The UW women’s basketball team, looking to keep its NCAA tournament hopes alive, will head to Indianapolis this weekend to compete in the Big Ten Tournament March 6-10.
The Badgers will receive the No. 7 seed, as they finished the season 7-20 overall and 5-11 in the conference.
Wisconsin’s disappointing record, the program’s worst since Jane Albright attained the head-coaching job in 1994, will prevent the Badgers from receiving an at-large bid to the “Big Dance” in March. A flawless record in this weekend’s conference tournament, however, would earn the struggling Badgers an invite.
If history has shown us something, it’s that anything can happen during college basketball’s last month of play.
“[Who’s going to win the tournament] is all up in the air I think, because some teams are coming on strong at the end and some teams aren’t playing as well as they were at the beginning,” UW senior Kristi Seeger said. “Minnesota, Iowa, Penn State and Ohio State … they’re all great teams, you know, but anything can happen.”
Every year, upsets are not only possible, but expected. However, if the Badgers plan on being one of the season’s Cinderella teams, they have their work cut out for them.
The Big Ten boasts one of the most solid top-to-bottom basketball conferences in the country and currently has three teams ranked 15th or better in the nation.
The three clubs, in order of likelihood, predicted to have the best chance of cutting down the nets in Indiana this weekend will be Penn State, Purdue and Minnesota.
Penn State (23-7, 13-3): The Lions have won or shared the Big Ten regular-season title four times since joining the conference in 1992-93, and they will be the No. 1 seed at the Big Ten Tournament this weekend.
Led by perennial All-American Kelly Mazzante, Penn State finished the regular season on a tear, winning eight of their final 10 games.
Mazzante, who registered double figures in all but one of the Lions’ 30 games this year, is the nation’s third leading scorer and tops the Big Ten with her 25 points-per-game scoring average.
After notching 35 points, seven assists and five steals in Penn State’s matchup with the Badgers Sunday, Mazzante was named Big Ten Player of the Week for the fifth time this season, which matches the Big Ten’s single season record set by Minnesota’s Lindsay Whalen in 2001-02.
Joining Mazzante in the PSU backcourt is Penn State’s second leading scorer, Tanisha Wright (15.9 ppg). Between the two prolific scoring guards, the Lions possess the best perimeter-scoring tandem in the conference and possibly the nation.
Purdue (23-5, 12-4): The Boilermakers and their star forward, Shereka Wright, finished the regular season as the No. 12 team in the country and didn’t lose a single game on their home floor in 2002-03.
Wright, like Penn State’s Mazzante, is in the running for this year’s Big Ten Player of the Year honor.
The 5-foot-10 forward has led the Boilermakers in scoring 16 times and rebounding eight times this season and has led in both categories on six different occasions. With her quick first step and nose for the ball, Wright has emerged as one of the nation’s elite all-around players.
Much of Wright’s success this year, however, can be attributed to Purdue’s sure-handed point guard, Erika Valek.
Because of Valek’s presence on the perimeter, opposing defenses haven’t been able to sag in and clog up the middle to slow down Wright.
Valek, who stands at just 5-foot-6, has connected on 37.2 percent of her treys this season (29-78), and currently ranks fourth on the all-time three-point field goal percentage chart (.378).
The Boilermakers are 13-1 this season when Valek scores at least 15 points, and she will play a critical role in Purdue’s level of success this weekend.
Minnesota (23-4, 12-4): Like Penn State and Purdue, the Gophers rely on a standout player to get things rolling offensively.
Minnesota’s Lindsay Whalen is currently the nation’s twelfth leading scorer (21.3 ppg) and ranks seventeenth in assists (6.3 apg).
As Whalen goes, the Gophers go. In Minnesota’s four defeats this season, the Hutchinson, Minn., native has averaged just 11.7 points-per-game, nearly 10 points below her regular scoring average.
Over the course of the Gophers’ current seven-game winning streak, which included a dismantling of the Big Ten champion Penn State Nittany Lions, Whalen has scored 21 or more points on three separate occasions.
As of now, Minnesota is the hottest team in the conference and they will be carrying a lot of confidence into Indianapolis this weekend.
The Sleepers: Although their records may indicate otherwise, Illinois (18-11, 9-7) and Iowa (15-15, 6-10) both have a legitimate shot of winning this weekend’s conference tournament. The Illini and Hawkeyes, seeded as the tournament’s No. 6 and No. 7 teams, respectively, have come on strong in recent weeks and have proven their ability to upend the Big Ten’s elite teams. Illinois split their season series with Minnesota, while Iowa was able to top Kelly Mazzante and the Lady Lions less than a month ago. Neither team really has a marquee player that they can go to offensively, but both clubs play sound defense and take care of the basketball, making them tough teams to beat if they can catch fire on the offensive end.
Unless the Badgers can pull off a championship in Indianapolis this weekend, UW head coach Jane Albright will be returning to Madison for the last time as a Badger. Albright, the school’s winningest coach in women’s basketball history, announced her resignation, effective at season’s end, last Tuesday.
