Irish will face UConn again in Big East Tournament Championships
By TIM CASEY
Assistant Sports Editor
STORRS, CONN.
Nearly two months of anticipation boils down to two hours of reality tonight.
Hopefully.
Several inches of snow blanketed this rural town in northeastern Connecticut on Monday night and forecasts estimate that additional snow will accumulate today. If weather permits, No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Connecticut will square off for the Big East tournament championships tonight at 7:30, a game that will be televised on ESPN2.
The two teams met on Jan. 15, with the Irish upsetting the then top-ranked Huskies 92-76 before a sold-out Joyce Center crowd.
Due to Monday's storm, a police escort led two busloads full of Notre Dame players, coaches, managers, cheerleaders, band members, athletic department officials and members of the media to and from Gampel Pavilion. After Notre Dame's 67-49 victory over Virginia Tech, it took 45 minutes for the buses to drive the 20-mile trip from Gampel to the team's hotel.
Also, the semifinal game between Connecticut and Rutgers was delayed for nearly an hour while a repairman fixed a leak on Gampel's roof. The Huskies cruised to a 94-66 win to set up tonight's rematch.
Notre Dame (28-1 overall) and Connecticut (27-2 overall) entered the tournament with identical 15-1 conference records but the Irish gained the No. 1 seed due to their earlier win.
Since the 1993-94 season, the Huskies have won seven straight tournament titles, two national championships and have gone 135-5 in Big East regular season games.
So although the Irish are ranked atop the latest national polls, Muffet McGraw referred to her team as the underdog during Thursday's Big East teleconference.
Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma disagreed with McGraw's comments.
"Muffet stays up at night thinking of things like that to say," Auriemma said on Thursday. "God bless her. She's come up with a great idea, `the press is saying they're the underdog.' I don't know what that means."
The Huskies will play without All-American forward Svetlana Abrosimova tonight. Abrosimova hurt her left foot during the 92-88 loss to Tennessee on Feb. 1. She underwent surgery on Feb. 7 to repair a torn ligament and will miss the rest of the season.
Sue Bird, Connecticut's starting point guard, is questionable tonight. The first-team All Big East performer suffered a back injury during Sunday's quarterfinal win over Boston College and missed Monday's game against Rutgers. As of last night, it was uncertain whether Bird would play in the final.
Even with Abrosimova and Bird sidelined, the Huskies present a formidable challenge. Forward Swin Cash is the only Connecticut player to rank among the conference's top 20 in either scoring (12.1 points per game — 16th in the Big East) or rebounding (7.6 rebounds per game — fifth in the Big East) but the Huskies still lead the Big East in scoring, scoring defense, field goal percentage and field goal percentage defense.
After the shocking loss to Notre Dame, in which the Huskies shot a season-low 36.7 percent from the field, Connecticut has played better than ever, compiling a 14-1 record. They have outscored their opponents by an average of 38.1 points per game in the 14 victories.
"When we lost to Notre Dame, they were putting up billboards `If you want to beat Connecticut, play zone,'" Auriemma said on Thursday. "We've made a lot of progress since then."
For McGraw, tonight's game is important, but she refuses to refer to the first victory over Connecticut as a fluke. The Irish played their best game in two months in Sunday night's 56-point win against Georgetown and showed on Monday that they can be successful even when Ruth Riley struggles.
"I think we've already proved that we're a great team," McGraw said. "I think win or lose, both teams are No. 1 seeds (in the NCAA tournament). I don't think there's anything more that we need to prove."
For the first time since the 1992 Big East final, when top seeded Miami beat Connecticut 56-47, the Huskies will wear the blue road uniforms tonight.
Because the Irish are ranked higher, they will don their gold home uniforms.
What effect will this have on the Huskies?
"Kids are weird today," Auriemma said. "These are kids that used to play in T-shirts and shorts outside because they liked to play basketball. Now they're going to get all whacked out about what uniform they're wearing? To me, if you're fortunate enough to play for the Big East Championship on Tuesday night, if they make you sit in section 203 and run down the steps when you get subbed in, then you're happy. The goal is to win the Big East Championship, anything other than that is nonsense that doesn't belong in any discussion or any thought."
How about the weather?
All Sports Stories for Tuesday, March 6, 2001
