Completed Event: Women's Basketball at #23 Alabama on February 15, 2026 , Win , 79, to, 71
Final
Women's Basketball
79
at #23 Alabama
71
University of Oklahoma Athletics
Sooners Prepare for Prairie View
March 21, 2009 | Women's Basketball
March 21, 2009
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IOWA CITY, Iowa -- The University of Oklahoma women's basketball team acclimated itself to Carver-Hawkeye Arena Saturday afternoon in preparation for its NCAA Championship first round game.
No. 1 seed Oklahoma meets 16th-seed Prairie View Sunday at 6:21 p.m. on the University of Iowa's campus, where the namedropping of Bob Stoops comes second only to Norman, Okla.
The Sooners entertained questions from the media in a press conference shortly before taking their first steps on the court for an hour-long practice.
“(Prairie View) is a very, very good 16 seed,” Coale said of first-round opponent Prairie View. “I think Coop (head coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke) has done a great job with them in terms of getting them to play hard for her.
“They buy into the way they need to play to be successful, and they do a lot of full-court stuff. They do a lot of trapping at the full court and at the half-court, they use their athleticism, they spread the floor and duck their heads and drive it at the rim, and are hard to contain. They do a lot of really good things and I expect that they'll try to continue to do that.”
OU's sophomore point guard Danielle Robinson agreed in her assessment of the Lady Panthers.
“They do pressure,” Robinson said. “They full-court press in man and in a 1-2-2 sort of thing. They are athletic, though, and I think that's what makes them so good. They buy into what their system is, they know how to run their defense and their athleticism also helps.”
The Sooners enter the NCAA Championship following a semifinal round loss in the Big 12 Championship, ust their fourth of the season. Senior Ashley Paris said she hopes the team has learned from defeat.
“Well, obviously losing is tough and even though it might help us now,” Paris said. “I think all of us would have liked to play in the Big 12 Championship. For the most part, if we can learn from it, then it was worthwhile and a lot of the teams will pressure us similar to how Texas A&M did.
“If we can learn from it, it was worth it.”
Priaire View head coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke, a former Olympian and two-time WNBA MVP, said her team was excited about the opportunity and challenge of playing the Oklahoma Sooners and their All-American center Courtney Paris.
“There are two goals for her,” Cooper-Dyke said, “first limit her touches then second, we cannot allow Courtney to get the position she wants, when she wants it, where she wants it.
“It's been tough for every team that has faced Oklahoma, so we will be no different. You have to limit her touches. Then you have to box her out. You can't let her get those easy put backs and let her get on her double-double streak that she's been on.”
Despite having to face Paris, Cooper-Dyke had nothing but admiration for the record-setting senior.
“What Courtney Paris has done for the NCAA has just been tremendous,” Cooper-Dyke said. “ She's really been a great ambassador for women's basketball all over the world. I think every player respects what Courtney Paris has done because they know how difficult it is to achieve those goals. To be 30 rebounds shy of having 2500 points and 2000 rebounds, I just think that is a tremendous feat and she's done a tremendous job all throughout her career.
“It is difficult to play in the Big 12. For any player to do what she's done is an accomplishment. She's just done a tremendous job and I look forward to her getting out of the NCAA and into the WNBA so we don't have to play against her again.”
OU junior forward Amanda Thompson sat out Saturday's practice and head coach Sherri Coale said her status for Sunday would be a “game-time decision.”
Thompson is nursing a left foot injury that is apparently the recurrence of an old injury that recurred during the Big 12 Championship.
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