Game 34: Utah (NCAA Second Round)

After a day of rest, we are back in action this time playing Utah in what will be Kristi and Marissa's last ever home game at the Comcast Center. Four years of memories have come down to this one day. I am sure there will be very few dry eyes when the clock hits 00:00 tonight.

Before the preview just two quick points:
1. Starting tonight, every one we will play from here to the Final Four will have motivation against us. Utah, Vandy, LSU, South Dakota State and Baylor have all been beaten by Kristi and Marissa during their careers and we all know Benedict Arnold would love a crack at Maryland.
2. With Tennessee's loss to Ball State(Don't know if you had heard, ESPN barely mentions this), the Lady Vols now own the record for earliest exit by a defending champ. We previously held that mark.

Utah was the winner of the Mountain West Conference Tournament and enters the second round with a record of 23-9. Among the common opponents for them and us: South Dakota State (L, 70-58), Virginia (L, 65-57), TCU (W, 73-63; L, 53-47).

The Utes like to run a ton of screens on offense and continually attack the hoop. The scored at will against Nova on Sunday. on defense they play tight man-to-man defense and will do their best to frustrate opponents. Nova was a great three-point shooting team and Utah took that part out of their game the other day. Utah gave us fits three years ago, but then again almost the entire team had the flu and I haven't heard that we are suffering from it again.

PPG/OPP: 63.3/54.7
FG%/OPP: .443/.342
3FG%/OPP: .347/.289
FT%/OPP: .803/.720
RPG/OPP: 38.8/30.8
APG/OPP: 14.4/10.9
TOPG/OPP: 17.7/13.4
SPG/OPP: 7.0/8.5
BLOCKS/OPP: 3.3/2.8

The Starters
- #15 Morgan Warburton. a 5'11 senior guard. Leads the team in scoring at 18.6 per game. Shoots 43% from the floor and 39% from behind the arc and 90% from the line. leads the team in assists and turnovers and is second in steals. Will rebound the ball as she gets 6.3 per game. Played in the Elite 8 game.
- #2 Kalee Whipple. 6' junior forward. Second on the team in scoring (16.8), assists (99) and turnovers (109). Shoots 44% from the floor, 37.4% from 3 and 77.2% from the line. has taken more threes than Warburton. rebounds 6.2 per game. Leads the team in steals but that tends to get her in foul trouble as she has fouled out 5 times this year.
- #31 Katie King. 6'1 senior forward. Averages 11.1 points and 7.2 rebounds per game. Stays mainly inside the arc making 57.2% of her shots. Has shot 4 threes this season making only one. Is a 92% free throw shooter but has only taken 73 foul shots, which tells me she doens't go after contact. second on the team in blocks.
- #22 Halie Sawyer. 6'1 junior forward. Averages 7.3 points and 7.8 rebounds (leads team) per game.Shoots 42.8% from the floor and 65.1% from the line. Has taken 28 threes this season and made only 4. leads the team in blocked shots. Has fouled out of 3 games.
- #1 Janita Badon. 5'6 freshman guard. Didn't start the entire year until postseason play. Averages 3.3 points per game and has taken only 94 shots the entire year (the first four have taken 200+). Made 6 of 30 threes and is third on the team in assists. makes 60.6% of her free throws. will help rebound.


The Bench
- #5 Hannah Stephens. 5'8 freshman guard. was the starter until the postseason started. Like Baden she rarely shoots the ball, but it seems like she liked to shoot the 3 more than Badon did as 40 of her 72 shots have come from behind the arc. Doesn't really rebound.
- #23 Deanne Stevenson. 6'3 senior center. In there to help rebound. Has only taken 22 shots all year.
- #20 Sasha McKinnon. 6'0 junior guard. Three-point shooting threat.
- #10 Josi McDermott. 6'0 freshman guard. Has taken 16 shots all year, 4 of 6 from behind the arc.

Keys to the Game
- Dictate the Tempo. Utah will want to play slow to let their defense settle. Three years ago that worked because we had a short bench, this year it shouldn't. Grab the ball and beat them down the court before they can set up. Same goes for defense. Force Utah to play faster than they are used to. The Utes haven't given up more than 63 points in 2009 and haven't scored more than 79/
- Rebound the ball. Again we have a height advantage at nearly every spot. Rebounding allows us to pick up the pace and prevents second chance points.
- Switch on screens. Utah will run their players through screen after screen hoping to free up the offense. Against Nova, I saw a few players run the same the circular route over and over until they got a free look at the hoop. We either have to switch or hedge them to disrupt the passing lanes.
- Attack the inside. Kizer and Liles need to have big games to free up the middle even more.
- Don't make this about you. I hope Coach Park doesn't make it his mission to embarass the Utes. He's at a new school now and he doesn't need to prove to the old staff that he is so much better than them. Just coach the game like a normal one.
- Have Fun.
- Eat Kids


After our game you can also watch LSU-Louisville and Baylor-SDSU to see who else is in our Regional.