Monday, March 23, 2009

Sweet! Wirth and Risper lead the Lady Dores tonight against Kansas State in the Sweet 16


The Lady Dores face Kansas State tonight in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Tipoff's at 8:45 pm.

Not even gonna say whether this one's televised. Saturday's game with Western Carolina was supposedly on ESPN2 but by the time I got there the teams on the screen were Rhode Island Tech and Mother Mary's Convent or some teams I've never heard of before (which I must confess would be most of the women's teams). The game probably started out being televised but then the Dores jumped on WC pretty quick on the way to a 73-44 victory and so the Deuce switched to another game. And I'm sorry, but the Lady Dores are the only women's team that I'm gonna miss a second of the men's tournament for.

Speaking of the men's tournament, the SEC didn't wow America like Kevin Stallings had predicted (1-3, gone in two rounds) but he's a smart man who has to maintain the collegiality among his fellow coaches in the conference and saying that Miss State, Tennessee and LSU were all going to make a run certainly didn't hurt.

Don't you hate when people talk about how they're bracket's doing? Well, here goes: We predicted lower seed Purdue to make the Sweet 16 (though we missed on USC and Utah State) and have 13 out of 16 teams — which is how many we'd have if we'd just gone with the top seeds, though we beat that method in the first round. Our only Elite Eight team that's gone is Wake Forest. Pitt is our champion, and they were lucky to get past East Tennessee State (where have you gone Mister Jennings?) and Oklahoma State. We'll see.

But back to the ladies. Expect Christina Wirth and Jennifer Risper (pictured above) to have big games tonight against No. 5 Kansas State. The Dores beat the Wildcats in 2005 when they were No. 5 and the Cats were No. 4. KSU's Shalee Lehning is the nation's second-leading assist woman with 7.8. Risper will be guarding her and you've got to feel good about that.

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