything else, I’ve learned that nothing in impossible,” said Powell. “Of course we want to go out their and do the same thing and this year it would be more history because it is more games. That would be crazy if we did that.”
