Dec. 4, 2009
ESPN.com's Mechelle Voepel on Matchup
LA Tech Game Notes
WACO, Texas - When Teresa Weatherspoon was the starting point guard during her four years at Louisiana Tech in the mid-1980s, she served as the floor general for head coach Leon Barmore and his staff.
Weatherspoon now occupies Barmore's old chair on the LA Tech bench as she enters her first full season as the Lady Techsters head coach, more than 20 years after her collegiate playing days were capped by a national championship title in 1988.
On Saturday when her Lady Techsters face the 8th-ranked Baylor Bears at 5 p.m. at the Ferrell Center in a game televised on Fox Sports Southwest, Weatherspoon will look down the floor and see her mentor on the opposing sideline along with another former LA Tech great in BU head coach Kim Mulkey.
It will be an almost surreal experience for all parties involved.
"I've always gone to battle with them," Weatherspoon said. "Now, I'm going to be on the opposite side going against them. When the ball goes up, it's about the game. But tears will roll at some point, because I have so much respect for both of them."
Weatherspoon won't be the only one who will be feeling a plethora of emotions at game-time.
"I think the emotion will (come from) seeing a lot of familiar faces," Mulkey said. "It'll be good to see Teresa Weatherspoon and Louisiana Tech (on Saturday). Coach Barmore and I spent many years in building that program and you will never erase the blood, sweat and tears that went into building a program like Louisiana Tech.
"There is a place in your heart that will always pull for Louisiana Tech, but Coach Barmore and I know who signs our paychecks."
The storylines are numerous for this matchup of one of the most complete teams in the country in Baylor against one of the up-and-coming teams in LA Tech. In fact, so much has been and will be made of the Mulkey-Barmore-Weatherspoon connection, that some people will forget that there is a game at stake.
The Lady Techsters (3-1) are coming off a hard-fought, emotional 77-74 loss to 7th ranked LSU Tuesday night in a game that saw LA Tech cut a 17-point deficit down to one on three separate occasions in the final 90 seconds of the game.
However, Weatherspoon and Co. came up just short but will have another opportunity on Saturday to make a statement, and maybe even more importantly, continue to grow as a team.
However, defeating Baylor on its home floor will be a tall task - literally - as LA Tech will have to find a way to succeed against the nation's most-talked-about freshman in the Lady Bears 6-foot-8-inch center Brittney Griner.
Griner, only seven games into her college career, has already dunked in a win over Jacksonville State and is averaging 15.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and an eye-popping 5.9 blocks per contest. And as impressive as the youngster has been, the Bears are far from a one-woman show as Mulkey boasts one of the most complete teams in the country.
Led by Griner, junior guard Melissa Jones (14.1 ppg, 6.6 rpg)), senior forward Morghan Medlock (12.3 ppg, 9.3 rpg) and a host of talented youngsters, Baylor ranks among the Top 50 in the NCAA in 12 statistical categories, including No. 2 in field goal percentage (52.1) and No. 6 in scoring offense (85.1 ppg).
The Lady Techsters are no stranger to the NCAA rankings through four games, as LA Tech enters the contest ranked No. 10 in scoring offense, No. 4 in field goal percentage, and No. 11 in scoring defense. All three of those will be test once again on Saturday.
In order for LA Tech to be successful against the Bears, the Lady Techsters will need to find balanced scoring as it did in the three-point loss to LSU. Weatherspoon has plenty of options led by 6-foot-2-inch Shanavia Dowdell (15.2 ppg, 9.3 rpg) who netted 26 against a stingy LSU defense.
In addition to Dowdell, Tech has received plenty of offensive contributions from Adrienne Johnson (19.5 ppg), Whitney Jones (13.8 ppg), Brietta Thomas (10.3 ppg), Jasmine Bendolph (8.5 ppg), Tarkeisha Wysinger (6.3 ppg) and Kiara Young (6.3 ppg).
Jones will be making a return to Waco where she started her college career, playing seven games for the Bears during 2006-07 before transferring to LA Tech.
The contest can be heard on ESPN 97.7 FM and KBYO 92.7 FM with the pregame show starting at 4:30 p.m.
