Preview: WNIT Championship Game

NORMAN, Okla. -- On Wednesday, the No. 22 Oklahoma women's basketball team snapped the second longest home winning streak in New Mexico history. On Sunday the Sooners will enter another famously hostile arena and attempt to become just the second team in the last 63 games to leave Gampel Pavilion with a victory over Connecticut.

The Sooners and seventh-ranked Huskies with meet in the Preseason WNIT Championship Game on Sunday at 2 p.m. EST. The game will be broadcast live by Connecticut Public Television. Fans outside of Connecticut can find the game on Hoop Streams by going to cptv.org and purchasing a pay-per-view subscription for the game. OU has reached the title game with wins over UW Milwaukee, SMU and New Mexico, while UConn knocked off Marist, Indiana State and Boston College.

Game Notes PDF | Basketball Gameday Central

Oklahoma has come out on the losing end in each of the five meetings between the schools. UConn ended the Sooners' national championship hopes in the 2002 National Championship game with a 82-70 defeat. The squads have met once since the 2002 Final Four with the Huskies triumphing 73-60 loss in the 2002 Hawaiian Airlines Wahine Classic. Three current Sooners - Chelsi Welch, Laura Andrews and Beky Preston - played in that game. Welch was the best among those players with eight points and seven rebounds. Current UConn senior Ann Strother had 16 points and three rebounds in the contest.

This season UConn has three players scoring in double figures. Strother leads the trio at 16.7 point per game and is followed by sophomore guard Mel Thomas (13.3 PPG) and sophomore forward Charde Houston (11 PPG). OU will counter with Courtney Paris, Leah Rush and Welch. Paris has begun her collegiate career by averaging 23 PPG and 16 RPG, while Rush is collecting 11 PPG and 5.3 RPG and Welch is averaging 7.7 PPG and 3.3 RPG.

Setting The Scene
Date: Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005
Location: Storrs, Conn.
Tipoff: 2 p.m. EST
Venue: Gampel Pavilion (10,167)
TV: Connecticut Public Television (CPTV),
Cox Sports (Channel 7 in Norman/OKC, Channel 3 in Tulsa)
Webcast: CPTV.org
Radio: KOKC (1520 AM), Yahoo! Radio
Radio Talent: Bill Pink (Play-by-Play) & Tara Degiusti
Tickets: (860) 486-2724

Player to Watch
OU head coach Sherri Coale called it the best game of Britney Brown's career. Her seven clutch points and seven assists against New Mexico were huge for the Sooners who recorded an 11-point victory at The Pit on Wednesday. Brown will have to produce a similar effort for the Sooners to be successful in raucous Gampel Pavilion. Brown will square off against freshman Renee Montgomery, who had 10 points and three steals against Boston College on Thursday night.

New Mexico Leftovers
Oklahoma went to The Pit and snapped the second longest home winning streak, 16, in New Mexico history with a 74-63 victory. The Sooners were just the second UNM opponent in the last 50 games to defeat the Lobos when they scored 59 points or more.

OU advanced to the Championship Game of the Preseason WNIT thanks in large part to the 26 point and 18 rebound effort of freshman Courtney Paris. It marked the third consecutive double-double to start her career.

The game hinged late in the second half when Paris and Leah Rush (14 points, 4 rebounds) both went to the bench with four fouls. Rush went to the bench at the 11:59 mark with OU leading 58-45. Paris got her fourth foul at 9:04 with the Sooners leading 62-47. OU stemmed the tide without their two leading scorers and were ahead by eleven (68-57), which was the final difference when the duo returned with 5:01 to play.

Notes:
* Courtney Paris became the first OU freshman to record a double-double in the first three games of her career. She is also the first freshman to reach double digits in rebounds in the first three games and the fourth Sooner to score 10 or more points in that span.

* Britney Brown, who played the entire second half and logged 32 minutes of action, tied a career best with seven assists.

* Erin Higgins scored a season-high 12 points on four 3-pointers. It marked the 16th time in her career that Higgins has hit four or more 3-pointers.

* Higgins also extended her consecutive starts streak to 52.
An Immediate Impact
Coming into the season much was made of the potential impact of twin freshmen post players Ashley and Courtney Paris. Just two games into their careers, they are fulfilling the hype.

Courtney is averaging 23 points and 16 rebounds on the young season and has recorded three consecutive double-doubles.

Ashley is averaging seven points and seven rebounds as the Sooners sixth man.

Fighting the Good Fight
The battle for the starting point guard duties began when Dionnah Jackson hung up her jersey at the end of last season. Britney Brown has started the first three games, but fellow junior Kendra Moore has played more minutes (67 to 54). Through the early going the battle is a draw and head coach Sherri Coale is happy about that.

So far Moore is the fourth leading scorer (6.7 PPG) and has just three turnovers. Brown has committed only seven turnovers and is leading the team with 4.3 APG.

The duo has combined to average 13 PPG, 6.4 RPG and six APG. Jackson averaged 14.6 PPG, 8.5 RPG and 5.7 APG last season as a honorable mention All-American. Coale hopes the duo can combine to fill those numbers and so far the duo is nearing her expectations.

Record Watch
Below are the records that freshman Courtney Paris has set in three games:

*Set an OU freshman debut record with 24 points in the opener against Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
* Set a Preseason WNIT single game record with 20 rebounds in second round game against SMU. Also set the tournament rebound record with 48 total boards in three games.
* Set an OU record by becoming the first player to record a double-double in the first three games of her career.
* Tied an OU record by becoming the fourth player to score 10 or more points in the first three games of their career.
* Set an OU record by recording double figure rebounds in the first three games of her career. No other player had collected 10 or more rebounds in back-to-back games at the beginning of their career.

Don't Forget About Me
2005 Preseason All-Big 12 selection Leah Rush has become somewhat of a forgotten commodity for the Sooners with the emergence of the Courtney Paris. While Rush is no longer the go-to scorer, the captain is still a vital cog in the OU offense.

Her impact was no more apparent than in the second half against New Mexico. Rush scored 11 of the Sooners first 23 second half points and helped OU extend its lead from 1 to 15. She also had more assists than turnovers (3-to-2) for the second time this season.

Rare Misses
Leah Rush went 3-8 from the free throw line at New Mexico on Wednesday night. It was just the ninth time in her career that she has missed two free throws in the same game and the first time since Feb. 16, 2005, at Colorado that she had missed consecutive attempts. Rush is a career .819 (176-215) shooter from the charity stripe, which ranks as the second best percentage in OU history.

Experimental Rules
The NCAA Rules Committee is enforcing two experimental rules during all Division I women's basketball exhibition games and selected tournaments, including the Preseason WNIT.

The 3-point line has been moved back nine inches (20 feet, 6 inches from rim) and is marked by a three-inch line. Players can shoot a legal 3-pointer from beyond or on top of that line, but the shot will be worth two points if any portion of the foot crosses the inside of the line.

The second experimental rule is the 10-second backcourt rule that is utilized in men's college game. Teams have 10 seconds to get the ball across half court after a made basket or change in possession.

Record Turnout
A home-opener record crowd of 5,711 watched the Sooners defeated UW Milwaukee on Friday, Nov. 11. The previous record was 4,360 from the 2001 opener against Sam Houston State.

The crowd was also the third largest turnout for a pre-January game. The record for a pre-January Sooner game was set in 2001 when 12, 080 sold out Lloyd Noble for a game with Tennessee. The second best crowd was 1999 game against UConn when 10,713 were in attendance.

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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