Doty to miss 2010-2011 season with torn ACL

The word out of Storrs, CT today isn’t good — star guard Caroline Doty has been lost for the season with a torn ACL.

This is at least Doty’s third torn ACL in four years, not a very promising thought.  She will, however, have two seasons of eligibility remaining.

The Huskies were already going to slip somewhat — you don’t replace players like Tina Charles and Kalana Greene easily — but I thought the Huskies would still be very good.  After all, Kelly Faris seems ready to step in for Greene, meaning the only question would be in the middle.  Now, with Doty out for the season, the task becomes greater, and the Huskies will need at least a couple, maybe three, of the newcomers to come up big.  It’s likely that Bria Hartley will now need to play major minutes.

Don’t get me wrong — the Huskies will still be good — but unless the freshman really come up big, I think this team is going to struggle.  Maya Moore and Tiffany Hayes, the only two remaining starters, will be very good, and I will buy the “Geno will find a way” line to some extent.  But while the incoming class is very good, they’re not Bird-Cash-Jones-Walter-Williams good, and even that group took some time to get going.

UConn Women: Bad for the Sport?

I keep reading debates about whether the UConn Huskies, because of their current winning streak, are good for Women’s College Basketball.  It’s nice to see the attention paid to the sport, but I don’t understand the debate, if for no other reason than it’s premature.

Yes, the Huskies are currently riding a 77 game winning streak.  But let’s keep it in perspective: during the streak, they have to date won exactly 1 National Championship.  Any talk about a UConn dynasty can only commence if they defeat Stanford tonight for the National Championship, which would give them two undefeated championship seasons in a row.

And why is everyone conceding the championship to the Huskies?  Stanford is a team that lost to UConn in the Final Four last season, and then lost only guard Jillian Harmon and returned J.J. Hones from injury.  UConn lost Renee Montgomery and returned Caroline Doty from injury.  Yes, UConn defeated them earlier in the season.  But Stanford led at the half and only lost by 12 points — and that game was played at Connecticut.

Yes, I believe that UConn will win tonight — but Stanford is an excellent team, and it will be a battle.

The last team to defeat the Huskies? That would be Stanford, two seasons ago in the National Semifinal game.

The women’s game has not achieved the same level of parity as the men’s game, where Syracuse rose this year from unranked to a #1 ranking; where preseason #1 Kansas was defeated by mid-major Northern Iowa; where mid-major Butler University scrapped their way to the National Championship game.  Sure, Nebraska was probably a bit of surprise this season, and no one had Baylor in the Final Four — but only because the Bears were expected to need another year of experience.  In the women’s game, the difference between the haves and the have nots is greater than in the men’s game.

It’s not as if Connecticut stands head and shoulders above all of college basketball.  If there’s even a debate, it might be over which program is better: UConn, with 6 National Championships, or Tennessee, with 8.  I’m not even sure there’s a debate yet: Tennessee has won more titles, and they went back-to-back as recently as 2007 and 2008, so it’s not as if they won all of their titles 30 years and are no longer relevant.  And Stanford is a perennial contender, and has been for 20 years. Rutgers, Notre Dame, Duke, North Carolina and Baylor have all been solid.

It’s not even as if Connecticut has such a reputation that they recruit all of the top talent, either.  I would debate whether Geno Auriemma recruits as well as John Calipari or Roy Williams or Mike Krzyzewski on the men’s side.  Yes, there’s Maya Moore, who was the #1 recruit when she came on board, as was Tina Charles; UConn also landed #1 player Elena Della Donne, who never played for the Huskies.  Overall, UConn has 8 Top 100 players on the current roster — for comparison, Stanford has 12, and Baylor has 7, and I suspect that Tennessee is right up there as well.

Here are UConn’ current Top 100 recruits:

Tina Charles: #1

Maya Moore: #1

Caroline Doty: #10

Tiffany Hayes: #11

Lorin Dixon: #19

Heather Buck: #31

Kelly Faris: #39

Kaili McLaren: #46

I must admit that I wasn’t paying attention to college basketball back then, but did people debate whether UCLA was good for college basketball when they won 88 games in a row, 7 consecutive National Championships, and 10 out of 12?  It’s too bad that the UCLA run ruined the game!

Can we at least table the debate until after tonight’s championship game?

UConn Rolls Over Iowa State, 74-66; Moves On To Elite Eight

The juggernaut that is the Connecticut Huskies Women continued its winning ways today.  The Huskies rolled over #4 seed Iowa State in an NCAA Regional Semifinal, winning by a final score of 74-36.

For all intents and purposes this game was over in the first 10 minutes of the first half, as Connecticut jumped out to a 25-10 lead.  Maya Moore had 17 of those 25 Connecticut points, including 4 straight 3-pointers, en route to a game high 25.  Three minutes later, the lead was 29-10.  Connecticut finished the first half leading 42-14.

Tina Charles and Kelly Faris were the other Huskies in double figures, each scoring 16 points.  Faris was on fire from the field, hitting on all 4 3-pointers and 6-8 overall.  It was a good night for Moore and Faris to shoot the lights out, as Tiffany Hayes was 1-8 from the field and Caroline Doty was 1-5, all on 3-pointers.  To put it in perspective, Moore and Faris combined for 9-11 from beyond the arc; the rest of the team was 2-15.

Overall, the Huskies shot only 26-66 (39.4%) from the field, but they were 11-26 from beyond the arc, and 11-13 from the charity stripe.  They also dominated the boards, winning that battle 47-32, and had only 9 turnovers.  They held the Cyclones to 28.3 shooting, 24% from beyond the arc.

Connecticut next takes on #3 seed Florida State, who won a close game against #11 seed Mississippi today, by a final score of 74-71.  This game will be a rematch of the December game at Florida State, won by UConn by a final score of 78-59.  The winner, of course, moves on to the Final Four in San Antonio next week.

One quick complaint: CBSSports has shockingly bad coverage of Women’s Basketball, even during the NCAA Tournament.  Tonight’s scoreboard lists #1 Oklahoma versus #7 Notre Dame.  Now Oklahoma is actually a #3 seed, and Notre Dame is a #2 seed, perhaps ranked #7 in the country — but I know Oklahoma is not ranked #1 overall.  Also, if you check out the conference standings, the conference records seem to not be up to date — although maybe that’s been fixed since the last time I checked.  At one point recently, UConn’s conference record was shown as 3-0.  I guess it begs the question: is anyone (besides me!) looking at those pages, because you would think CBSSports would get complaints and would fix the pages.

One other observation: The road to the Final Four for both the Duke men and women will go through Baylor.  The men defeated the #2 seed Baylor this evening to advance to the Final Four; the women take on the #3 seed Baylor tomorrow and would advance to the Final Four with a win.  Duke is the only University remaining this year with a chance to match UConn’s feat of Mens’ and Women’s Championship in the same season.