5 Thoughts On Day 4 Of The NCAA Tournament

1) So, um, does Duke make a play for Suzy Merchant now? Might not be such a bad idea after what Merchant has done with the Michigan State program since Joanne P. McCallie up and left all of one month after signing a contract extension back in 2007. It also might not be such a bad idea after the complete and utter mess that McCallie has made with the Duke program she bolted for, culminating in last night's 63-49 loss to her old Spartan team-a loss in which the Blue Devils didn't score a field goal in the final 7 minutes and 32 seconds of regulation. Because of their complete and utter offensive ineptitude after tying the score at 47, the Dookies become just the second # 1 seed in the last decade of women's college basketball to get bounced in the second round. (2006 Ohio State enjoys the company) ...Wow. There are so many things to talk about with this game that I could probably do this "5 Thoughts" post entirely on it, but we'll cram them all in to this first thought. First of all, as Steve Levy sardonically noted in his Sportscenter highlights of the game and as Ryan Burr sardonically noted in his College Gameday highlights, this game was played in East Lansing. Here we go again. Blah blah blah, no it wasn't fair to Duke to have to play on the road as a 1 seed but it's their freakin' fault for not scoring a single basket in the final 7 and a half minutes. That's why they lost. Period. I'm getting sick of people, especially talking heads on ESPN who don't really know what they're talking about (that's why I'm not chewing out Mechelle Voepel for raising complaints about this system) wondering why a 1 seed has to play on the road in round 2. It's the way it has to be. Period. Don't like it? Watch the men's tournament. Oh, wait, their first and second rounds have an unfair pod system designed to keep attendance up by keeping certain teams close to home, too. But back to this game. What a win for Suzy Merchant and her Michigan State program. In just her second season as head coach of the Spartans, she's already got them in to the Sweet 16. That's pretty incredible. Not only that, her team is just the third 9 seed to ever reach the Sweet 16 since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1994. How about that parity, folks? Add a 9 to the two 6's and a 7 in our final 16. Michigan State gets Iowa State in one of the Berkeley region semifinals. Raise your hand if you had that one in your bracket. From the Blue Devil perspective, obviously this is a gigantic disappointment; just another in a long line of them in McCallie's tenure in Durham. The heat had already been turned up on her by some fans and people within the game but now it's about to get even hotter. That's not to say she's getting canned without a Final Four appearance or something next year, but she might want to get the program back to where Gael Goestenkors, her predecessor, had it sooner rather than later. And what a bittersweet end to the careers of Abby Waner, Chante Black, and Carrem Gay. They start their careers losing the national championship to overtime in Maryland, then they end them with losing the ACC championship in overtime to those same Terps before getting unceremously dumped out of the NCAA tournament on the road in the second round to their head coach's old team because they're unable to score a single field goal in the final 7 and a half minutes. As great as this victory was for Michigan State (and it's 5,000 plus fans, including the men's basketball team, who showed up and stormed the floor), it was equally as crushing of a defeat for Duke. It's rare that you get games that are so meaningful for both programs involved and it's even rarer that you get them in the second freakin' round. What a game.

2) As good as Duke/MSU was, it wasn't even the best game of the night! That honor belongs to South Dakota State and Baylor. The Jackrabbits scored the first 8 points of that one and got out to a 22-8 lead at the 9:08 mark of the first half. But unlike on Sunday night against TCU, they wouldn't be able to cruise to victory against this Texas foe in the Lone Star State. Baylor, under the direction of Kim Mulkey who was thankfully only in the hospital for a day, proceeded to rip off a 10-0 run in the span of about a minute and 10 seconds to tighten this one up. Then SDSU got back up 9 with 2:41 to go in the half but the Lady Bears closed it out with a 8-0 run to cut the deficit to one at the break. The second half was basically a tale of Baylor trying to get over the hump. The Jacks scored 12 of the first 20 points to kick off the half and go up 41-36. From there, Baylor kept closing in on the lead and South Dakota State kept denying them it. There were a few ties but the Lady Bears never grabbed the lead. And then the final minute happened. Kelli Griffin's layup with 41 seconds to gave Baylor a 57-55 advantage, its first of the contest. On the ensuing SDSU possession, Jennifer Warkenthein got fouled but missed the second free throw, leaving the Jackrabbits a point short. South Dakota State had no choice but to foul Whitney Zachariason, who also missed the second free throw. 58-56 Lady Bears. Warkenthien grabbed the rebound and then 13 seconds later found Jill Young wide open underneath for the game-tying layup with 7 seconds to go. But Griffin took the inbound and went coast-to-coast, laying it in with .5 seconds to go to prematurely end one of the greatest Cinderella stories in recent women's college basketball history. South Dakota State's Grant Hill pass got knocked away and the Lady Bears escaped in to the Sweet 16 with a 60-58 victory. SDSU ends the year 32-3 but out in the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. That's tough to swallow. What a year they had though and it's a year they'll never forget up in the land of Mount Rushmore. Coming in to the second round, I would have put this game at the top of my list of "most anticipated second round games" and boy, did it deliver. Huge victory for Baylor, who's back in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2006. That year they were a 3 seed and got absolutely pulverized in the Albuquerque semis by some girl by the name of Crystal Langhorne. Hopefully for them, Angel McCoughtry won't do similar things on Saturday.

3) And speaking of McCoughtry... In further proof that high seeds having to play on the road in round 2 isn't the end of the human race as we know it, her and 3rd seeded Louisville went to Baton Rouge and handled 6 seed LSU 62-52. The Cardinal superstar had 28, including 2 on a fastbreak layup off of a steal that finally pushed the Louisville lead to double digits just before the final minute and was the death knell for the Tigers and their 12 game home tournament winning streak. If Maya Moore didn't exist, McCoughtry would get my vote for Player of the Year. She does absolutely everything for Jeff Walz and that Louisville program and with all due respect to Candyce Bingham and the rest of the Cardinal players, they wouldn't be anywhere near a 3 seed and a 31-4 mark without McCoughtry. Maryland fans should be scared to death of the Candice Wiggins potential she has for a possible Elite Eight matchup next Monday. But going back to tonight, there's not really much to say about Louisville's victory other than how impressive it was to go in to one of the toughest places to play in women's college basketball and absolutely wear out the home team in the final few minutes to get the victory. It's hard to find a more satisfying victory than that in this kind of round. Well, unless you're Michigan State and facing your old coach on your home floor.

4) UConn wasn't mentioned until the fourth thought? What is this madness? Honestly, what is there to say about them? They're really, really, really good. The fact that they won by 28 and it actually decreased their average margin of victory on the season says it all. No matter how impressive the Maryland win was, no matter emotional the Michigan State win was, no matter how dramatic the Baylor win was, and no matter how gritty the Louisville win was, everyone pales in comparison to the Huskies. They're simply in another league. Give a whole lot of credit to Florida for hanging in as long as they did-it was 26-20 deep in to the first half, even despite Sha Brooks being saddled on the bench with foul trouble. Then UConn went on a 13-0 run with 9 straight from Renee Montgomery (who played her last game in Gampel Pavilion and scored 25 points in it) to end the game, but props to the Gators for hanging in for longer than a lot of teams (like, say, Louisville in the Big East championship) do against this juggernaut And by the way, Montgomery led her team with 25 but Maya Moore and Tina Charles both added 22. I'm not sure a team of five LeBrons could beat this UConn squad when those three are scoring 20 apiece. That's only the second time it's happened this year (thank god for the rest of the women's college basketball world) and prior to this year, no UConn trio had done that since 1999. A lot of great UConn players have come through the program between 1999 and now. This just goes to show you how special this team is and how special those three are. Look out, Cal.

5) ...And then midnight struck. Sorry Ball State, it's over. Instead of being the women's answer to George Mason, you'll have to settle for being the team that pulled off the most historic upset in the history of the sport. Iowa State ended the Cardinals season 71-57 in a game that was tight until the final few minutes. So now the Cyclones go on to the Sweet 16 and should be favored to make the Elite 8 (again, lemme know if you had that one going in to the tournament) while the girls from Muncie head back home. Still, ISU could have subbed in UConn to play and beat them by 80 tonight and it wouldn't have made Sunday night any less special. From now on, whenever the name "Ball State" is mentioned in women's basketball circles, 71-55 will immediately become the topic of conversation. At least until the Cardinals make the Final Four or something.

BONUS THOUGHT: Pat Summitt is better than your team's head coach. Perhaps you heard that Summitt made her team practice on Tuesday, just 48 hours removed from the aforementioned "most historic upset in women's college basketball history." After an entire season full of criticism for her team culminating in Sunday night's disaster, this is a shock but not really a shock because of what we've come to know and expect from Summitt. When you heard her criticize most of her players for "not being in the gym enough" during the press conference after the game, you thought, "yeah, she'll probably have them back in the gym right after the loss." And look what happens. Nothing but the best is demanded from Summitt and her program does everything right. When something goes wrong, it's not accepted, it's not tolerated, and it's fixed as quickly and swiftly as possible. I would bet my life that Tennessee's not getting bounced in the first round again next year. I know I labeled the post about Sunday's game as "Tennessee's downfall" but the reality is that Tennessee will never have a downfall as long as Summitt is coaching. Love or hate her, you have no choice but to respect her. She might be the greatest coach in the history of American sports. Pretty sue that deserves a little bit of respect.

Remember, RALEIGHPALOOZA begins this weekend. I'm off until Tuesday or so, so look for John, Hal, and Jeremy to take you through the weekend.

REACTION: Maryland 71, Utah 56

From earlier in the night in my gameday post:

PREDICTION - Maryland 70, Utah 58.

I'm a genius.

Seriously, being off by one point on the Terp side and two on the Ute side...that's pretty good, you gotta admit. Though I must admit that I was a little bit wrong about how the game would go. I said that that it would be close until the second half when the Terps would pull away. Instead, Maryland pushed the lead to 16 by halftime with a 12-0 run in the final 4:40 of the half. The Terps were up 21 at the under 16 timeout in the second half but then the Utes chipped away and got the lead back down to 14 at the 9 minute mark. But the Terps quickly swelled it back to 20 a couple of minutes later and cruised to the finish, winning by a healthy 15.

I wrote in the gameday that I thought that Elaine Elliott would want to slow down the pace of the game and keep it low-scoring. Whoops. I'm STUNNED that Utah played at Maryland's pace, at least in the first half. Absolutely stunned. It actually worked for a while, as the Utes led 15-8 with almost 5 and a half minutes gone by. But then the Terps staged their comeback, beginning with an absolutely ridiculous sequence.

Dee Liles laid it up after a dish from Coleman to make it 15-10. Morgan Warburton missed a three for Utah on the other end, but then so did Toliver for the Terps. Fortunately for them, Coleman grabbed the offensive board, the ball found its way in to Liles, who missed a layup but got her own rebound and the putback. 15-12. This is where the Maryland fans started getting in to it. You could hear a roar begin; the crowd knew the run was coming. Janita Badon drove to the hole but laid it up far too hard and Liles collected the board. Crowd's getting louder. Toliver rushes it up the court and proceeds to make an absolutely breathtaking no-look bounce pass to a wide-open Strickland underneath for the easy deuce and the Comcast Center goes absolutely ballistic as I yelled out "OH WHAT A PASS!" to no one in particular. 15-14. Warburton tries to answer with a three and can't and now Maryland can grab the lead. Again it's Toliver pushing it up the court. She penetrates and goes for another no-look...but this time it's deflected and it's a turnover. An outlet pass to Josi McDermott and it looks to be an easy two for the Utes...but Marissa Coleman was making strides like a leopard waiting to stalk its prey. I'm not sure if everyone in the building knew what was coming next but I knew that with Coleman's speed and length, Josi McDermott would not be scoring two points at this particular time.

She didn't. Coleman absolutely swatted her meek layup attempt right in to the backboard. The crowd just loses it again. Comcast is among the loudest I've heard it for a women's basketball game so nobody notices that Kalee Whipple's there to retrive the bounce off the backboard and put up a quick three. Bang...and like that, Comcast goes silent. 18-14.

UNBELIEVABLE sequence. We're talking about almost two uninterrupted minutes of nonstop action and ridiculous plays. I learned a few things after this sequence:

1) There are few things more beautiful than Kristi Toliver in the open floor
2) Kristi Toliver's an absolutely unbelievable passer
3) Marissa Coleman might be the biggest hustler in women's college basketball
4) Brenda Frese has built an absolutely stunning and unbelievable culture of women's basketball here in College Park
5) The non-student fans for women's basketball are way, WAY better than the non-student fans for men's basketball. It's probably because all the non-student fans for women's hoops are diehards.
6) I'm really, REALLY going to miss watching Coleman and Toliver play
7) Kalee Whipple can really play as well
8) Utah had the momentum after Whipple's three. If they could ride it out for the next few minutes, they'd have a shot at the upset. If the Terps seized it, ballgame over.

Guess which happened.

Maryland proceeded to go on an 8-0 run after that sequence to grab a 22-18 lead. During the run, Coleman had 6 points and 2 rebounds. My god, what a player. After Warburton laid it in to make it 22-20, another Terrapin spurt occured, this one 6-0. This one was a little more diverse, with a layup and two free throws from Lynetta Kizer, a jumper from Marah Strickland, and an assist and a rebound for Anjale Barrett.

That diversity was the story of the first half. Toliver and Coleman, despite their ridiculous plays and how good they were, had exactly half of the Maryland points at halftime. Coleman had 12, Toliver had 10, together they had 22...but the team had 44 as Liles and Strickland had 8 apiece, Kizer had 4, and Barrett had 2. On the other sideline, it was a completely different story. The Utes had 28 points at recess. Whipple and Warburton combined for 21, or 3/4 of them.

There was your prevailing theme for the night. Whipple and Warburton were the only two players on Utah's roster who would get significant run for the Terps. They are both fantastic players (although Warburton didn't have her best shooting night; 7/21 from the field, 0/6 from three), but no other Ute proved that they could really hack it all night long, at least not in comparison to their opposition. Whipple ended the night with a game-high 24 points and Warburton had 17. That's 41 of the 56 Ute points and no other individual had more than 8.

You need more than two players to beat this Maryland Terrapin team, especially at the Comcast Center.

The other prevailing theme for the night was how Utah got worked like a speed bag on the interior once again. I will put this to you this way: the Utes as a team had 24 rebounds. Marissa Coleman by herself had a career-high 18 rebounds (to go along with 18 points...honestly, if she's not an All American, I'm boycotting this sport.) Dee Liles by herself had 17 rebounds. Um, that's really not good if you're a Utah fan. When two individual players are nearly matching your team's rebounding output, it probably means you're taking a pounding on the interior. Tonight was no exception (actually last night since this is being written the morning after but I haven't slept yet so we'll say "tonight"; also I'm lazy and "tonight" is easier to write than "last night" or "yesterday") as the Terps outrebounded the Utes 54-24. 54-24. The margin the visitors were outrebounded by was larger than their actual rebound total. That also isn't good. The Terps had more offensive rebounds, 25, than the Utes had total rebounds. Coleman outrebounded the Utes by herself in the first half. And all of this was against a team that was 12th in the country in rebounding margin coming in to the season and had only been outrebounded in five games this year.

Elaine Elliott, just how the heck did this happen?

"It's just pure and simple -- their strength over us was just their physicality. We couldn't change that. We couldn't grow bigger. We couldn't grow heavier," Elliott said. "That was the difference in the two teams. We would have preferred that it wasn't a home game. ... [But] the differences in that game were apparent and that was something we wouldn't have overcome no matter where we played."

Liles ended with 12 points to go along with her 17 boards, Kizer and Strickland each had 8, and Kim Rodgers chipped in 6 on a couple of threes. Oh yeah and Toliver finished with 17 points and 4 assists. Not bad for your final appearance in the Comcast Center. I'm sure Coleman's 18 and 18 counts as a pretty nice lasting impression for the 10,065 in attendance tonight as well.

So the story here was basically that Utah's only chance was to slow this game down in an attempt to mitigate the Terps' advantages in pure talent, athleticism, and size. They didn't do it. They got run out of the gym. They had a few talented players who were able to keep them in it for a while and brought them back to a respectable deficit at brief points in the second half, but all in all, it just wasn't nearly enough. Also, I think, they wilted a bit playing in front of an absolutely lively and raucuous crowd that you just would not have gotten at a neutral site. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Maryland now moves on to play Vanderbilt on Saturday in the Sweet 16 in Raleigh. Before that though, it's time to introduce something special that's about to come to this blog.

Remember Spokanemania from last year? Well, it's coming back. Except it's not going to be in Spokane this time, it'll be in Raleigh. Thusly, it'll be repackaged, rebranded, and renamed as...

Drum roll, please...

*edge of your seat*

RALEIGHPALOOZA!

That's right, John Willmott, Hal DeCoursey, and Jeremy Moreland are heading down to Raleigh and they're gonna tell you all about it. Starting this Friday (or, perhaps if you're good and they make solid time, Thursday night), you'll get an account of what it's like to stay in Raleigh for a weekend while your school's women's basketball team attempts to reach the Final Four. Will there be a trip (or trips) to the Official WMUC Sports Sonic? Will there be little digs at N.C. State's campus for being literally nothing but red brick? Will they meet any celebrities down in North Carolina like, um, NASCAR drivers or John Edwards maybe? What if Duke AND North Carolina happen to go down in the men's tournament this weekend; will there be an historic party on the Wolfpack campus? WHO KNOWS?!?! So stay tuned for that, it should be a ton of fun.

GAMEDAY: NCAA Tournament Round 2 - (9) Utah

After the bad omen I gave you in my last post (# 4), want a good omen for Maryland's chances tonight?

Look at tonight's opponent. Now, remember the last time the Terps faced them.

Feeling better yet?

Yep, it was the Elite Eight in the 2006 NCAA tournament down in Albuquerque. A stomach virus had just struck the Maryland locker room and they had just been dragged to overtime by a gritty, underdog Utah team that had battled back from double digit margins in their first two tournament games, barely escaped a Cinderella Boston College team in the Sweet 16, and then erased a 9 point deficit to the Terps with 10 and a half to go to nearly win it in regulation before Shona Thorburn couldn't hit both free throws to give the Utes the lead with 7.8 seconds to play.

But what's the saying again? Oh yeah, "overtime is our time."

The Terps dominated OT, with Laura Harper scoring the first four points and then closing out the extra period on an 8-0 run to win 75-65 and advance to their first Final Four since 1989. Kristi Toliver, despite being struck with the flu the night before, scored a game-high 28 to lead the Terps. It's this program's version of the "Flu Game" as the Toliver/Michael Jordan parallels continue. It was a much less memorable (in terms of individual performance) night for Marissa Coleman, as she had just 4 points on 1/10 shooting, but she did grab 11 rebounds (Editor's Note: Isn't it amazing how Coleman always, ALWAYS seems to find a way to contribute in other ways when she's not scoring? Even as a freshman she did this. Absolutely incredible.) All in all, it was a gutty team effort from a special group of players that would go on to win the program's first and only National Championship a week later in Boston.

Now the year is 2009. Utah is the opponent not in the final 8 but in the final 32. And this time it's not in Albuquerque, it's in College Park, on Maryland's home floor.

The Utes, however, may be just as formidable as they were in 06.

They were 27-7 that year and a # 5 seed in the NCAA tournament. This year, they're 23-9 and a 9 seed. So on paper, they look a little bit worse. However, they are once again Mountain West conference champions, they are once again coached by Elaine Elliott, and they are coming off perhaps their best game of the season in which they posted one of the best defensive efforts in women's college basketball this season.

Everyone, myself included, predicted the Villanova/Utah first round game to end in the 40's or 50's. I had the Wildcats winning that game due to their superstar, Laura Kurz, and the mindset that Harry Perretta would outcoach Elliott. Whoops. Kurz had just 11 and went 0-for-7 from three point range. The Wildcats as a team shot 11-for-58, or 19 percent, on the game and were just 4-for-29 from three point range (14 percent.) The 30 points they scored was the third-lowest in the history of the tournament and the lowest by a non-16 seed in the history of the tournament. Utah literally doubled them up and had almost as many points at halftime, 26, as their opponents would score in the entire game.

That's a pretty good defensive effort.

With all due respect to Kurz, a Naismith Trophy finalist, and the Wildcats, the Terps present a much bigger challenge defensively for the Utes. The Terps have not one but two superstars in Coleman and Toliver and an excellent supporting cast in Lynetta Kizer, Dee Liles, Marah Strickland, and everyone else. They average 79.8 points per game, or 50 more than Villanova put up on Sunday. Slowing them down will be difficult. Beating them will be even tougher.

But definitely not impossible.

After the job that the 6'0 Kalee Whipple did on Kurz, it would not be a shock to see Elliott match her up on Coleman and see if she can frustrate her in the same manner. With the way Coleman can be careless with the basketball (103 turnovers on the season, or 3.12 a game), she'll have to be extra careful or Whipple and her 69 steals (or 2.16 per game) could take advantage. Oh and Whipple can get it done on the offensive end as well, averaging 16.8 points per game with a game-high 15 against Villanova on Sunday, dishing out 99 assists on the season, and grabbing 6.2 rebounds per contest.

She's pretty good, but Morgan Warburton is just as good, and might be even better.

Warburton, the preseason Mountain West Player of the Year, two time all-conference player, and 1,000 point scorer (20th in Utah's history), has only led her team in points (18.6 per game), assists (112 on the year), and is third in rebounds (6.3 per game) this season. She had 14 against the Wildcats, so her and Whipple nearly outscored their opponents all by themselves. These two are clearly the leaders of the Utah band. Both can light it up from three, shooting above 37% from the year, and as we all know, the three point shot can be the great equalizer in college hoops, especially women's. But in this game, the Utes probably won't be looking to outbomb the Terps from three; they'll be looking to hang with them, as Maryland is the top three point shooting team in the country, thanks mostly to Toliver, Coleman, and Strickland.

Warburton's a 5'11 guard, so she could be the perfect match for Toliver, but the thinking here is that Brenda Frese might stick the bigger (6'0) Marah Strickland on her and allow Toliver to focus more on dominating on the offensive end like she did on Sunday and like she did four years ago as a freshman in the Elite Eight against the Utes. Regardless of who's checking who on each side of the ball, the winner of the Toliver-Warbuton "game within the game" should go a long way in to determining tonight's outcome. Same, perhaps, with Coleman-Whipple.

There are two other big keys to tonight. The first one is literally a "big" key. Utah's two other standout players are Katie King and Halie Sawyer. King is the Utes' third double-figures scorer, averaging 11.1 per game, while Sawyer averages 7.3 a night. However, their impact is mostly felt on the boards. Each grabs more than 7 rebounds per game, with King averaging 7.1 rebounds and Sawyer 7.8. The disadvantage for them is their height, or lackthereof, as both are 6'1. That's a problem going up against the 6'4 Lynetta Kizer and the 6'1 Dee Liles (who averages 8.5 rebounds.) Combine those two with Coleman's toughness and rebounding prowess and I have to give the physical and interior edge to the Terps, which is something Elliott knows cannot be the case tonight, as she said after the loss in the regional finals four years ago that size made the difference. Granted, the Terps had Crystal Langhorne and Laura Harper back then and as good as Kizer and Liles are, they haven't ascended to the heights those two did. Bottom line: whoever controls the paint and dominates on the glass will have a huge shot at winning tonight.

The last key for tonight is tempo. This one is basic but obvious. The Terps score almost 80 points a game. Utah only allows 55 points per game. If it's a slogging, slow contest, that should keep the Utes in it and give them a chance to pull off the upset. They probably don't have the athleticism or the firepower to win a shootout. Elliott knows this and she's a good enough coach to get her team to not cave to the Terps. That's not to say that Frese will just let her team play a half court game, but it's easier to slow down tempo than it is to speed it up and the Terps are probably more comfortable in a half court game than the Utes are in a track meet. I look for Maryland to play slow if that's what Utah wants to do, wear them down inside, let Coleman and Toliver do their thing, and push the pace whenever they get the chance (off missed shots or when Utah falls asleep after a made basket.) I think this game should be close for a while before Maryland pulls away in the second half.

I'm going to be in attendance tonight for the last game at the Comcast Center for Coleman and Toliver. It should be a great one.

PREDICTION - Maryland 70, Utah 58