Spring Break
Big East's best set to face off
Moore, McCoughtry highlight Big Monday showdown
Brittany Perotti
Issue date: 1/26/09 Section: Sports
|
It is only Jeff Walz's second season as head coach of Louisville, a program that is now No. 7 in the nation.
Tonight, these two coaches, one with years of experience and the other at the start of his career, will meet again. The No. 1 Huskies face the Cardinals in a 7:30 tipoff at Gampel Pavilion.
It could be a preview of the Big East tournament championship game. The last time these two teams faced each other was March 11 in Hartford, with the conference tournament title on the line.
That day, UConn won its 14th Big East tournament title with a 65-59 victory. The win for the Huskies was not easy. The then-No. 23 Cardinals battled back from a 34-19 first-half deficit to have fans on the edge of their seats.
It took an all-around effort from both starters and bench players to ensure the win. Renee Montgomery scored 20 points, including 11 free throws, and Charde Houston recorded a double-double.
This year marks a different story.
The Huskies are one of two undefeated teams left in the nation, with a 19-0 record (5-0 Big East) coming into tonight's game. They return home after two road games - the highly-anticipated 88-58 blowout of No. 2 North Carolina and a 65-34 win at Cincinnati which included an 18-0 run for the Huskies over nine and a half minutes in the first half.
Prior to the game against Cincinnati, Maya Moore was averaging 19.9 points a game. Against the Bearcats, the national player of the year contender had 14 points of the Huskies' first 20 points.
Moore said Thursday that the game against the Cardinals is more meaningful than the game last week at North Carolina due to the implications it will have at the end of the season - namely, the Big East regular season title.
"It's a tough conference and I think going undefeated is going to be really, really hard to do," Auriemma said Thursday. "And whoever wins that game Monday night still has a lot of challenges left and a lot of tough games to play."
Be the first to comment on this story