[BJWilliams]

Alright folks its time to begin the second trip through the conference. Everybody remembers what happened the last time these two teams got together. Of course everybody ALSO remembers what happened the last time these two teams got together in the Vines center with 1st place on the line.

[krh44]

Lets hope for a big crowd and of course a W. I am sure the Ladies will be inspired after the defeat earlier in the season

[Sly Fox]

This is the second half of the doubleheader at the Vines with this game set to start at 3:30pm. As BJ pointed out, this game is critical for us in the Big South race after that 64-62 overtime loss a couple of weeks ago down in High Point.

Big South Standings:

High Point .......... 6-1
Liberty .............. 6-1
Radford ............. 5-2



High Point University
High Point, North Carolina


HPU Official Site

HPU Message Board


Key Players:



#12 Leslie Cook
5' 11" Senior Guard
Thru 21 Games: Averaging 11.2 Pts & 3.5 Rebounds with Team-High 53 3-Pointers




#14 Candyce Sellars
5' 6" Senior Guard
Thru 21 Games: Averaging Team-High 12.9 Pts & 4.4 Rebounds with 47 Steals




#33 Amber Manuel
5' 11" Junior Forward
Thru 20 Games: Averaging 8.8 Pts & Team-High 6.5 Rebounds with 13 Blocks

[krh44]

Wow anyone watching this game!

[El Scorcho]

Game over. High Point walks out of the Vines with a 67 to 61 victory over the Lady Flames. For the first time in ten years, the Lady Flames have been swept in the regular season. With the loss, the Lady Flames also fall to second place in the Big South. Still plenty of time to make that up, hopefully.

[krh44]

Never seemed to be a sense of urgency late in the game. With a minute to go we almost let the 30 sec clock run out and had to take a terrible shot. They looked lost out there

[TIMSCAR20]

The gap is closed considerably in the big south on the women's side. HPU is a good team and has been close for the past 2 seasons. They are not going to be satisfied with this one. They want the sweep of the Lady Flames. With the conference championship on a neutral site, they gotta be feeling pretty good. Actually they are in the drivers seat to get a home game if the old tournament setup was in play with the top seed getting home court. Moving the tournament to a neutral site actually benefits Liberty this year though I doubt that was the intent when they moved it. It would have been difficult to go back down to HPU and win had it come down to the final game on their floor. What was the crowd like today? Did folks stay after the men's game?

[thepostman]

the gap has closed...and I give some of the credit to the other teams and some of the credit to LU for not improving at all this year...they just kind of stayed the same...which is kind of frustrating...hopefully they will get everything going in the right direction come conference tournament time

[bigsmooth]

all about recruiting...coach green is not doing his best in this area IMO. plenty of time to get things back on track and win the tournament.

[Sly Fox]

From Chris ...

High Point sweeps Liberty

By Chris Lang
Lynchburg News & Advance
February 10, 2007

Moriah Frazee said she is still convinced Liberty has the best women's basketball team in the Big South.

The scoreboard, for now, says otherwise.

High Point, which has given the Flames more fits than any other league team the last four seasons, rode the hot shooting of Candyce Sellars to a 67-61 victory at Vines Center on Saturday, giving the Panthers a sweep of the season series. The last Big South team to win two regular-season games against the Flames was UNC Greensboro in the 1996-97 season.

Even so, that wasn't what had High Point coach Tooey Loy smiling after the game.

"I think being in first place actually means more than beating Liberty," Loy said. "We've beaten Liberty once in each of the last three years. We've gotten over that hurdle. But we hadn't been able to get in first place or have a real chance at winning a conference title. That's probably bigger for the program."

High Point (14-8, 7-1 Big South) holds a one-game lead over Liberty (14-9, 6-2) and Radford (14-8, 6-2). In reality, the lead over Liberty is two games, since the Panthers would win any tiebreakers. High Point has won three of the last five meetings with the Flames, and the two losses were both by single digits.

"They've got some good ballplayers," Liberty coach Carey Green said. "The last couple of years, they've been seeded No. 2 (in the conference tournament). Take Liberty out of the equation, and they're at the top. And that's where they are now, currently No. 1. It's not just that they're having success against Liberty. They're having success against everybody in the league."

Liberty led 45-39 with 13:02 left after Megan Frazee (17 points, 13 rebounds) scored an inside basket. But High Point quickly closed the gap, scoring 10 of the next 12 points to take the lead for good.

As good as Sellars was for High Point - she scored a game-high 26 points and hit 6 of 10 3-pointers - it was other Panthers who came up big during the run. Reserve Ashlee Samuels hit two baskets, and forward Caitlyn Thys hit two more. Sellars hit a 3-pointer with 8:36 left that pushed the High Point lead to 52-47.

"We started executing our stuff a little better, and we slowed down a little bit," Loy said. "We slowed down and got the shots we wanted."

High Point led 62-55 with 3:11 left after another Sellars 3-pointer, but Liberty responded with two quick Megan Frazee baskets to cut the lead to 62-59 with 1:57 left. Thys was called for traveling, but Liberty got nothing out its next possession, settling for an off-balance Allyson Fasnacht jumper with one second left on the shot clock.

With 36.8 seconds remaining and three seconds left on the shot clock on High Point's next possession, Katie Ralls drilled a 3-pointer to put the Panthers up 65-59.

"I wouldn't have thought to shoot it if the clock wasn't winding down," Ralls said.

Said Green: "Katie Ralls, she plays the game, watches the game, studies the game, then steps up and closes out very strong."

Moriah Frazee scored a season-high 18 points and had seven rebounds. She joined Green in criticizing the Flames' defense, especially in the second half. High Point shot 53.6 percent after halftime and scored 37 points.

"We've just got to tighten up our defense a little bit," Moriah said. "I'm not worried about it too much. We need to just play a little better. The games that we lose, it's just little things that we didn't do that we have to go back to work even harder at. I do think we have a better team than them. We just have to go out there and work a little harder."

Monday, after a close win over Birmingham-Southern at home, Green noted that he wasn't sure what motivated his team, which has won nine straight Big South championships. He'll find out in the next couple of weeks, as Liberty tries to fight its way back past the Panthers in the conference standings.

"The lesson will be a little bitter, to understand the importance of playing good defense," Green said. "We'll just carry this experience into tomorrow's practice and into the next game.

"We'll just accept the reality of where we're at. It's unusual that we're in this position, but that is reality. We're No. 2 at best at this time."

http://www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Sate ... th=!sports

[BJWilliams]

I see some parallels between this situation with Liberty and with Old Dominion's situation. ODU and Liberty have of course the two longest champion streaks in the state of Virginia (ODU 15 straight CAA titles, of course LU with 10 straight in the Big South). ODU for the longest time pretty much rolled over everyone in the CAA (heck they even were ranked as high as the top 5 in the country at one point and went to the national championship game, as a side note), and they even had one of the longest streaks for conference wins in the nation. then JMU knocked them off. They still won the conference tournament the year JMU ended that streak, but the aura of invincibility definitely faded after that one. Now ODU is still a good team and is always right at the top come regular season, but everybody in the CAA is also better. Every other team knows that ODU can be beaten. Its the same with Liberty in the Big South. LU has pretty much rolled over everybody on their way to those 10 tournament titles, but after High Point beat us in 2005, it showed the rest of the conference that beating the Lady Flames CAN be done. Look at the margins of victory this year:

Jan 13, 2007 vs. Coastal Carolina*
Conway, S.C. W (58-54) 4 points
Jan 15, 2007 vs. Charleston Southern*
Charleston, S.C. W (72-39) 33 points
Jan 20, 2007 4:00 PM vs. High Point*
High Point, N.C. L (62-64, OT) -2 points
Jan 22, 2007 Winthrop*
Lynchburg, Va. W (69-42) 27 points
Jan 27, 2007 6:00 PM Radford*
Lynchburg, Va. W (79-66)13 points
Feb 3, 2007 2:00 PM vs. UNC Asheville*
Asheville, N.C. W (66-62) 4 points
Feb 5, 2007 7:00 PM Birmingham-Southern*
Lynchburg, Va. W (52-44) 8 points
Feb 10, 2007 3:30 PM High Point*
Lynchburg, Va. L (61-67) -6 points

Overall, the margin averages 12.125 points per game...but that is factoring wins and losses together. In LU's 6 wins this year the average margin was 14.83 points. In the two losses (both to High Point) the average margin...4 points.

In the 6 conference wins, LU averages 20.66 turnovers per game. In the two losses (both to High Point) 17.5 turnovers per game.

[PAmedic]

WOW!

logged in this AM and really was surprised to see THIS result. Clearly some problems with the team at this point.

(Maybe I'm channeling "theSportsCritic" )

seriously, not to sell HPU short- but our ladies have the talent to be rollilng these teams. not sure what the issue is this year. Hopefully they get it straightened out by tourney time

[Purple Haize]

BJ I have been comparing LU to ODU for a few years now. The only difference being ODU used to go to the Sweet 16 and Final 4 on a more consistent basis, but the parallel is DEAD ON.
I will disagree that it is about recruiting, Coach Green has a VERY deep team that is VERY good and has more talent than just about any other Big South school from top to bottom. In that defense, some teams just get into a funk. I am POSITIVE there is a "been there done that" mentality that over takes the team from time to time. For that I have no solution so I can't really criticize it!

[Cider Jim]

Maybe the girls' team needs a pep talk or devotional from RD about winning.

[Sly Fox]

Haize - La Tech & Stephen F. Austin used to dominate as well but it is getting tougher to hold a top position these days. Even the once might UConn, Tennessee and Texas all have had off years recently.

[pointguard4christ]

I can understand being in a funk but why didn't we run the ball up the court especially in the closing minutes? We are a good open court team and we could have won by taking advantage of the disorganized defense in transition. We just kind of walked the ball up the court when we got a defensive rebound. Coach Green didn't look like he was concerned about it either.

[PAmedic]

with the success this team has enjoyed over the last decade, you'd think losing ONE conf game would be motivation enough.

To get SWEPT in-conf SHOULD be cause for a near-riot in the locker room. At least the ladies should get some sense of urgency, and/or feel the need to step up big time prior to the start of the conf tourney.

I guess I'm just hoping that this team and coaching staff doesn't take it too casually. They need to take losses personally; there is a tradition in this program that needs to be upheld.

[pointguard4christ]

you are totally right PAmedic. They should have had urgency in the second half of this game, not save it for the conference tourneys, though.

[PAmedic]

THANK YOU!

And just in case my wife is reading this: YES- I KNOW. I COULD NEVER LAST 5 MINUTES OUT THERE!

(she likes to point out that I criticize but have no ability myself )

but if PG4C agrees with me, then I'm probably on to something!

[jmdickens]

Carey Green was at Lahaye 2 hours before the tip off.....That is very common for him. He approached it like every other game I am sure, because this would have given LU the #1 seed...Now they will only get a chance for second unless HP can lose a couple.

[ATrain]

Radford and UNCA have both given HPU fits this season...it'll be interesting, thats for sure.

[jcmanson]

A very dissapointing game. It seemed as if our girls had no enthusiasm, no passion to win that game. In years past, that would be what would get us on the winning side of the scorebook. The girls didn't seem to have that. They better wake up, or our 10 year streak is going down this year.

[jimflamesfan]

This is very frustrating. I know the problem, though. I've watched the VT game in person, and the Highpoint game via television. The problem is I shouldn't watch. When I stopped watching the Highpoint game to do some work, LU opened up their biggest lead...but then I started watching again

I think Coach Green is a great coach, and we are still as deep as highpoint. I do think the Big South has gotten a lot better.

Now I'm just crazy, but if we play highpoint again I'd like to see us run more...

If we start to get down in a game...I'd like to see us switch to using three guards and running...I think we're more athletic...something like

Fasnaught G
Hammond G
Parker G
R Lightfoot F (or KP)
Megan Frazee F

Parker, Hammond, and Fasnaught can run and have quick reflexes...put them out and run.

This wouldn't be a long change, just for a short period of time to switch things up.

But I really don't know anything...that's just what I'd like to see - but then again, I can't watch if I want us to win, so I guess I don't want to see it, haha.

[jcmanson]

On another note, why has Hammond not been playing? She looked really good when playing last year. I know it's hard to get minutes in with all of our depth, but she is a player that I think you find minutes for.

[givemethemic]

Hammond has a had a very nagging hip-flexor injury... I tore mine in high school and it is one of those... how do I say this without gettinng edited....A very Painful injury...and she just can't run alot and pivot the same.....