Much orange in the news

Oregon State University: who knew the Beavers would be 5-2? Nobody. But I'd love to know why numbers have been written on the arms of the players in practice, as we can see by the photo with the story.

There's something wrong with Delaware's Elena Delle Donne, but no one is saying yet.

For heaven sakes, would someone please update the Ladycat Classic bracket??!!

Serious Tennessee news:

In the Vols' 99-55 victory over Lamar tonight, freshman sensation Meighan Simmons broke a school record with eight three-pointers. She finished with 28 points.

Pat Summitt's son Tyler is earning his keep as a men's team walk-on.

Tuesday items

Tennessee's Vicki Baugh is becoming a leader: she initiated a meeting with Coach Pat Summitt, as the coach-player laision. This initiated an interesting twitter discussion between former Vols Candace Parker and Nicky Anosike about the program and the current team.

Fanhouse names their top college players, teams and games of the week.

Sue Bird has a new website.

Acres of news

Things have shifted a bit in the AP's top 25 list.

Purdue's Drey Mingo has been released from the hospital. Thank goodness.

UConn's Stefanie Dolson responded to the verbal taunting of Geno Auriemma with a good game.

Candice Wiggins speaks about World AIDS Day, coming up Wednesday.

Penn State is 6-1 under Coquese Washington.

All that extra work is paying off for Tennessee forward Glory Johnson, who is the SEC Player of the Week.

Oregon forward Amanda Johnson is the Pac-10 Player of the Week.

Brittney Griner of Baylor and Jordan Hooper of Nebraska are the Big 12 Players of the Week.

ESPN has some tasty info after a high school tournament last week. There was the Turkey Jam in Memphis, and the subsequent player evaluation sheet. Good stuff.

Bonus: three reasons why enthusiasm will make you a better coach.

UCLA 71, Temple 61

UCLA had to work hard today to put away the Temple Owls. Outside of the Notre Dame upset almost two weeks ago, this was the Bruins' toughest test of the season so far.

Temple isn't a big wide team - they're a tall, fit and fast team with superior strength and conditioning. They played relentless defense and are probably used to running other teams into the ground.

They ran a stifling zone defense that forced UCLA to take shots at first, because they couldn't get into the paint. It took a while for the Bruins to make the adjustment and find ways to attack the zone.

Southern California's own Kristen McCarthy - who played for former hoops power house Bishop Amat - had five consecutive three-pointers in the first half for the Owls. This helped her team stay in the lead until literally the last second of the period, when Bruin guard Darxia Morris hit an improbable shot to tie the score at 35.

Temple began the second half on a run, and maintained a five-point lead until UCLA went on its own 13-0 run. But the Owls charged back, and it wasn't until a Jasmine Dixon putback with 8:35 to go that the Bruins took the lead for good. UCLA stepped up its defense, which included a full-court press, and that seemed to cool Temple down.

Coach Nikki Caldwell said after the game that her team "plays in spurts," and that she "is waiting for them to play a full 40 minutes."

McCarthy lead all scorers with 22 points, and her teammate BJ Williams had 12.

Morris and Markel Walker each had 15 points for the Bruins, and Rebekah Gardner added 14.

Check out my game action shots HERE. They turned out well today.

I saved out three "homegirl" shots for this space:



Southern Cali's own Kristen McCarthy had a big crowd on hand for her today at Pauley Pavilion. Here, she lines up for a free throw in the second half.



McCarthy, a junior forward, lead all scorers with 22 points, and she also had nine rebounds.



OK, Allison Taka fans, she was at Pauley today taking in the action (seen here talking to a friend at a timeout). I'm not sure why you search for her on my site.....I know you do because the stats tell me she's almost always one of the top 10 terms you punch in before you come here.

I never wrote about Taka much; she was a bench player, and didn't play much at all last year. So I'm a little mystified why you're always looking for Taka stuff here. But I thought I'd give you a picture since you're so dilligent. Now if her name keeps popping up, there will be a reason for it.

No upsets today.

Vanderbilt Tournament - final day

Vanderbilt in pre game warm ups. They had the band and about 50 cheerleaders at the game.



Princeton, in orange, boxing out late in the game.

Consolation Game

USC 78, Quinnipiac 59

USC won the consolation game over Quinnipiac at Vanderbilt's Thanksgiving Tournament today. Both Christina Marinacci and Briana Gilbreath had double-doubles for the Trojans. Gilbreath led in scoring with 18 points, and she added 14 rebounds. Christina Marinacci had 15 points and 18 rebounds.

The game was tied 35-35 at the half. However, USC held Quinnipiac to 24 second-half points to pull away for an easy win. USC had only nine turnovers for the game and dominated the boards. Quinnipiac had seven three-point baskets, but struggled with their inside game. USC goes on to play Xavier Thursday night in Ohio.

Championship game

Princeton 68, Vanderbilt 74



Vandy, in white, looking to set up a screen play.

Before I say anything about the game, Princeton is a good team. I read some forums where people was upset with USC's loss, but it was not to a poor or fluky team. Yes USC will need to win these games, but Princeton could gave any team ranked about 15th or lower a solid game.

Princeton and Vanderbilt both play solid half-court offenses. Princeton has a three-point shooter named Micir who hit six three's - all from behind the men's line. She finshed with 20 points. Northern California sophomore Niveen Rasheed added 15 points.

For Vanderbilt, Southern California freshman Jasmine Lister had 15 points, and played a ton of minutes.

Vanderbilt led by three points at the end of a back-and-forth first half, 29-26. Vandy did open a 10- or 11-point second half lead, but Princeton fought back to trail by three points with just over a minute left. A three-pointer by Vandy and some foul shots sealed the victory at 74-68.

Tournament MVP was Hannah Tuomi for Vanderbilt. Named to the all-tournament teams were Lister for Vanderbilt and Marinacci for USC.

Admission was free on both days of the tournament and both days had about 3500-4000 fans show up.

- IM in Nashville (soon to be back in OC)



Tournament Awards Vanderbilt had Tuomi, MVP in white uniform #15, Jasmine Lister #11 in white uniform, and Tiffany Clarke #34 also for Vandy. Christina Marinacci in black warmups for USC, and Micir for Princeton #23 in orange uniform. Not sure of Quinnipac winner.

____________________

In other tournament wrap-ups, Cal won the Colliers International Classic by beating Portland State, 82-49. Southern California's own Layshia Clarendon had 15 points, eight rebounds and seven assists in the win, and took the tournament's MVP award.

The Ducks won the Oregon Invitational with a solid victory over Sacramento State, 110-60.

Hard luck times

Two seasons worth of injuries and then mono can't keep Ohio State's Amber Stokes down: she's back.

Glory Johnson talks about Tennessee's loss to Georgetown last night.

Stack Magazine discusses Candace Parker's return to regular practices, and includes her practice shooting sequence.

Non-hard luck bonus: Nationally-ranked Brea Olinda hosts their annual Ladycat Classic this week. The brackets are solid, and action begins tomorrow.

Cal State Northridge falls to Chattanooga, but they're coming along

The Cal State Northridge Matadors aren't where they want to be yet, but they're getting there.

I stopped by last night to check in on them after last seeing the team on their first day of practice back in late August. What a difference. Though they lost to Chattanooga they fought hard, and I saw some brilliant performances out there.

Coach Jason Flowers and his all-star coaching staff of Christine Collins-Kiernan, Bryan Camacho and Lindsey Foster have a job akin to Obama's: cleaning up a mess that took years to make. The CSUN program has been in the basement of the Big West Conference for a long time, but I believe those days are numbered.

Check out my story and accompanying photo gallery.

CSUN faces off with LMU Tuesday night.

Geno Auriemma gets personal

UConn Coach Geno Auriemma took shots at one of his players, and at Tennessee Coach Pat Summitt, in a post-game press conference tonight.

Here's the Stefanie Dolson insult:

“I just thought Samarie’s been working at a real high level in practice,’’ he said. “I thought defensively she’d be a little better able to help us because most of their big guys are perimeter guys or want to play on the perimeter. So I thought Samarie would be better defensively to do that. And Stefanie played (15) minutes against Howard. So we don’t want to wear her out. Those two rebounds took a lot out of her. So we want to save her for the stretch run here. She came to practice today and she was really beaten up, and I didn’t realize the toll it was taking so I wanted to give her a rest.’’

Here's the Summitt insult:

Auriemma certainly saved his best jab for last. This one was aimed directly at Summitt. Earlier this season, she again accused Auriemma of cheating in recruiting.
And after the Lady Vols defeated Louisville 63-50 in the season opener on the road Nov. 12 Summitt said she would not mind again playing Louisville in the future because Cardinals coach Jeff Walz does things the right way.
Fast-forwarding to tonight at Gampel Pavilion, LSU coach Van Chancellor said he would like to again open a series with UConn. Auriemma was asked about a potential series with the Lady Tigers and ran with it.

“We’re not playing any SEC schools this year except them,’’ Auriemma said. “So, yeah, I could see us getting that series back with Van. He does things the right way. So I wouldn’t be opposed to playing Van going forward.’’

Pat and Geno have smack-talked each other before, so that's nothing new. But should Auriemma take shots at one of his own players? Was what he said taking it too far? Should such conversations be reserved for the locker room, or should players be put on blast? Was sarcasm appropriate in this case?

I'm wondering what you think.

(My) upset city

Georgetown (12th) upset Tennessee (4th) tonight at the Paradise Jam. What's more, forward Shekinna Stricklen was injured. But UT women's athletic director Joan Cronan tweeted that Kinna is OK and was in the whirlpool. She also called the game "rough, very rough."

Halfway across the world, Cal State Bakersfield capitalized on a monster comeback to hand Oregon its first loss, 82-78.

Ugh on both counts.

Duke barely escaped Charlotte tonight, 61-55.

And following up on yesterday's semifinal, Georgia put the hurt on LMU in today's final - 76-44.

Vanderbilt Tournament action

The USC Trojans lost to the Princeton Tigers 60-59 on the opening day of the Vanderbilt Tournament in Nashville, Tenn yesterday. This was a game that USC led for most of the way. Princeton's last lead was at 21-18 midway throught the first half, but USC failed to put away a team that on a man-to-man basis, they were better than. They also failed to make their free throws, hitting nine for 18 in the game, while Princeton hit 16 for 20. Princeton made their last two free throws to win the game with five seconds remaining, and trailing 59-58. USC's inbound play was a desperation three-pointer by Jackie Gemelos that didn't fall. Ashley Corral led all scorers with 21 points, and played the entire 40 minutes. Niveen Rasheed led Princeton with 18 points.

- IM in Nashville (regularly OC)



The benches in Vanderbilt are on the baselines, not the sidelines. This was Vanderbilts bench. Vandy beat Quinnepac, 111-53.



USC warms up for their game against Princeton.



Vanderbilt's arena is almost a square with three levels. SEC conference flags hang on the ceiling, including Tennessee's.