Women's Hoops Guru

By Mel Greenberg

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. _ A sum of two lumps by then-No. 1 Tennessee and No. 1 Connecticut that have blemished No. 3 North Carolina’s otherwise perfect season resulted in a reversal of fortune Saturday afternoon for the Tar Heels, who outlasted No. 4 Maryland, 97-86, in double overtime.

Unlike Monday night’s second-half meltdown at UConn, this time North Carolina (18-2, 5-0 ACC) overcame squandering a double-digit lead during the thrilling marathon contest between two elite Atlantic Coast Conference rivals ranked in the Top 5.

Games such as Saturday’s, along with Monday night’s rally by Connecticut, and several others this season have gone a long way to offset the absence of the annual UConn-Tennessee showdown, which was cancelled in June by Tennessee coach Pat Summitt.

A roaring crowd of 7,914 watched the game, a far cry from not too long when some very good Tar Heel teams performed here in total eclipse of the powerful men’s program.

Saturday’s result tightened the race among five teams for the four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Had Maryland (22-2, 6-1) won, the Terrapins would have put most of their hard regular-season work behind them.

North Carolina still has a home-and-home with Duke in the regular season, while Maryland just has one more against the Blue Devils, with a triumph in hand.

Thus, a Tar Heels loss would have made North Carolina 0-3 in head-to-head games against three of the NCAA prime contenders for the top berths in the 64-team field. Rutgers, the other team in the mix, would potentially have its win over Maryland as a trumph card when NCAA tournament committee discussions go to the wire.

If anything, Maryland may have to do a little scrambling depending on the performances of UNC and Rutgers the rest of the way.

Of course all this could still be affected by how the Atlantic Coast and Big East tournaments play out.

As it is, poll-wise Rutgers could gain some ground in Sunday night’s voting to move up as high as No. 3, the spot the Scarlet Knights held in the preseason.

In that sense, North Carolina coach Sylvia Hatchell acknowledged the urgency to Saturday’s contest in terms of her team.

“This is a tough stretch for us,” Hatchell said. “We’re at UConn, then Maryland here today. We’re at Wake Forest (Thursday), and then Duke (Feb. 4), I don’t think anybody else in the country has a stretch like this. And we’re at Tennessee, we’re at UConn, I don’t know that anybody else that has that schedule, especially on the other teams’ courts.

“So this was a big game for us,” Hatchell said. “But I think what we’ve gone through so far, helped us with this game. Maryland’s a great team. They’ve got four starters from the (2006) national championship team. They’ve got no weaknesses. So this was a big game for us. This stretch right here is big.”

A slew of WNBA scouts were in Carmichael Auditorium on press row, including Connecticut Sun general manager Chris Sienko and entire Sun coaching staff.

New York Liberty coach Patty Coyle was on hand as was Washington Mystics coach Tree Rollins and Corey Gaines, the new coach of the WNBA champions Phoenix Mercury. Minnesota’s Don Zierden and Julie Plank, his new assistant who had been with the Indiana Fever, was also here.

If anyone benefitted from the presence of the WNBA observers, it might have been UNC’s senior forward-center LaToya Pringle, who followed up on a fine individual performance against UConn by being Saturday afternoon’s heroine with a game-high 31 points and nine rebounds.

Pringle also sent the game into the first overtime with a three-point play to tie it at 71-71 with 46 seconds left in regulation and had 12 points in the second overtime.

Senior forward Erlana Larkins, expected to go high in the WNBA draft in April, had 25 points and 18 rebounds, 13 on the offensive glass while still playing with a broken left hand.

“I’m really proud of these two right here,” Hatchell nodded toward Pringle and Larkins. “They’re warriors. And I just kept telling them `Go to’em. `Go to ‘em, to to ‘em, and I kept challenging them to rebound. I thought that was a major difference because Maryland is such a great rebounding team. But we kept going to these guys and they did a really nice job for us.”

North Carolina outrebounded Maryland, 59-46, including 26-17 on the offensive glass.

Rashanda McCants also scored in double figures for the Tar Heels with 14 points, while Jessica Breeland grabbed 12 rebounds.

“I felt we had to come out and play for 20 more minutes and give it all we had because we felt we didn’t do that Monday night against Connecticut,” Pringle said.

Just as the Tar Heels rocked Connecticut in the opening minutes of Monday night’s game, North Carolina built a 10-point lead in the first eight minutes against Maryland.

But the Terrapins fought back to ties of 31-31 and 33-33 before Hatchell’s group recovered with two field goals to go into the break with a 37-33 advantage.

Maryland grabbed some momentum in the second half and bolted to a seven-point lead midway through the period.

But the Terrapins began getting in serious foul trouble with Laura Harper disqualified early in the first overtime and Jade Perry gone late in the second extra session.

Furthrmore, for all her greatness, Maryland point guard Kristi Toliver committed eight turnovers, some in crucial spots. She still finished with 20 points, hitting some clutch shots, but the normally effective three-point ace was only 2-for-11 from beyond the arc.

Maryland, overall, made only 5-of-27 three-pointers.

Crystal Langhorne had 23 points and eight rebounds, while Harper scored 12.

Marisa Coleman also had 20 points for the Terrapins, who were playing in their second straight double overtime game after beating Georgia Tech on Sunday. The program is now 10-2 in overtime triumphs under coach Brenda Frese, who stayed home under her doctors’ continuing orders because of her pregnancy.

Frese is due late next month or early March, although some media types were wondering ahead of Saturday’s game whether the Maryland coach, TV savvy that she is, might deliver during halftime back home.

North Carolina, which did not go to the line in the first half, made 25 of 38 free throw attempts the rest of the way.

Maryland shot 15-of-23 from the line.

“Someone told me a long time ago, going on the road in the ACC was going to be real tough,” said the Terrapins’ new assistant coach Daron Park, who was previously at Utah. He is in charge of Maryland on the road when Frese is absent.

“We saw it first-hand today. But what a unbelievable effort from our kids. We showed great composure getting down early and keeping our heads about us and battling back against a very, very good and very, very talented North Carolina team.

“We talked about having a chance to win down the stretch and we had that chance to win.”

Maryland had won 12 straight since fading at Rutgers last month.

The Terrapins were able to hold Larkins in check for a long while.

“We just tried to mix things up on her,” Park said. “We basically tried to be very, very active where sometimes we would be in a three-quarter, sometimes behind and tried to push her off the block a little bit, and sometimes get around to a front. Basically, just tried to get her off her toes and at the same time rotate our three bigs under her so we could try to stay fresh and out of foul trouble.

“The keys for us, was getting stops at one end, because when we got stops, then we could run,” Park said. “I love our transition game. I love the way we push the ball up the floor.

“We had to get stops in order to do that, which at the beginning of the game we weren’t very effective in doing so. To keep them from running, we had to get makes and when we made baskets, that really helped our transition defense because were able to get back and finding them a little bit.”

The national spotlight will remain here through Monday night when Tennessee visits an improving Duke squad.

-- Mel