The opening
round of the 2005 NCAA women’s basketball tournament
featured a smorgasbord of predictable results, blowouts,
upsets, near misses and one thrilling finish.
All but one
of the 1-4 seeds advanced by sizable margins. This is not a
surprise. The top 16 teams in the tournament represent for
the most part long-time women’s basketball powerhouses. The
bottom 16 teams do not have the womanpower to compete. But
many of these teams, for whom an invitation to the Big Dance
is a treat and not an expectation, showed impressive heart
and effort, determined to at least show pride in their games
before being vanquished by superior teams.
DAY ONE
University
of Southern California (seeded 8th) and Louisville (9) set
the tone early on Saturday. USC only led 28-25 at the half
but ran away with the game in the second half. Chloe Kim
came off the bench to score 14 points along with nine
rebounds as USC began the second half with an 8-0 run.
Louisville went 7:25 without scoring a basket. Jazz
Covington, the conference scoring leader, was shut down,
scoring only nine points, half her season average, as USC
became the first team to advance in the tournament. This was
only the second tournament win for the Women of Troy since
Lisa Leslie graduated.
For most of
the morning of Day One, it seemed that a challenge, but
ultimate loss, by the underdog would be the pattern of the
tournament. Sixth-seeded Georgia, which may have the dubious
distinction of being the best women’s team to never win an
NCAA title, was down 9-2 early against Rice. After Georgia
took the lead, Rice came back with a fast-paced run, but
turnovers were their undoing. Georgia scored 17 points off
turnovers to take a 42-25 lead, from which they never looked
back. Eastern Kentucky, after looking dead against Arizona
State, was able to cut the lead to nine points but could get
no closer. Kristen Mann, Big West Player of the Year and
Jacqueline Batteast, Big East Player of the Year, were the
headliners in the UC Santa Barbara/Notre Dame matchup, but
neither turned out to be a major factor. Notre Dame led
31-28 at the half, but in the second half UCSB shot only
20%, 1 for 9, in 3-pointers. This was one of the narrower
wins, with Notre Dame’s Megan Duffy scoring 7 points in the
final minute for to seal a 10-point victory. Kansas State,
playing without senior point guard Megan Mahoney, who tore
her ACL shortly before the tournament, struggled early but
still beat Bowling Green 70-60.
But the #10
Oregon Ducks broke the pattern, scoring the tournament’s
first upset. The Ducks were tied with #7 Texas Christian at
the break. However, they looked like dead ducks early in the
second half, going down by 10 points to a TCU team that has
advanced to at least the second round for the past four
years. But the Ducks succeeded in slowing down TCU’s leading
scorer Sandora Irvin. Irvin, the NCAA’s all time leader in
blocks, had six for the game but only 14 points, half her
season average, and eventually fouled out. Oregon’s Cathrine
Kraayveld, who missed all of the past two years with major
injuries, had a career game with 23 points, including two
clutch free throws, as the Ducks came back with a 20-7 run
to win a nail-biter by three points.
Later in
the afternoon, #10 Utah joined Oregon as an upset victor,
beating #7 Iowa State in a game of runs. Trailing by as many
as 15, Utah, behind Kim Smith’s 22 points and eight
rebounds, rallied to win 73-61. The Utes are led by a group
of Canadian players, bringing the land of same-sex marriage,
legal abortion and no death penalty to Utah.
But the
biggest thriller of the day, and the biggest upset of the
first round, was #12 Middle Tennessee State University’s
heart-stopping win over 5th seeded North Carolina
State. Last year, MTSU as the #13 seed upset North Carolina.
Their chances for a repeat looked possible when they led by
a point at half time, but an NC State run gave them a
10-point lead. The Middle Tennessee Lady Raiders refused to
go away, tying the game and then going up by three with five
minutes left to set up one of the most exciting finishes of
the women’s tournament so far. NC State scored four
consecutive points to take the lead back.
An exchange
of free throws gave first MTSU and then NC State one-point
leads. This was followed by a lay-up by MTSU and two more
free throws by NC State. MTSU made a basket with just one
second left on the shot clock, but NC State’s Ashley Key hit
a 3-pointer with 1:30 to go to give her team a two-point
lead. A steal and lay-up by Middle Tennessee tied the game
with 14.6 seconds on the clock. With NC State going for the
game winner, MTSU stole the ball with nine seconds left.
Passing the ball around the court, seeking an opening, they
finally found one when Patrice Holmes hit a wide-open short
jumper with 1.6 seconds to go to give her team the 60-58
come-from-behind upset win.
If Middle
Tennessee provided the biggest thriller of the tournament’s
first day, the disappearing act by Old Dominion was
undoubtedly biggest disappointment. ODU is one of the most
successful programs in women’s basketball. Their 21
tournament appearances trail only Tennessee and Louisiana
Tech and they boast of 14 consecutive seasons of 20 or more
wins. Playing in-state rival Virginia, the Lady Monarchs at
first were slicing up the Cavaliers with almost surgical
precision. Forcing five early turnovers, ODU jumped out to a
10-2 lead, later more than doubling the score at 18-7. But
ODU fouls and three three-pointers by Virginia’s Shareese
Grant keyed an 11-2 run. With the game tied at 20 it seemed
all the pep went out of Old Dominion. They appeared not only
lost but also beaten, throwing up bad shots with no
offensive sets, not running back on defense and committing
unforced turnovers. With Virginia leading 39-33 at the half,
the game should have been far from over, had ODU players not
figuratively put their tails between their legs and slinked
away. What began as an exciting game ended up a blowout,
Virginia winning 79-57.
The evening
game between Stanford and Santa Clara was billed as a family
affair, featuring Stanford senior Debnem Kimyacioglu and her
sister, Santa Clara sophomore Yasmin Kimyacioglu. The
“family” theme was emphasized by Santa Clara coach Michelle
Bento-Jackson, who is approaching the final month of her
pregnancy. (Coaching while eight months pregnant is a
challenge her male counterparts do not need to face.) Santa
Clara lives and dies by the 3-pointer, hitting five in the
first half. Several times they took the lead over the
heavily favored Cardinal. A late run put Stanford up by 10
at the half. The game quickly became out of reach. Stanford
began the second half with a lay-up and a 3-pointer by
super-freshman Candice Wiggins. After a Santa Clara miss,
Brooke Smith made a basket and was fouled, hitting the free
throw. A steal and lay-up by Wiggins shot the lead up to 20
points only two minutes into the second half and Stanford
never looked back.
DAY TWO
No. 9
Arizona began the games on Sunday morning with their
match-up against #8 Oklahoma. Arizona’s Dee-Dee Wheeler is
the Pac-10’s leading scorer, but she broke a finger in her
shooting hand and missed significant time during the season.
The Wildcats struggled to score and failed to get back on
defense early, allowing Oklahoma to lead 34-29 after a first
half highlighted by center Leah Rush’s four-point play. In
the second half improved shooting by Wheeler and the hefty
Shawntinice Polk led Arizona to an 8-point lead. They were
unable to pull away, however, and Rush, who had 20 second
half points, tied the game with a late three. A Wheeler
“Stockton-to-Malone” type pass to Polk for a lay-up gave
Arizona a two-point lead with 35 seconds left. Oklahoma
missed a three, got the offensive rebound and missed again.
Two free throws from Wheeler sealed the game and the upset
and gave the Pac-10 a perfect 5-0 record in the first
round.
It is
noteworthy that Stanford, with the nation’s #1 ranking, only
got a #2 seed in the tournament since the Pac-10 was
considered a “weak” conference.
With two
10-7 upsets on Day One, Green Bay was hoping to make it a
threesome in their match-up against Maryland. The Terrapins
had no answer early on for forward Tiffany Mor’s (who
actually came to Green Bay on a softball scholarship as a
left-handed pitcher) inside game. Maryland was forced
repeatedly into taking long jumpers that weren’t falling, at
one point missing nine consecutive shots. The second half
was a seesaw battle of ties and lead changes, but Green
Bay’s hopes for an upset were lost when Mor fouled out and
Maryland came back to win 65-55, led by Shay Doron’s 25
points.
With two
upsets and a near-miss, Boston College may have been nervous
going into their 7-10 game against Houston. But a game that
was expected to be close was not, as Houston definitely had
a problem, losing 65-43.
The longest
active win streak in the NCAA, men’s or women’s, belongs to
Temple. Appearing in only their second NCAA tournament, the
6th seeded Owls had been doormats for years until
the advent of Coach Dawn Staley, herself a former NCAA
champion and WNBA star. Going into the tournament with a
24-game win streak, however, they seemed lost against the
more experienced Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters (whose motto
is “to be a lady is to be a winner”.) LA Tech’s guard tandem
of Tasha Crane and Ericka Tyler had 19 first half points,
while the Owls’ starting guards managed only three, and 6’7”
Margaret Desseman blocked five shots in the first half. Down
35-23 at the break, and with Staley having picked up a
technical foul, Temple came roaring back in the second half,
denying the Techsters hopes for an upset. Temple’s Candice
Dupree had 16 second-half points, giving her team the lead
with two minutes left.
The evening
games finished out the weekend with two upsets, a near miss
and one very historic win.
Connecticut
had built a 30-point lead over hapless Dartmouth when ESPN
mercifully cut to the 8-9 match-up between New Mexico and
Purdue. The game was tied at halftime when Purdue’s shot
blocking began to close out the middle and force New Mexico
into a jump-shooting game. So effective was Purdue’s defense
that New Mexico did not shoot their first free throw in the
entire game until the 2:15 mark of the second half. Purdue,
led by Katie Gearld and Lindsey Wisdom-Hilton, upset New
Mexico 68-56.
Meanwhile,
Virginia Tech was being blown out by DePaul by 20 points,
Many had questioned whether Virginia Tech even belonged in
the NCAA tournament and their play justified the skepticism
until midway through the second half, when a remarkable
comeback gave them a one point lead with under a minute to
go. With the game tied in the final seconds, a questionable
call became pivotal. Virginia Tech’s Kirby Copeland appeared
to have a basket and a foul, but the referee changed the
call and waved off the basket, claiming the foul was on the
floor. Instead of a two-point lead with a possible free
throw, the game remained tied. Copeland made one of two free
throws. On the ensuing possession, Janni Dant hit the
biggest two of her 22 points when she made a basket with 4.9
seconds left to give DePaul the lead back. Virginia Tech’s
inbound pass sailed out of bounds with 1.5 seconds left, and
DePaul salvaged a one-point victory and avoided the “choke
of the tournament” collar.
DePaul
having dropped the choke collar, someone had to pick it up
and that someone was the fourth-seeded Pennsylvania State
Lady Lions. Up by five at halftime, they were outscored by
Liberty’s Lady Flames 51-38 in the second half, becoming not
only the highest seed to lose in the tournament, but only
the fourth #4 seed to lose in the first round in women’s
NCAA history. Liberty’s 6’8” Katie Feenstra notched her 48th
career double-double with 22 points and 11 rebounds, while
her size and defense clogged the lanes. Liberty has known
big wins before; they beat Kansas State earlier this year,
breaking K State’s 35-game home win streak. But with the
victory over Penn State they became the first team ever from
the Big South conference to win a game at the women’s NCAA.
Penn State coach Rene Portland insists that her program has
never had any lesbians and never will; perhaps she could use
one or two.
Finally,
the evening ended with legendary Tennessee coach Pat Summitt
winning her 879th game, tying Dean Smith for the
most ever NCAA basketball victories. Summitt began as a
22-year-old head coach on January 10, 1975. She is only 51
and could easily coach another 10 years or more. Sixty-seven
of her former players or assistant coaches are now head
coaches at other schools. In fact, by coincidence the head
coach of the Western Carolina team that the Lady Vols beat
to secure #879 is Kellie Harper, née Kellie Jolly, the point
guard on Tennessee’s last three national championship teams.
In post-game comments, Summitt said, “This is about the
names and the faces who have made a difference for women’s
basketball”. Hers is first among them.
