by Rob Clough
The early word in women's hoops is "upset." #8 Louisiana Tech lost to
Michigan, an unranked but up-and-coming program. #18 (and falling) Old
Dominion has lost twice in the last week, although losing star center
Lucienne Berthieu to an ACL injury obviously hurts. And our friends from
Chapel Hill are feeling the sting of losing Teasley, falling to unranked
Buffalo on the road.
Buffalo, it must be noted, had never before beaten a top 25 team. UNC
got in some foul trouble, but their 7-18 gackfest from the foul line
really cost them.
Things are even wackier on the west coast, where PAC-10 favorite
Stanford lost to St Mary's of the WCC. Worse yet, every other PAC-10
team lost that night, 4 in all.
Turning back to the ACC, Maryland and NC State both won easy openers,
but Clemson fell to #22 Illinois on the road by 18 points. The idea of a
Clemson team giving up that many points is somewhat odd. State's been
having some serious injury blues of late. In addition to waiting for
point guard Terah James to return from an injury, the Pack also learned
that star forward Kaayla Chones will be out 4-8 weeks and sharpshooter
Amy Simpson 4-6. Frosh Adeola Olanrewaju had a big game on the boards in
her debut, and will be counted on for a lot of production. Wake Forest
suffered a blow on its role to respectability, losing guard Janae
Whiteside, one of Wake's better offensive players, to an ACL tear.
She'll be out for the entire year.
Lastly, UConn is playing so well, that even Geno Auriemma is having
trouble finding things to yell about. They simply tore Georgia apart
with aggressive defense and precise offense. Tennessee is also playing
rather well, though they haven't matched up with a good team yet. Their
two meetings with UConn have the potential to be classics.