Scarlet Knights Newzer

Put away the voodoo dolls

I walked out of the UConn locker room, took three steps toward the Greensboro Coliseum floor and Bob Mulcahy was at my shoulder. "How are those two?" the Rutgers AD asked. And in all fairness, no, he was not wearing a hopeful expression.

"Those two," of course, are UConn center Tina Charles and UConn's money guard, Renee Montgomery. The former went down in front of her own basket, late in the second half, writhing, clutching her shoulder. The latter went down a few minutes later, on the other end, and managed to pull herself up just before UConn's high-heeled, tight skirt-wearing trainer got to her. Charles, coach Geno Auriemma said, "hurt" her shoulder, Montgomery "twisted" her knee and for each, he said, "all the signs point to she'll be able to play."

I told Bob all that. He said back to me, "Do you believe him?" I said to him he might be spending too much time around football coaches. I've been wracking my brain since and honestly, I can't think of a single women's basketball coach masking,faking or engaging in any sort of subterfuge in regards to an injury.

My guess is you'll see both Tuesday night, at 9 p.m., when this Elite Eight rubber match tips off. Which, incidentally, is three weeks to the day the rubber match was supposed to be...

From the Do You Believe Files

Item #1: For the second weekend in a row, C. Vivian Stringer - the toughest scheduler this side of Pat Summitt - said her team's going to take it easy next year. "To be honest," she said of Rutgers' No. 2 strength-of-schedule rank, "I don't know if we're going to do that next year. We've been getting beat up and we have a lot of competition from within our conference."

Last week, Essence Carson said she'd believe it when she sees it. This week, I say the same.

Item #2: C. Vivian Stringer forged her career on zones, she gained fame as a clinician on zones and she still calls zone defenses her favorite. And yet, it's GW coach Joe McKeown who's got the greater zone notoriety. Of course, when one names his best match-up zone "The Blizzard Zone" (back at New Mexico, he promised his players Dairy Queens if they got his defense down), he's bound to get some listens.

"It's a little cold and rainy out there," McKeown said of Saturday's weather. "Maybe we'll get some snow in here tomorrow."

Item #3: Essence Carson IS susceptible to moments of vanity. If you recall, Kia Vaughn split open E's lip, as both battled for a rebound, in the Iowa State game. E's lip blew up, she needed two stitches and today, she spent a good two minutes examining the thing in the mirror as I waited for her. And when I told her she looked her usual gorgeous self, she moaned, "There's still a black spot right in the middle."

Big East bonding

We're here in Greensboro and even if Rutgers isn't (yet) facing UConn, I couldn't not get to the Coliseum that extra hour early for the Huskies' meet-the-media session. I mean, Geno Auriemma's always ripe for an eyebrow-raiser.

Turns out, I was the one with the suspect verbiage. I walked into the UConn locker room, glanced at the TV everyone was huddled in front of and let loose with a "holy (let's pretend I said) cow!" Then I did it again. Then I realized where I was, then I managed to look sheepish and then I apologized. To which one of the Huskies, pointing at her conference-mate Louisville's 18-point lead over top-seeded North Carolina, generously said, "Don't worry. That sort of forces you to say that."

On the day I wrote about UConn and Rutgers having to share this region perhaps being a slight to the Big East, and perhaps a lack of recognition for the strength of the Big East (Big East Dissed), chatter about the Big East's superiority was everywhere. Louisville ultimately lost and Pitt's tip with Stanford is still hours away, but players and coaches alike were trumpeting the five teams the league got into the Sweet Sixteen.

And Geno, of course, came through for me. "I'm not surprised one bit that we're the best conference in the country," he said. "And we're going to be the best (in the future)."

Maybe next year the selection committee will respect that.

On to Greensboro

I've booked my flight, I've found out that rental cars are desperately expensive and with my wake-up call four hours away - and my suitcase still unpacked - here I am blogging. This one was set to be bad for deadline, but then Oklahoma State and Florida State went into overtime - which the former won, on a literally last second free throw - and that pushed things back even further. And then Iowa State refused to roll, making the ending far from foregone and the time to squeeze in details nil. And so, bits about this solid, poised 69-58 Rutgers win I couldn't squeeze into my gamer:

For all the grumbling C. Viv did this year, she seems awfully calm right now. She called Mat over late in the first half, offered a few instructions and held both of Mat's hands while she did it. The only person I saw her give her signature scary look to was Essence (who obviously can take it) and when Rashidat was at the line in the first, and Katie and Kia were on the bench, she looked down, saw Kia and Katie mimicking their shooting motions and smiled. When does C. Viv smile DURING a game?

The crowd was announced at 8,029, but it seemed larger. The fans were loud, they spent most of the night on their feet and even though they didn't get the rules of a pivot foot, they were awfully nice. Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly promised yesterday that if his fans booed, it'd be directed at the refs, not Rutgers. And he was right. At halftime, when the refs walked back onto the court, the boos rained down hard.

Essence played in her Rutgers-record 131st game today and when I told her that afterwards she said, "Really? It feels like that many." Kia played in her 100th straight and when I told her that, she said, "Really? I love it." And then, remembering the number I'd read to E, she said, "But I want to play more than her."

Well, maybe both will add four to their totals this year.

Okay, time to turn in. I promise to have more tomorrow!

Kia's Payback?

The good news is Essence's lip, while maybe not blistex-commercial-ready, is fine. The better news - stay with me on this one - is that Kia was still gleeful over splitting it.

"I'm just getting her back for what she did during USA Basketball," Kia said, as E, the cut plainly obvious and her lip clearly swollen, just stared at her.

Yesterday, the pair had gone up for a rebound against Robert Morris, Kia's elbow caught E's face on the way down and E needed two stitches and a numbing. Well, apparently, the same thing happened when the two played on the USA U21 World Basketball Championship team this summer. Only it was E's elbow and Kia's eye that time.

"She gave me a black eye," Kia said loudly. Seeing E still not blinking, she swallowed her bottom lip with her mouth and said, "you can do this. I couldn't hide a black eye!"

Poor Brittany Ray, squat between the two of them, kept shrinking further into her hoodie, I did my best to stay quiet and finally E rolled her eyes. And Kia laughed. And it really was the sweetest sound.

Something's been up with Kia this year. Maybe it's just that she never had her sophomore slump. She took an enormous leap last year, people have obviously keyed on her this year in a way they never had and like assistant coach Marianne Stanley said today, "what she's gone through is very common." Still, Kia's such a competitor, none of that appeased her. And, as a result, she's been unusually cranky for a lot of the year. The crazy red wig she'd wear to press conferences didn't come out. The jokey jabs at her teammates and Coach Stringer, they stayed away too. She didn't smile as much around the media, and worse, she didn't pull out the rowdy, nutty, totally inspiring antics on the court that fueled her teammates.

Now she absolutely is. When conversation turned to Iowa's love for Coach Stringer, she mock instructed the Iowa press to tell its fellow citizens: "I know they still want her back, but they can't have her." She graciously said Iowans have treated she and her teammates well because of Stringer, before cutely predicting, "That'll change tomorrow around 8:30." Kia pretended she'd broken Epiphanny Prince's hand and she hassled her teammates. And it was exactly the Kia the Scarlet Knights have come to expect.

"A pain," Essence said. And then she sighed, "Our pain."

Feeling Good

85-42 and it was a beauty. I'll give you that smaller, leaner Robert Morris was overmatched. But who the Scarlet Knights played this afternoon was totally secondary. Like Robert Morris' Sade Logan said, "I don't think it matters. If they play like this every night, they're winning the national championship."

You can re-live the game's specifics, and read about what so impressed me, in tomorrow's Record. And like I wrote in today's paper (Rutgers' Image), this was exactly the type of game Rutgers needed as it starts its run to reassert its identity as one of college basketball's basketball elites, as opposed to a culturally-referenced Jeopardy question.

But before then, there WERE a few feel-good moments that didn't squeeze onto newsprint that I can share now:

How about Marianne Stanley, who's worked tirelessly with Rashidat Junaid on completely overhauling her foul-shooting motion, watching with hands clasped, midway through the second half and Rutgers up 31, as the sophomore went to the free throw line. Rashidat sunk both, came out and got a huge high-five and rump-pat from a broad-grinning Stanley.

How about with four and a half minutes left and Rutgers up 34, Robert Morris missed a shot, Epiphanny Prince grabbed the rebound and Matee Ajavon, crouching at the scorer's table waiting to come back in, starts screaming, "Go! Go, go, go!" She'd done it earlier in the game too, even as the Knights were running all over and around the supposed-to-be-athletic Colonials and later she explained, "We have to keep moving. This isn't the time of year to be slow."

How about eight minutes into the second half and Robert Morris down 31, the Colonials' Psyche Williams puts up a jumper, misses and stays put, slapping her hands and mouthing a curse, as the Scarlet Knights scramble for the rebound all around her. "We definitely did a better job fighting for rebounds," said center Kia Vaughn, who fought so well for one, she bloodied teammate Essence Carson's lip. "We don't have a choice now."

How about the Iowa State fans filing out all through the second half, including the dad behind me, holding his little boy's hand and saying to the usher, "We have to go now or he won't want to come back Monday night. I don't want him thinking we can't win."

Alright, we'll have lots more later... Have a good night!

Tasha the Terror?

Back on Selection Monday, when C. Vivian Stringer was skipping her fury from sharing a region with UConn to - yet again - potentially facing a lower-seeded team in its home state, Tasha Pointer told her to quit with the second one.

Now a first-year assistant, Tasha told Coach Stringer to go back a decade, when she was a freshman, Rutgers was a five seed, Iowa State was a four, and the two teams had a second-round match-up at Iowa State. The game drew a then-record 9,705 fans, Iowa State took a late one-point lead and, with 9.5 seconds left, Tasha drove at the basket, drew a foul and calmly sunk two free throws for the upset.

Yesterday, Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly told the Des Moines Register he still credits that game with igniting the interest that's made his program a perennial member of the national top 10 attendance list. Today, as he watched Rutgers lock up a Monday night match-up with his team, Fennelly told me he still shudders when he sees Tasha.

"They're really good," Fennelly said of this current Rutgers squad, "but I'm really glad she's not playing. We couldn't guard her back then, we probably still couldn't guard her."

Tasha modestly laughed when I relayed that back to her, protesting, "Thank goodness I was 18 years old. I didn't know any better to be nervous."

Cute. I WILL add one thing, though. During Jolette Law's entire tenure as a Rutgers assistant, she went to practice in shorts and played on the floor, with the Knights, and generally schooled the guards. Once she left to become Illinois' head coach, and Tasha came aboard, it was Tasha's turn to take the floor. And when I asked Coach Stringer earlier this year who was the tougher match-up for her players, the one-time Harlem Globetrotter but older Law, or Pointer, the former Scarlet Knights captain who led Rutgers to its first-ever Final Four, Stringer made it clear she wouldn't dress an assistant who COULDN'T make life hell for Matee Ajavon.

"Come," Stringer said, rolling her eyes at me, "on."

Mat's Star Turn

Matee Ajavon's on the cover of this week's March Madness Tournament Preview Sports Illustrated. She's in a white uniform and headband and squat over the right shoulder of whichever cover boy your copy has (SI used six this year). She's one of only four women's players included in the annual Where's Waldo-ish montage, with Tennessee's Candace Parker, LSU's Sylvia Fowles and UConn's Maya Moore being the other.

***In a side note, while it was disappointing to see more men's coaches (5) pictured, and almost as many mascots (3), I was somewhat relieved to see that female players thankfully at least doubled the number of cheerleaders (2).***

Of course, Mat was wholly unmoved when I asked her about her inclusion. She didn't know she was on the cover, she hadn't seen the cover and she said a quiet, "yeah, that'd be cool" when I asked her if she wanted me to bring her my copy.

Now, that ESPN promo spot she does know she's in. Then again, that may be because Epiphanny Prince has been giving her a ton of grief over it.

"It's so funny," Piph said, cracking up just thinking about it. "She's holding the ball and she's calling her favorite play. You can read her lips."

Calling Judy Southard

Well, it's not only Rutgers who'd like a few private moments with Judy Southard and her NCAA Selection Committee. Robert Morris coach Sal Buscaglia - who, incidentally, has nothing on C. Viv in the long run-on sentence/sentence fragment response category - spent a looong time in today's meet-the-media session moaning about his team's 15th seed. "I'd like," he said, "to see a little more openness (from the committee)."

Buscaglia's Colonials for the second year in a row won the NEC. They won 23 games and they're on a 17-game win streak. They traveled to SEC and Big XII middlers Florida and Nebraska, respectively, and they lost to Missouri, which took out Oklahoma in the Big XII tourney, by just a point. Their backcourt tandem of Sade Logan and Chinata Nesbit scores more than all but one backcourt pair in the country and their dribble drive motion offense, which Memphis' men's team has popularized and very few women's teams run, led to six double-digit scorers in their final game. So the 15 seed Robert Morris got, Buscaglia said, "that's disappointing to us."

Then he repeated the sentence, verbatim, several times.

Noting the outrage ESPN's analysts expressed over Rutgers and UConn sharing a region, and the subsequent "explanation" from Southard, he said, "It's also very important for every kid in the tournament, the 15 and 16 seeds, it's equally important to them (to get answers)."

Mocking the "reward" to his 23-win team, he said, "You're talking about going into the tournament and playing one of the best teams in the country. They could win the national title."

Of where HE would've put RMU, he said, "I really felt like we should've been a 13 seed, or at worst, a 14."

Maybe that Sen. Singer should go find his counterpart from Moon Township in Pennsylvania...

Link Catch-up

I'm about to head over to Rutgers' first hellos to the media here in Iowa. It's sunny and bright and the Des Moines Register, just in case any Iowans might think C. Viv's an enemy, wrote a great bit that all but called the Rutgers coach one of its own. Here it is: Stringer gives Iowa love

And just in case you haven't yet clicked over to what The Record's produced these last two days, these links will catch you up:

Tourney A to Z

Tara Sullivan on Kia Vaughn

RU's Prince of Thieves