NU women draw Xavier
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
By CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star
At least the Nebraska women’s basketball team should know the routine.
One year after playing Temple in a No. 8 seed vs. No. 9 seed NCAA Tournament game in Raleigh, N.C., the Huskers will head east again to play another Atlantic 10 Conference opponent, Xavier, in an NCAA opening-round game in College Park, Md.
And, yes, it’ll be a No. 8 seed (Nebraska) against a No. 9 seed.
Tip-off from the University of Maryland’s Comcast Center is 11 a.m. Sunday.
“I actually watched a couple minutes of them on film today,” NU coach Connie Yori said of the 24-8 Musketeers, who earned an automatic bid by defeating Temple in the Atlantic 10 Tournament final. “My administrative assistant, Steph Clark, was clipping film, guessing who we were going to play ... and she was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to play Xavier, I’ve got a film of them.’
“I had a feeling that we were going to play Wyoming at Stanford.”
Yori also felt like the Huskers deserved to be a No. 7 seed. But when an Iowa State team that Nebraska defeated twice wound up seeded seventh, playing in Des Moines, Iowa, oh, well.
“Whatever. Seven seed, eight seed — you’ve still got to play a team basically in the same range,” Yori said Monday.
The winner of the Nebraska-Xavier game will likely face top-seeded Maryland on Tuesday. The Terrapins won the 2006 national championship and this year wound up with the last of the four No. 1 seeds, getting the nod over Stanford.
Nebraska senior Danielle Page knows Husker fans would have preferred they wind up in Des Moines. But for her, a trip to Maryland is still pretty sweet. Page’s father and stepmom live about an hour from College Park. She has other family members in the area, too.
“I know he’s ecstatic,” Page said of her father. “I talked to him last night and he was really hoping for Norfolk (Va.) or College Park.”
Nebraska heads to its second straight NCAA Tournament appearance sporting a 20-11 record and looking for the school’s first win in the event since beating New Mexico in an opening-round game in 1998. Since then, the Huskers have dropped four straight.
They’ll enter this year’s tourney having been upset by Kansas in the opening round of the Big 12 Tournament.
“We struggled a little bit there at the end, so the eight seed wasn’t a huge surprise,” Page said. “I’m excited to play the eight-nine game, and hopefully if we get a win there, to get an opportunity to play a former national champion. That would be awesome.”
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.
Most Commented news