Thursday, March 05, 2009
ACC women's basketball tournament preview
Associated Press
Monica Wright (22) and the Virginia Cavaliers play Virginia Tech at 8 tonight.
The ACC women's basketball tournament starts today and Virginia Tech and No. 24 Virginia meet each other for the third time this season tonight at 8 p.m. at the Greensboro Coliseum.
Stop and go
Virginia loves to run and the Cavaliers need to get stops on the defensive end to get their transition offense off and running. That offense ranked third in the league against other ACC teams.
Lyndra Littles and Monica Wright are the top two scorers in the ACC, and center Aisha Mohammed ranks 13th in scoring and leads the league in rebounding. The three average 57 points a game in ACC play, but the rest of the team combined averages just 17.4. If any of the top three aren't on their game, the Cavaliers could struggle.
Virginia also ranks last against ACC opponents in scoring defense, allowing 74.1 points a game. The Cavaliers' man-to-man defense was lackluster against the Hokies in Charlottesville, but they switched to a 2-3 zone in the second half, smothered Tech's attempts to get inside and turned the game around.
Slow mo
Virginia doesn't own the Hokies. It just seems like it because they've won nine of the last 10 times they've met and 32 of 40 overall.
The last time the Hokies saw Virginia, they built a big early lead by shooting lights out. But that lead didn't last once the Cavaliers clamped down on defense.
If Tech wants to break its five-game losing streak to Virginia, its going to need all five of its starters -- and freshman Shanel Harrison -- to play well and play together. Tech can't afford the defensive letdowns and offensive miscues that have jumped up and bitten it too many times this season.
In addition to Utahya Drye, who ranks 15th in the league in scoring, center Brittany Gordon will need to stand up against Mohammed in the middle, and Lindsay Biggs will have to be ready and willing to catch and shoot in order to provide a legitimate outside threat.
The Hokies have been getting more scoring from both Nikki Davis, Laura Haskins and Harrison, but what they need most is for the whole team to play coordinated defense.
Next up
Tonight's winner will face third-seeded Duke, No. 8 in the AP poll, in the quarterfinals at 8 p.m. Friday.
It's bad news for the Cavaliers, who actually split with the top two seeds Maryland and Florida State, but had their two biggest weaknesses exposed by the Blue Devils.
The Blue Devils beat Tech twice in the regular season, winning 57-52 at Cassell Coliseum with Abby Waner sitting out due to a cold on Jan. 16, and then taking a 62-46 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Feb. 19. But the Hokies left the experience feeling pretty good about the way they'd played.
Not so the Cavaliers. Duke's top two scorers Chante Black and Waner struggled when the Devils came to came to Charlottesville, but Duke turned to its third and fourth scoring options Jasmine Thomas and Karima Christmas and tore right through Virginia's inconsistent defense for an 81-67 win.
Even without the defense they needed to get their running offense started, Littles and Wright scored barrels of points. But the Cavaliers had no third and fourth option on offense. Of Virginia's 67 points, Littles and Wright scored 50.
Break up the Big 3
Since 1993, the ACC tournament championship game as otherwise been known as the Duke-Carolina game. They haven't always both been in it, but between the two they've managed to win 13 of the last 15 championships.
The two exceptions? Clemson. In 1996 and 1999.
That's right, not Maryland, which won the national championship in 2006 and is the third member of the ACC women's basketball's Big 3. The Terps lost to North Carolina in the ACC championship game in 2005 and 2006 to kick off what is now a four-year tournament winning streak for the Tar Heels.
No. 11 North Carolina comes into this year's tournament as the fourth-seed, its lowest seeding since 2001, and No. 8 Duke is the third seed. No. 4 Maryland is the top seed and high-seed newcomer Florida State is the second seed.
The Tar Heels have won more consecutive ACC tournament games than Florida State has managed to hang around long enough to play since it joined the league in 1991-92 season. The Seminoles are 4-5 in tournament play, and have never won more than one game in a single tournament.
These Seminoles are ranked No. 12 in the country and led the league for most of the season. They beat North Carolina and Duke, and lost to Maryland on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Kristi Toliver. Who hasn't experienced that?
Their other loss was to Virginia. The Cavaliers went to Tallahassee on Feb. 24, and avenged their 80-75 loss from earlier in the season, knocking the Seminoles off 68-63.
The Cavaliers also split with Maryland, but the Terps were the ones who laughed last in that series. Virginia won 89-81 in Charlottesville then lost 94-78 in College Park, Md., in the rematch two weeks later on Feb. 12.
Missing in action
This will be the first ever ACC women's tournament without coach Kay Yow, who began coaching at N.C. State in 1976, two years before the first ACC tournament in 1978. N.C. State will keep a seat open on its bench in honor of its late coach, who died of breast cancer on Jan. 24.
The ACC has named its women's basketball Scholar Athlete of the Year award after Yow.
