Women Upset Louisville

By John Antonik for MSNsportsNET.com March 4, 2006 BOX SCORE HARTFORD, CONN. – No. 5-seeded Louisville was looking for another victory to put on its post-season resume while No. 12-seeded West Virginia was just looking to extend its season another day. West Virginia's Chakhia Cole, left, races for the basket with Louisville's Jessica Huggins in pursuit in the first half of their first round game of the Big East Women's Basketball Tournament in Hartford, Conn., Saturday, March 4, 2006. Louisville's Yuliya Tokova (5) looks on. AP photo/Bob Child Well, West Virginia extended its season another day by knocking off the Cardinals 54-45 Saturday afternoon in a Big East women’s basketball opening round game at the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Conn. “I thought we were very aggressive defensively,” said Coach Mike Carey, now 4-4 in Big East tournament games at West Virginia. “When we switched from man to zone it kind of took them out of a rhythm a little bit; they didn’t shoot well and had a lot of turnovers.” For that matter neither team shot the ball well, but the Mountaineers (13-15) making just a few more than the frigid Cardinals, who connected on only six first-half field goal attempts and finished the game hitting 14 of 53 for 26.4 percent. U of L also committed 20 turnovers in a game it may have needed to get an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament. Louisville (19-9) will now have to wait until next weekend to find out whether or not it’s going to play in the NCAA tournament or the WNIT. “Honestly, I think we should be locked into the tournament,” said Louisville coach Tom Collen. “We’ve got an NCAA resume that really might be the fourth-best resume in the conference. Certainly we came into this game not wanting to give the committee reason to step up and say the dreaded ‘they did not make it to the quarterfinals, they lost their last game of the year; they lost to a 12-seed.’ “We felt like we wanted to win this game as an insurance policy and we didn’t do that,” Collen said. West Virginia advances to at least the second round of the Big East tournament for the third straight year behind a game-high 19 points from junior guard Britney Davis-White. She had 17 of her 19 points in a first-half in which West Virginia led by as many as 20 points and owned a 31-16 lead at intermission. “Needless to say Britney had a great first half with 17 points,” Carey said. “I thought the start of the first half we were struggling to score a little bit.” “I knew Louisville was going to come out really intense and I knew I had to step up and hit shots and that’s what I did,” said Davis-White. LaQuita Owens contributed 14 points though making just 4 of 16 field-goal attempts, and Yelena Leuchanka came off the bench to add 10 points on 5 of 6 shooting. WVU’s top two scorers Olayinka Sanni and Chakhia Cole, who combined to average 24.2 points per game this season, managed just 9 points between them. Jazz Covington and Connie Neal scored 11 each for the Cardinals, which lost 99-73 to West Virginia in Morgantown back on Jan. 10. “This is kind of a hard one to take,” admitted Collen. “I don’t think we saw it coming.” The Cardinals cut West Virginia’s lead to just six points, 51-45, on a Neal 3-point basket with 50 seconds left in the game. The Mountaineers did just enough from the free throw line, hitting 3 of 6, to seal the game. The victory snaps a season-long eight-game losing streak for West Virginia. “At the end we started to fall apart, but we knew we couldn’t let ourselves do that,” Owens said. “I just kept trying to play and going for every loose ball.” Carey was not surprised that his team pulled off the upset, despite enduring a month-long losing streak heading into today’s game. “We felt like we had nothing to lose,” he said. “Not a lot of people gave us a chance to win this basketball game, especially after losing eight in a row. We had a lot of energy and I’m proud of them.” “I don’t know what it is – I don’t even know anything about Louisville but when I play Louisville I just feel it,” said Davis-White. “I’m going to try and make it that way with St. John’s, too.” The Mountaineers will battle the No. 4-seeded Red Storm on Sunday at noon. The game will be televised by CSTV and can be seen on the Internet through CSTV All Access. St. John’s, 21-6, 11-5, was one of four teams to earn a first-round bye. The Red Storm downed West Virginia, 74-69 at Madison Square Garden in New York in the two team’s only meeting back on Jan. 29. In that game, West Virginia lost its best player Meg Bulger for the season with a knee injury. “I think there are not many conferences that can boast a 12-seed that’s as good as West Virginia,” Collen said.