A look at
how the women's Final Four teams got there:
Baylor
64 North Carolina 57
North
Carolina is known for playing an up-tempo high scoring game,
but their freewheeling offense is vulnerable; force them
into a half-court game and they don’t execute well. This is
exactly what Baylor was able to do in order to become the
only second seed to advance to the Final Four. Baylor, the
top rebounding team in the Big 12, dominated the boards,
preventing North Carolina from running and stalling their
offense.
By Lisa
Leslie’s count, on 12 occasions in the first half alone
North Carolina fired up a shot without a single pass.
Meanwhile, Baylor repeatedly ran their offensive set, guided
by Sophia Young (who finished with 19 points and 11
rebounds), Steffanie Blackmon and Abiola Wabarra to lead by
nine points at the break. The Tar Heels had a total of three
losses all year, by a combined total of 27 points, but they
trailed by as many as fourteen in a game where they ended up
scoring 20 points below their season average. A pair of
3-pointers by Ivory Latta narrowed the lead, but when ACC
Defensive Player of the Year Nikita Bell fouled out, North
Carolina was doomed.
Louisiana State 59 Duke 49
LSU had
never been challenged in the tournament, jumping to big
leads in every game. Duke had only eight players active,
only seven of whom were healthy. So it looked like a
shocking upset was in process when Duke built an early
12-point lead. Point guard Semeka Johnson and All-American
Seimone Augustus led LSU’s comeback on both ends of the
floor, as LSU forced 12 Duke turnovers in the first half.
LSU’s game plan was to wear down Duke by running them out of
the game, and Johnson’s speed made the defensive players
look like their feet were nailed to the floor.
They also
got major contributions from 6’5” Sylvia Fowles off the
bench, who was a rebounding machine, finishing the game with
12 points and 13 boards as LSU was plus-15 in rebounding
edge. Both teams had too many turnovers, but LSU was able to
limit the damage as Duke scored only 4 points off turnovers
to LSU’s 13. Duke’s leading scorer Monique Currie was 0-9 in
the second half and 3-16 for the game as the top-ranked Lady
Tigers (Tigresses?) continued their tournament run.
Michigan
State 76 Stanford 69
This was
supposed to be Stanford’s year to break through. Instead,
Michigan State out-played the Cardinal at its own game. MSU
began both halves with 8-0 runs as Stanford was unable to
get the ball inside. (ESPN’s coverage of the first half was
marred by a 10-minute interview with MSU men’s coach Tom
Izzo while the game was going on, stopping the play-by-play.
A minute or two is fine but letting the interview with Izzo
take over the game just underlines that men’s sports are
considered more important than women’s.)
A duel of
3-point shots between Kristin Haynie of MSU and Susan King
Borchardt and Candice Wiggins of Stanford led to a tie at
the break. This should have boded well for Stanford, who has
had dominating second halves all through the tournament, but
MSU tore out to a 13-point lead. Stanford did not throw in
the towel, scoring on seven consecutive possessions until
T’Nae Thiel tied the game with seven minutes to go. MSU then
went on a 7-0 run, forcing two turnovers and a miss.
Stanford, still not done, answered with a 3-pointer by
Kelley Suminski and a 3-point play by Wiggins to close to
within one point with 30 seconds left. But Lindsay Bowen,
who had gone 0-7 in the game, made her first shot to up the
lead to 3 and Stanford’s 2005 unbeaten streak, and their
season, was over.
Tennessee 58 Rutgers 49
Tennessee
is another team that had never been challenged in the
tournament. While Rutgers took an early lead, the Lady Vols
came back behind Shanna Zolman and Nicky Anosike, building a
double-digit lead, and were up by six at the break despite
ending the half in a scoring drought. In the second half,
Tennessee seemingly could not do anything right; over a
14:40 period covering the end of the first half and the
beginning of the second, they had no field goals and only
one point with six turnovers. Pat Summitt was beside
herself, especially when her team needed two time-outs for
one inbounds play.
Rutgers
took the lead on Cappie Pondexter’s 3-pointer and upped it
when Matte Ajuvon stripped the ball and took it length of
the court for two. Things looked even brighter for the
Scarlet Knights when Tennessee’s best defender, Loree Moore,
picked up her fourth foul and had to go to the bench. But
Rutgers’ lack of scoring punch slowed them down and bad
fouls – often 20 feet from the basket and/or with less than
5 seconds on the shot clock – sent Tennessee to the line 19
times (as opposed to 5 for Rutgers). With the Lady Vols up
by six late, what looked like a 3-pointer by Ajuvon was, on
further review, judged to be a deep two. Although Tennessee
was an uncharacteristic 4-17 with eleven turnovers in the
second half, their thirteen second-half free throws helped
get them to their fourth consecutive Final Four.
News, Notes & Trivia
This is the
sixth time both the men’s and women’s teams from the same
school (Michigan State) are in the Final Four. The previous
five were Georgia, Duke, Oklahoma, Texas and Connecticut,
with Connecticut winning both titles last year … Baylor
coach Kim Mulky-Robertson played in the first ever women’s
Final Four as a student at Louisiana Tech …Michigan Governor
Jennifer Granholm, whose two daughters play basketball,
attended the Michigan-State-Stanford game. Arnold
Schwarzenegger apparently could not be bothered with
“girlies”…
Stanford’s
Brooke Smith played at Duke last season, making her the only
player who played for two of the Elite Eight teams… UConn
coach Geno Auriemma called Minnesota’s Janel McCarville “the
toughest player in America”…Family Values: Candice Wiggins
and Jessica Elway (Stanford), and Kylan Loney (Arizona
State) are daughters of former professional athletes. Ernest
Evans, the father of Duke’s Misti Williams sang the national
anthem at Duke’s final home game, but he is better know as a
rock icon of the 60’s under his stage name, Chubby
Checker…Yes, the epidemic is still with us: It is well known
that Wiggins’ father, former major league baseball player
Alan Wiggins, died of AIDS. The virus also claimed the life
of the sister of North Carolina center Erlana Larkins…
Global
game: The Sweet Sixteen alone featured players from 13
countries: Australia (Jessica Foley, Duke), Cameroon (Alice
Jamen, Ohio State), Canada (Lauren Stagg, Arizona State and
Alisa Wulff, Michigan State), France (Karolina Piotrkiewicz,
Liberty), Germany (Roli-Ann Nikagbatse, Liberty), Italy
(Jessica Foley, Duke), Lithuania (Rima Margeviciute, Egle
Smigelskaite and Daina Staugaitiene, Liberty), New Zealand
(Katie Eggars, Vanderbilt), Nigeria (Rashidit Sadiq,
Connecticut), St. Vincent (Sophia Young, Baylor), Sweden
(Hanna Biernacka, Louisiana State), Trinidad and Tobago
(Patrice Edwards, Texas Tech) and Turkey (Sebnem Kimyacioglu,
Stanford) …
The Most
Outstanding Players of each region were Seimone Augustus,
LSU (Chattanooga Region), Sophia Young, Baylor (Tempe
Region), Cappie Pondexter, Rutgers (Philadelphia Region) and
Kristin Haynie, Michigan State (Kansas City Region)…Error
correction: My apologies to Muffet McGraw, Sophia Young and
Monique Currie, all of whose names I wrote incorrectly in
previous columns, and Tasha Humphrey is a forward, not a
guard as reported…Speaking of errors, ESPN said that fans
from MSU’s Kelli Roehring’s home town organized a
“contingency” at the game. A contingency is an emergency;
the fans were a contingent…
My pick for
the national champion: Tennessee, again.
