[Sly Fox]

Here is how Chris sees the upcoming season:

Liberty women return entire team

By Chris Lang
Lynchburg News & Advance
November 7, 2006

Fourteen Liberty women's basketball players were on campus for the first semester of summer school to bond, condition and work out together.

That is remarkable. Add in that all 14 were members of last year's team, and Flames coach Carey Green has a scenario he's never seen in 20 years of coaching. He has an entire team back.

"That was excellent," Liberty forward Karolina Piotrkiewicz said. "Most times, everybody is working out on their own. It's always easier when the whole team is together."

Having so many returning players does wonders for continuity. As junior point guard Allyson Fasnacht said, the Flames can pick up right where they left off in March.

Complacency is a potential issue, considering this bunch teamed to win Liberty's 10th straight Big South tournament championship. That thought is rebuked, though, by how last season ended.

The Flames were competitive for, oh, two minutes of a blowout loss to DePaul in the NCAA tournament, "a bitter taste of medicine," Green said. Two years removed from a run to the NCAA's round of 16, Liberty is again hungry to prove it is not merely a Big South powerhouse, but a legitimate national program.

Liberty will have plenty of opportunity to do so. The Flames play another competitive non-conference schedule featuring games against NCAA tournament teams George Washington, Virginia Tech, Marist and (potentially) defending national champion Maryland. Plus, the Flames take a trip to WNIT qualifier Virginia.

Liberty had some close calls against high-level teams last year, leading at halftime against Florida and North Carolina State before losing. The Flames need to win one against that level of competition if they want a shot at a decent NCAA tournament seed come March.

"We've got a lot of chances to beat some quality teams," Fasnacht said. "We should compete and play well, and if we play well, we feel like we can win any of those."

Sophomore forward Megan Frazee, of course, did not play in that NCAA loss to DePaul. She missed the final 15 games of last season with a torn ACL, but has rehabilitated completely. Frazee earned preseason Big South player of the year honors despite only playing in one full conference game last season.

"She was already amazing last year," Piotrkiewicz said. "Right now, I don't think there's a word to describe how good she is. She looks way strong, faster and bigger. You could never tell she's had surgery."

Without Frazee last year, Liberty's offense became stagnant and overly reliant on its perimeter weapons. Frazee gives Liberty an inside-out threat, and Piotrkiewicz is more fit than she was last year. She said she worked hard in the summer on finishing around the basket, which was a major problem last season.

Green said he hoped to see vast improvement from another post player, junior Egle Smigelskaite. She was never quite right last season while trying to come back from a torn ACL, and though she's battled some back issues this preseason, Green expects Smigelskaite to be a solid post contributor.

Liberty is again the favorite to win the Big South championship, and the only real challengers figure to be a young Winthrop team that gave the Flames trouble in last season's Big South tournament semifinals and a High Point team trying to replace Big South player of the year Katie O'Dell.

http://newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellit ... th=!sports

[thesportscritic]

nice preview on our Women's basketball team.

[BJWilliams]

I posted this last season but this pretty much proves how good Carey Green has been as a coach for us:

Since he took over in 1999, here are our records against teams currently in the Big South Conference:

I was looking at the records and noticed that Carey Green has these records against current Big South teams:

UNC Asheville: 18-0
Winthrop: 17-0
Coastal Carolina: 17-0
Charleston Southern: 14-0
Radford: 14-1
High Point: 13-2 (11-2 factoring the first meeting this year)
Birmingham Southern: 11-0

Im pretty sure I got these straight. As a sidebar, High Point is the only team currently in the Big South to have beaten LU more than once since Carey Green took over. Oh and just because Im a stat hound, Carey Green has a record of 7-3 vs Elon who was the last team to give LU a BSC loss before High Point beat LU in 2005

[krh44]

Those stats are pretty amazing no matter what conference you are in

[PeterParker]

I suppose from the ladies perspective, all of the other sports are the dead weight keeping them from a better conference....

[BJWilliams]

Worth considering. They are one of the most dominating teams in the school athletically

[zachthompson]

I sometime wonder if we would get better seeding in the NCAA tourney if we joined a better conf. plus than we would have team that would actually make us PLAY to win... so our team would get better....

[jcmanson]

Sure we would, but we are not going to move to a better conference because of our women's teams. It will have to be our men's team and football team that will get us to the next level. The rest of our sports, other than those 2, are already at a level that would not hold us back from that jump, but in this day and age men's bball and football are what matters on the broad scheme of things.

[ATrain]

We would definitely get a better seed if we were in a better conference, but last year we got a 13 despite the conference being ranked 14th and our top-50 RPI and the year before we were 13 with a sub-50 RPI and the conference was ranked 27th or something. Basically if you're not in the BCS conferences you're gonna get screwed with seeding.

But the only way to get into a better conference is, like was mentioned above, having good football and men's bball programs.

[Chris Lang]

The problem last year was that RPI was inflated, and the tournament committee treated it as such. Liberty was in the top 50 in RPI, but that was because of the losses to quality opponents. High Point was the only quality win in the bunch. Had Liberty beat N.C. State or Florida, I think the seed would have been higher.

Look at what happened on the men's side last year. Missouri State had a top-20 RPI but was snubbed altogether because they lacked a signature win.

Liberty still has several opportunities to add signature wins -- Virginia Tech, George Washington, Maryland. The Virginia win will help big-time in the long run.