Stanford, Cal women have more than Pac-10 title in sights
Road tested and ready.
As the Pacific-10 Conference opens tonight, the Stanford and Cal women's basketball teams are expected to battle for the league title after completing tough nonconference schedules.
But eighth-ranked Stanford and No. 9 Cal also have the NCAA tournament in their sights.
They didn't schedule some of the country's best teams simply to prepare for the Pac-10. Behind talented and experienced front lines the Cardinal (9-3) and Bears (9-2) enter conference play hoping to grow into teams able to make a postseason run the way Stanford did last spring.
"Cal and Stanford, they know who they are and they do it really well," Arizona State Coach Charli Turner Thorne said. "It is not easy to take them out of their games."
The Sun Devils, who play host to Stanford tonight and Cal on Sunday, are expected to be the Bay Area schools' most difficult challenge, but Oregon State, UCLA, USC and Washington State also have upgraded programs.
"The Bay Area trip is by far the hardest," Turner Thorne said. "But there are no easy games."
Only Washington (4-6) and Oregon (3-7) begin the conference with losing records.
No conference school played as tough a schedule as Stanford, which lost at Baylor, Duke and Tennessee. The Cardinal also defeated Purdue, Iowa State and Rutgers, all ranked teams.
"We know we've been tested and that will help us," Coach Tara VanDerveer said. "Our team will not be intimidated anywhere we go."
Center Jayne Appel and forward Kayla Pedersen, both 6-foot-4, have found inside help with the quick growth of freshman forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike. Teams will try to slow the post game by pressuring the guards.
Point guard Rosalyn Gold-Onwude said recent defeats at Duke and Tennessee have taught the team how to handle the pressure without All-American guard Candice Wiggins, who now plays in the WNBA.
"Finding ourselves against tough competition without Candice, that's really important for this team," she said.
If the Cardinal plans another run through March Madness, it also will have to make do without point guard JJ Hones, who in November suffered her second season-ending knee injury in two years.
Some have suggested the losses of the guards make Stanford vulnerable.
"Everybody talks about the press, the press, the press," Gold-Onwude said. "We played in front of big crowds" at Duke and Tennessee. "If we're in that position again, we are going to know what it takes to pull it out."
At Cal, the focus is a little different after a bitterly disappointing exit in the second round of the NCAA tournament last season.
The Bears "are hungry for more," Coach Joanne Boyle said. "They think they can if they're healthy."
That includes wresting the Pac-10 title from Stanford, which has won eight consecutive championships.
Cal has reason for optimism. The Bears have played well despite missing two front line players for much of the nonconference season: Devanei Hampton and Rama N'diaye, who tore her ACL in an NCAA tournament game in March.
"We've been doing special things without two of our bigs healthy," Boyle said. If Cal can survive this month, "February basketball can be pretty exciting."
Copyright (c) 2009 - San Jose Mercury News
Top women's basketball teams enjoy tough non-conference games
One great aspect of women's college basketball is the willingness of the country's top programs to play one another in November and December, seemingly without limitations.
Stanford is just one team that took that approach this season, and Sunday the Cardinal concluded a trip that seemed overbooked when they started and crazy when they were done.
Coach Tara VanDerveer took her third-ranked team on a six-day trip to No. 8 Duke, South Carolina and No. 11 Tennessee and returned home with two more losses, leaving the Cardinal at 7-3 after playing for the 2008 national championship.
They dropped to No. 11 in this week's rankings.
"I'm not afraid of winning or losing,'' VanDerveer told the San Jose Mercury News before the excursion. "We want to grow. We want to improve.''
Stanford previously had played No. 7 Baylor, No. 15 Rutgers and Purdue, when the Boilermakers were ranked. Few, if any, men's programs are willing to risk so many defeats in the season's first six weeks.
The Cardinal aren't the only women's program to schedule that way.
With one of its best teams ever, Oklahoma has faced No. 1 Connecticut, No. 2 North Carolina, No. 13 California and No. 24 Arizona State. Perennial NCAA Tournament team Old Dominion prepared by playing No. 4 Texas, No. 14 Maryland, No. 16 Virginia and Tennessee. Rutgers played at Cal and Stanford on the same trip and will face Tennessee before the Big East schedule starts.
Playing three or four highly ranked teams is not out of the ordinary for the most prominent programs.
The Duke-Stanford meeting came about after Duke coach Joanne McCallie called VanDerveer last summer to see if she wanted to add a game to the trip.
She accepted despite knowing she would have to prepare for a national championship rematch with the Lady Vols five days later in front of a large crowd at Tennessee's Thompson-Boling Arena.
Duke beat Stanford 56-52 and Tennessee won 79-69 in overtime. VanDerveer would have liked a better result, but she schedules with the big picture in mind. She has attributed a loss to Connecticut last year with helping vault the Cardinal to within one win of the national title.
The next task is getting Tennessee and Connecticut to resume their series.
REBUILDING AT LSU
Louisiana State, which has appeared in five consecutive Finals Fours, is attempting to regain its national prominence after falling from the top 25 for the first time in 117 weeks earlier in the season. It had been the sixth-longest active streak when the season started.
All five starters from last year's Final Four team are gone, and the Tigers have started 5-3 with losses to Notre Dame, Xavier and Middle Tennessee State. They have since won four in a row but against poor competition.
Coach Van Chancellor's rebuilding effort will be tested in coming weeks, starting with a game against Florida State on Sunday. Their next five opponents are a combined 43-12.
DEBUT IN TOP 25
South Dakota State moved into the rankings at No. 25 this week, making the Jackrabbits the first team from the Summit League to make an appearance since Northern Illinois in 1993.
(c) ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Paris, Sooners stop Roadrunners
SAN JOSE, Calif. --- Courtney Paris absorbed the double teams in the first half, content to let her Oklahoma teammates carry the scoring load.
That all changed as soon as Cal State Bakersfield made a run to cut the Sooners' lead to three early in the second half.
Paris scored 13 of her 17 points in the second half and added 12 rebounds to post her 101st straight double-double and help No. 5 Oklahoma pull away for a 105-84 victory in the opening game of the Basketball By The Bay Classic on Friday night.
"When people are coming up on you, you know you have to take it to another level," Paris said. "These guys in the first half knocked down a lot of big shots. So in the second half, they couldn't double as hard. So it let me go to work. We play inside-out or outside-in, depending on how people guard us."
Paris took just two shots in the first half, before making six of seven in the opening 9 minutes of the second half when the Sooners (7-2) broke the game open. The undersized Roadrunners (4-5) had no strategy that could contain Paris when she decided to dominate inside.
"Hope she misses?" Christin Kepenikian said about the approach to playing Paris. "We had our hands up. She made some pretty hard shots. We were double-teaming her, but a couple of times she got it in too deep, which is too hard to guard."
Reserve Nyeshia Stevenson led the Sooners with 23 points, and Courtney's twin sister, Ashley, added 13 points and 11 rebounds. Danielle Robinson had nine points and 10 assists in a homecoming game for the San Jose native. Amanda Thompson scored 13 for the Sooners, who shot 58.9 percent for the game.
(c) 2008 NewsOK.
Driven and relentless, Hansbrough closes in on goal of leading Tar Heels to title
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Tyler Hansbrough closed his eyes, hoping for a good night of rest. Instead, his mind kept racing, turning over and over the thought of finally getting North Carolina to the Final Four.
"I couldn't really fall asleep," he said. "I kept thinking about this game coming up."
It's somehow fitting that Hansbrough -- a relentless All-American and a star from his first college game -- doesn't even take a break even when he should be sleeping.
That he's feeling anxious these days is no surprise. After all, he has worked with every play of his career to win a national championship, a goal now two wins away.
It's why Hansbrough can't talk about his first trip to the Final Four without immediately adding that he wants more.
"It means a lot," said Hansbrough, whose team plays Kansas on Saturday night in San Antonio. "It's a goal we set out. Obviously, we beat some good teams to get here and we feel like we're playing really well. We want to keep on moving."
Few players have embodied that approach better than the 6-foot-9 junior. He has spent seemingly the entire year earning a personal accolade for every victory the Tar Heels (36-2) managed in what has become the winningest season in the storied program's history. He was a unanimous All-America choice by The Associated Press this week.
Hansbrough, averaging 22.8 points and 10.3 rebounds, will be just the eighth Tar Heel to have his jersey retired. In last weekend's win over Louisville, he scored 28 points to move past Sam Perkins for second on the school's career scoring list with 2,151 points, trailing only Phil Ford (2,290) for a record he'll easily set if he returns next year.
"I didn't make Tyler that hard worker. I've just been a guy who benefited from it," coach Roy Williams said. "That boy is self-driven and self-motivated."
He's done it with an unyielding will that has him chase every rebound and loose ball while scoring despite constant contact. It's an approach that as a freshman earned him the nickname "Psycho T" -- he screamed to motivate himself to keep going during a grueling conditioning drill. Aron Baynes, Washington State's Australian forward, called him a "thrashing croc in the paint" before the team's matchup in the round of 16 last week.
But Hansbrough has also shown an expansive shooting range. His jumper has proved reliable while creeping out past 15 feet, whether it was his last-second shot to beat Virginia Tech in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament semifinals or the two clutch shots he hit over Louisville center David Padgett to help the Tar Heels hold their tenuous second-half lead in the East Regional championship.
That performance -- a 28 points, 13 rebounds -- left coach Rick Pitino offering plenty of praise. Yet his teammates have grown accustomed to the exceptional -- Hansbrough averaged 28 points and 12 rebounds during the nearly seven full games that point guard Ty Lawson was out with an ankle sprain in February.
"After you play with him for a while, you see some of the things that he can do," sophomore Wayne Ellington said. "He makes tough shots with a lot of defenders around him. I know he's capable of that. It doesn't really surprise me anymore when I see him make a tough shot."
His father, Gene, could probably say the same thing. He first saw his son's hypercompetitive drive when the 5-year-old Tyler practically ran over every defender to score goals in soccer games. Soon, Gene had to pad the area around the basketball goal in the basement of their Poplar Bluff, Mo., home because Tyler's games against older brother Greg became so fierce.
Things changed when Greg was diagnosed with a brain tumor when he was about 7. The surgery to remove the tumor left him partially paralyzed and forced him to learn to walk again. Greg eventually recovered enough to play basketball again and run marathons, an effort that left an impression on Tyler.
"He lived with it every day," Gene Hansbrough said. "He saw him struggle to be normal. I think watching Gregory struggle to do everything that normal kids do really helped Tyler appreciate what he was blessed with."
It certainly explains Hansbrough's insatiable work ethic. This, after all, is the same player who celebrated a 40-point day as a freshman by going to the gym to work on free throws during an off day because he missed a few from the line the night before. His approach is simple: "I feel like you're either getting better or you're not."
His biggest risk heading into this weekend might be putting too much pressure on himself. Then again, it's what got him here.
"What I said to myself is you've got to do the things you've done before," Hansbrough said. "I can't just sit here and wait for the games. I'm going to go out there and do the routine that I've done. I'm going to do the same things I've always been doing."
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
Huggins' Mountaineers prepare to take on Xavier in NCAA's West Region
PHOENIX -- The West Virginia Mountaineers are far different than most of Bob Huggins' teams, except in one way.
They win.
Huggins inherited a team of sharpshooters recruited by John Beilein, who stressed an intricate offense, and transformed it into a squad that plays man-to-man defense and scraps for rebounds.
No one will confuse these Mountaineers with Huggins' big, bad Cincinnati Bearcats. But West Virginia (26-10) has reached the NCAA tournament's round of 16, where the seventh-seeded Mountaineers will face third-seeded Xavier (29-6) in the West Region on Thursday night.
"He's completely flipped everything around, with rebounding, defense, intensity and goal-wise," forward Joe Alexander said after the Mountaineers practiced at U.S. Airways Center on Wednesday. "The goals changed when he came, from day one. They went from making the NCAA tournament to winning the NCAA tournament."
The 54-year-old Huggins returned to his alma mater after Beilein, who went 104-60 in five seasons in Morgantown, bolted for Michigan last year.
The players knew little about Huggins, a 1977 graduate of West Virginia, aside from the glowering figure they had seen stalking the sidelines on television.
Huggins has shown his players a softer side since arriving. But he also brought a commitment to defense that has paid off in the first two rounds of the tournament, when West Virginia limited 10th-seeded Arizona to 65 points and second-seeded Duke to 67.
"I think the defensive end took a lot of getting used to," backup point guard Joe Mazzulla said. "Last year, we did two hours of offense and 10 minutes of defense (in practice). This year, we do two hours of defense and half-hour of offense."
From the start, Huggins and his staff pushed the players into the weight room. He also brought a treadmill to practice, and players who mess up are asked to go for a spin.
"When I first heard that he was going to get one in the gym, I was like, 'Man, that's not going to happen," backup forward Wellington Smith said. "When I first saw it, I was like, 'Man, I'm going to be on there a lot.' I've been on there a lot."
His transgressions?
"Not box out," Smith said. "Let a guy go middle. Just being, maybe, soft."
If there's one thing Huggins can't stand, it's being soft. But while Huggins likes to instill discipline in his players, it has, at times, been missing from his personal and professional life.
His 16-year tenure at Cincinnati produced a trip to the 1992 Final Four and two other regional final appearances. It also included player arrests, NCAA probation and Huggins' drunk driving arrest in 2004.
Huggins was forced out in 2005, but he wasn't finished. He spent one season at Kansas State before taking the job at West Virginia. Huggins is 616-221 in 26 college seasons.
Reinventing himself as a coach wasn't a big deal for a man who had survived a heart attack in the fall of 2002.
But then, Huggins said he didn't really change after that seemingly life-altering event, although he had planned to at the time.
"Same thing you do New Year's Eve," Huggins said. "You said, 'I'm going to do this,' and about the third of January you are back doing what you did before.
"I haven't really changed all that much," Huggins said. "I mean, I would like to sit here and tell you that I probably eat better, but look at me. That's obviously not the case."
The beefy Huggins paused while reporters laughed.
"Honestly, I don't think about it very much, which is kind of hard," Huggins said. "But I just believe with all my heart when God says it's your time, it's your time. You don't get to debate that. He decided for whatever reason it wasn't my time."
Xavier coach Sean Miller, who has known Huggins for most of his life, said he's not surprised that Huggins has returned with a passion.
"He is such a survivor," Miller said. "He is so strong-willed. I don't know if it surprised anybody that not only is he back as a coach, but better than ever."
Arizona coach Kevin O'Neill, a longtime friend, called Huggins "probably the most underrated coach in the whole game. He's going to be in the Hall of Fame."
Huggins' blunt style makes for good copy but isn't always endearing. He still bristles over the perception -- some of it fueled by the media, he believes -- that his Bearcats were a lawless bunch.
"I understand to make a good story, there's got to be white hats and black hats, otherwise we never would have had a cowboy movie," Huggins said. "That's the way it is."
To stress his point, Huggins recalled the 1992 Final Four.
"The reality is in 1992 we go to the Final Four with three bluebloods -- it is Indiana, Duke and Michigan," Huggins said. "And then here we come in with 10 transfers.
"Didn't matter that they were the most articulate, the funniest, the best interview," Huggins said. "They really were the highlight of the whole deal. It was a story. And I understand that, and I'm good with it. I'm 54 years old, shocked back to life three times, you know? I'm fine with it."
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
Georgia leads improbable group to NCAA tournament
ATLANTA -- Billy Humphrey stood on the court of a bitter rival, looking up at the video board along with the rest of his Georgia teammates. He didn't care his team was seeded 14th in the NCAA tournament. He didn't mind facing powerhouse Xavier in the opening round.
After all the Bulldogs had been through, what's the big deal?
"Right now," Humphrey said, "I feel like we can beat anybody."
Georgia showed plenty of grit during the Southeastern Conference tournament, somehow managing to win four games in spite of a devastating tornado, an impromptu change of venue and a grueling doubleheader. When it was done, the Bulldogs (17-16) had earned a most unlikely bid to the NCAA tournament, beating Arkansas 66-57 in the championship game Sunday.
"We can take Xavier!" proclaimed Terrance Woodbury, already looking ahead to a Thursday matchup with the Musketeers after scoring 16 points in the SEC final. "We can do it!"
The Bulldogs weren't the only farfetched team to make the NCAA tournament. The first-timer club includes four new members. Drake broke a 37-year drought. Cal State Fullerton is in for the first time since 1978. And Baylor might be the most remarkable of all, claiming a spot five years after one of the worst scandals in college basketball history.
"We persevered," coach Scott Drew said.
Perseverance. That's a word that applies to all The Improbables.
American, Maryland-Baltimore County, Texas-Arlington and Portland State will get their first sampling of March Madness. Sure, they're all seeded last or next-to-last in their respective regions, so one-and-done is a distinct possibility across the board.
But right now, the score is zero-zero.
"We know what we're capable of doing, and we're going to go out there and do it, no matter who our opponent is," said UMBC forward Cavell Johnson, whose team faces Big East power Georgetown on Friday. "All we needed to do was get our foot in the door, and we're going to take advantage of it."
That's the beauty of the Big Dance, which opens up its 65-team field to the proletariat by handing out automatic bids to conferences such as the America East and the Southland, thereby creating all sorts of Rocky-themed stories and the illusion that everyone has a chance -- at least until tipoff.
"You come to some places and they have all these championships and NCAA tournament appearances," said Anthony Vereen, whose 25 points led Texas-Arlington to the Southland tournament title Sunday. "Then you come here and look in the record books and it says under championships, 'None, none, none.' So it feels pretty good to win this one."
None, none, none -- that would have been the answer to this pre-SEC tournament question: In three words or less, what are Georgia's chances of winning the championship?
After all, the Bulldogs finished last in the SEC East with a 4-12 conference record, and no sixth seed had made it beyond the semifinals since the league went to divisional play in the early 1990s. Only two teams in the tournament's modern era had won four games in four days to claim the title, another bit of history working against Georgia.
Well, the Bulldogs not only did the unthinkable -- they actually won four games in three days, playing a doubleheader Saturday after a tornado slammed into Georgia Dome the night before and forced a postponement of the last quarterfinal game.
Fearing the building wasn't safe, the SEC picked up and moved to nearby Georgia Tech, which was spared by the storm. The tournament finished up at cozy Alexander Memorial Coliseum before mostly empty seats; the place wasn't big enough to accommodate all the ticket-buying customers, so none of them were let in. The title game was played before a crowd estimated at 3,700, all of them getting in with tickets provided to family and friends.
The Bulldogs led all the way, racing out to a 19-point lead in the first half and holding on when Arkansas made a late run.
"It's really gratifying," said coach Dennis Felton, who had only eight scholarship players remaining after injuries, defections and disciplinary problems. "Regardless of how much adversity we went through and how much we had to go through as a team, the guys we had left had enough character to keep fighting for another day."
The Bulldogs got to cut down the nets at the home court of their in-state rival. Then, as if rubbing salt in Georgia Tech's wound, everyone in red and black hung around to watch the NCAA selection show on the video board hanging above the court.
In a way, this makes up for the tournament Georgia missed out on in 2003, when a 19-win team coached by Jim Harrick was kept at home by the administration after embarrassing allegations came to light late in the season. Among the charges: illegal payments to a player and a sham class taught to athletes by Harrick's son, which turned the school into a national punch line.
There was nothing funny about the scandal going on at Baylor about the same time. One of the team's player, Patrick Dennehy, was murdered. A teammate admitted doing it and was sent to prison.
The sordid affair opened up an ugly can of worms, which included secretly recorded tapes in which coach Dave Bliss was heard trying to portray Dennehy as a drug dealer. By then, school investigators already had determined Bliss paid up to $40,000 in tuition for Dennehy and another player, and had improperly solicited $87,000 from boosters.
Drew was brought in to rebuild the program, and it took just five years to make it to the NCAAs. The Bears got in for the first time in 20 years and only the second time since 1950.
The wait was excruciating, though, as one school after another was called. Finally, a single slot remained.
It went to Baylor.
"It was a tough way to get in, but we got in," school president John Lilley said. "Part of this is just confidence that we could come back from less than nothing and make it."
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
Mayo scores 23 as USC beats ASU 59-55 in Pac-10 tournament
LOS ANGELES -- Southern California advanced to the semifinals of the Pac-10 tournament thanks to an exceptional defensive effort in the second half against Arizona State.
The Trojans benefited from an official's call as well.
Freshman O.J. Mayo scored 23 points and matched a career high with six assists, and the Trojans held ASU to six field goals after halftime in a 59-55 victory over the Sun Devils on Thursday.
Freshman Davon Jefferson and Taj Gibson each had 11 points and nine rebounds for USC, which held ASU without a field goal after Derek Glasser made his only basket of the game with 9:35 remaining to give the Sun Devils a 49-42 lead.
Arizona State appeared to tie the game at 57 when Jeff Pendergraph slammed in a James Harden miss with 16.9 seconds left, but Pendergraph was called for going over Jefferson's back for his fifth foul.
Jefferson made two free throws to complete the scoring.
"No, honestly, I didn't (feel any contact)," Pendergraph said. "They usually don't blow the whistle. I thought it was clean. It's not like I pushed anybody out of the way.
"Everybody jumped. I just jumped higher."
Mayo disagreed, saying: "It was a foul. Body contact."
USC coach Tim Floyd said he didn't have a clear look at the play.
"I saw him dunk it and I didn't like that," Floyd said. "I'm sure if I was sitting on the other bench, I would have liked it. It's a difficult game to officiate."
The win was the sixth in seven games for the fourth-seeded Trojans (21-10), who had already assured themselves of an NCAA tournament berth.
"We're very fortunate to get out of there," Floyd said. "I think we're seeing the greatness in this league in every game in this tournament."
The Trojans will face No. 3 UCLA in Friday night's semifinals. The top-seeded Bruins (29-3) beat ninth-seeded California 88-66 in Thursday's second quarterfinal matchup.
USC shot 42.9 percent to Arizona State's 35.3 percent and outrebounded the Sun Devils 36-26. The Trojans won despite committing 19 turnovers to 12 for ASU.
Harden, a freshman who scored 50 points in ASU's two games against USC during the regular season, was held to six in the second half and 16 overall in this game by Daniel Hackett.
"I thought he was outstanding, the second half in particular, defensively," Floyd said of Hackett. "He just battled, much like he did last year against (Kevin) Durant in the NCAA tournament."
USC beat Texas 87-68 last March. Durant scored 30 points, but never came close to dominating the East Regional game.
ASU's NCAA tournament status is in question. Many thought the fifth-seeded Sun Devils (19-12) needed at least one victory in the conference tournament to earn their first NCAA tournament berth in five years.
"It's very difficult to be objective when you're this emotional," said second-year ASU coach Herb Sendek, whose team has lost 10 of its last 15 games. "The committee has a very difficult challenge. I think we'll get consideration. Hopefully the excellence of the Pac-10 will be recognized and rewarded."
The Sun Devils were 8-22 last season.
Regarding the call against Pendergraph, Sendek said: "From my perspective, I thought it was clean. But I third we're best served to focus on the things that we could have done better to avoid that situation."
Pendergraph had 13 points and six rebounds and freshman Rihards Kuksiks scored 12 for ASU, which shot 6-of-21 (28.6 percent) in the second half.
A three-point play by Jefferson with 5:11 remaining snapped a 53-all tie and put USC ahead for good. The Trojans wouldn't make another field goal, but they still managed to win.
A foul shot by Gibson with 4:32 left gave USC a four-point lead, and neither team scored after that until Pendergraph made a free throw with 2:10 to play.
ASU's Ty Abbott added another foul shot with 1:38 left to make it 57-55. Neither team scored after that until Jefferson made the game-clinching free throws.
The Sun Devils outscored the Trojans 11-4 to start the second half for a 43-38 lead, and extended their advantage to seven before a basket by Gibson and five straight points by Mayo tied it at 49 with 7:53 to play.
Neither team led by more than four points after that.
Harden scored eight points during an 11-2 run that put the Sun Devils ahead 17-9, which turned out to be the biggest lead of the game for either team. The Trojans scored the next 10 points for a two-point lead. Neither team led by more than four points during the remainder of the first half, which ended with USC on top 34-32.
The teams split their two regular-season games, with each winning by 14 points at home.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
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