Now No. 2 Irish brace for Hurricane warning
By TIM CASEY
Assistant Sports Editor
The Irish may have lost on Saturday but don't expect Miami coach Ferne Labati to shed any tears for the Big East's top team.
"As the season progresses, teams go up and down," Labati said. "But they're still winning. They've got to be doing something right."
With the 54-53 loss to Rutgers, Notre Dame (23-1 overall, 12-1 in Big East) fell to No. 2 in both the Associated Press and ESPN/USA TODAY polls. Tennessee (26-1 overall) vaulted to the top while Connecticut (22-2 overall, 12-1 in Big East) remained in third.
Since then, a prevalent theme among Irish fans has been that Notre Dame's loss was somehow beneficial.
Not one of the Irish players would publicly agree with that logic.
"It's never good to lose," freshman guard Jeneka Joyce said. "People are always like, `Oh you needed that. It serves as a wake-up call.' All of us were very unhappy to have lost. We can take several things away from the loss but we just wished the outcome would have been different."
Notre Dame returns to the court tonight at 7 p.m. for a conference game against Miami. The Hurricanes arrived in South Bend Monday afternoon and practiced for two hours in the Joyce Center. Miami (13-11 overall, 6-7 in Big East) lost early season games to Florida International and Fairfield but has gone 4-1 in February.
Freshman Chanivia Broussard, who starred at Miami's Northwestern High School, averages a team-high 12.7 points and adds 5.3 rebounds per game.
Junior Sheila James, sophomore Alicia Hartlaub, senior Dalia Clarke and sophomore Meghan Saake join Broussard in the Hurricane's starting rotation.
"The thing that have really cost us games are young kids making costly turnovers in critical situations," Labati said. "That has really hurt us."
In last year's 83-68 win over the Hurricanes on Feb. 22, Ruth Riley scored 36 points and 12 rebounds. She hit 18-of-23 from the line and was 9-of-16 from the field.
"If the officials make all these calls," Labati said, "there's nothing you can do."
Needless to say, Labati mentioned containing Riley as her team's biggest target for tonight. The Hurricanes plan on implementing several defensive strategies to counterattack the Irish's balanced offense.
Lately, though, coach Muffet McGraw has depended almost exclusively on her starters. Against Rutgers, the reserves did not score and logged only 25 of the possible 200 minutes of playing time.
And in that same game, in which Riley scored just 12 points and fouled out in 25 minutes, the Irish's offense recorded their lowest point total of the season.
"Coach stressed that we have to get back to our transition game," Joyce said. "We haven't been able to run as effectively as we would like to."
Whether it's fair or not, the loss to the Scarlet Knights will dominate conversation for the next few weeks, until the Big East tournament. Just like the Connecticut victory caused maybe too much optimism, the Rutgers defeat may cause too much pessimism.
"You can't take anything away from Rutgers because they're a good team," Joyce said. "But it was just very disappointing when we knew we had the potential to have an undefeated season. Now we've got to readjust and take care of business."
All Sports Stories for Tuesday, February 20, 2001
