Familiar face awaits Cal women for NCAA tournament opener
Moments after it was revealed that seventh-seeded Cal would face 10th-seeded Virginia in the first round of the women’s NCAA Tournament, Cavaliers coach Joanne Boyle got a text message from her Cal counterpart, Lindsay Gottlieb.
“They love these storylines, right,” Gottlieb wrote.
The storyline for today’s Cal-Virginia game (2 p.m. ESPN2) in Columbia, S.C., is obvious.
Boyle was Cal’s head coachfrom2005 to 2011, taking the Bears to the NCAA Tournament four times. When Boyle left Berkeley to become Virginia’s head coach following the 2010-11 season, her successor at Cal was Gottlieb, who had been an assistant under Boyle at Richmond and Cal.
“She’s one of my best friends,” Boyle said on the Cavaliers’ website.
If Virginia (18-13) should beat Cal (21-10), a different storyline emerges, because the Cavaliers’ second-round opponentwould probably be No. 2-seeded South Carolina, whose head coach, Dawn Staley, is the best player ever to come out of Virginia.
Getting past Cal will be a challenge, based on the way the Bears finished the season. Cal won six of its final eight games, beating then-No. 14 Stanford along the way. The Bears lost to ninth-ranked UCLA 77-74 in the Pac-12 tournament quarterfinals but held a seven-point lead with less than seven minutes left.
The Bears are led by three-time all- conference selection Kristine Anigwe, who averages 16.7 points and 8.8 rebounds.
Virginia lost four of its final six games this season, but three of those losses were against teams that earned No. 1 seeds in this year’s NCAA Tournament. The Cavaliers played five games this season against No. 1 seeds (two against Louisville, two against Notre Dame and one against Mississippi State).
CHASING HISTORY » Tennessee is 56- 0 in NCAA Tournament games in Knoxville, and the next one game comes today when No. 3 seed (24-7) opens the NCAA Tournament against No. 14 seed Liberty (24- 9) at Thompson-Boling Arena.
Liberty is a travel-hardened group. The Lady Flames have played 19 games in eight different states and flown through 11 different airports this season. They even bused 800 miles from Atlanta to Kansas City in December after a power outage impacted the Atlanta airport.
BIGNUMBERS » DePaul and Oklahoma met in the second game of the season, a Blue Demons 111-108 win, and they meet again in a first-round game today: In their last two games, DePaul and Oklahoma have combined for 423 points.
The teams delivered their highest-scoring games in NCAA tournament history when they played in 2014. DePaul won, 104-100, with six players scoring in double figures.
EARLY START » Boise State barely adjusted to Daylight Savings Time before heading east for a contest against host Louisville that will tip offat 10 a.m. Mountain time.
“We felt like we lost a whole day coming here,” said guard Riley Lupfer, adding that the travel denied guard Ellie Woerner a chance to celebrate turning 21 on Wednesday. “We were on a plane most of it and we were like, Ellie, you kind of missed your whole 21st birthday. That kind of (stinks). Otherwise, I think we handled it pretty well.”
BEEN THERE » Much has been written about Notre Dame’s four season-ending ACL injuries that began almost a year ago when AllAmerica forward Brianna Turner was hurt during an NCAA tourney victory over Purdue. The Irish then lost senior point guard Mychal Johnson in the preseason, promising freshman forward Mikayla Vaughn in November and Lili Thompson on Dec. 31.
Cal State Northridge can relate. Flowers lost starting guards Serafina Maulupe andCheyenne Allento injuries before midseason and guard Hayley Tanabe (7.8 points, 107 assists) dealtwith a stress fracture in her foot at the start of the season.