Texas A&M To Face Minnesota With Sweet 16 Trip On The Line

March 23, 2009

NCAA Second Round Game Notes in PDF Format

#2 TEXAS A&M (26-7) vs. #10 MINNESOTA (20-11)
Game #34
NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship Second Round
March 24, 2009 • 6:00 p.m. (CT)
The Joyce Center (11,418)
South Bend, Ind.

Television: ESPN2 and ESPN360.com
Radio: Texas A&M Sports Network (KZNE 1150 AM)
Series History: Minnesota Leads 3-2
Internet: Live statistics available on www.ncaa.com

GAME PREVIEW
The ninth-ranked and second-seeded Texas A&M women's basketball team (26-7) continues on its mission to go further than its program-best NCAA Elite Eight run a year ago. The Aggies' second obstacle towards their ultimate goal will be 10th-seeded Minnesota (20-11) who they will face in the second round of the 2009 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship on Tuesday, March 24 at the Joyce Center in South Bend, Ind. Tipoff between the Aggies and Golden Gophers is scheduled for 6 p.m. (CT) on ESPN2. This will be the second year in a row in which A&M will take on the No. 10 seed next to last year's 63-39 win over Hartford in the second round of the Oklahoma City Regional. A trip to the Sweet 16 is on the line for both teams which would catapult them into the Trenton Regional to be held on March 29 and 31 at Sovereign Back Arena in New Jersey. A&M has won eight of its last 10 games with one of the nation's top defenses forcing opponents to 21.8 turnovers per game and a 36.5 shooting percentage from the field.

ON THE TUBE
Texas A&M will play before a national audience on ESPN2 for the 13th time in program history and are 9-3 all-time on the deuce and an undefeated 2-0 this season. Play-by-play announcer Eric Collins and color analyst and former Purdue All-American Stephanie White will call the second-round game between the Aggies and Golden Gophers live from the Joyce Center on the Notre Dame campus.

COVERAGE AREA
The Texas A&M versus Minnesota game on Tuesday will be televised in its entirety in each schools' home-marked protected areas which includes the entire state of Texas and Minnesota. The rest of the country will view ESPN2's national whip-around coverage which will allow the viewer to see to the most compelling action from multiple games. The game will be carried locally in the Bryan-College Station area on Suddenlink Channel 28 and to satellite customers who subscribe to DirectTV (Channel 211), ESPN FullCourt (Channel 721), Dish Network (Channel 145), Dish ESPN FullCourt (Channel 456), AT&T (Channel 611) and AT&T ESPN FullCourt (Channel 4502). For high definition subscribers, if you are tuned to your ESPN2HD channel, you will receive the national telecast that will allow the viewer to see the most compelling game action. If you wish to watch your local home market protected game in its entirety, you must tune into your regular Standard Definition ESPN2 Channel.

THE GOLDEN GOPHERS AT A GLANCE
Minnesota is making its eighth all-time NCAA Tournament appearance and turned in its fifth 20-win season under head coach Pam Borton with a 79-71 victory over seventh-seeded Notre Dame in the NCAA First Round on March 22. Golden Gopher guards Brittany McCoy and Emily Fox combine for 251 of the team's 405 assists on the season. Fox is an All-Big Ten Conference Second Team selection averaging a team-leading 13.2 points a game. Minnesota compiled an 11-7 mark against league opponents to finish tied for fifth in the final Big Ten Conference standings.

PROBABLE STARTING LINEUPS
TEXAS A&M
No. Name (2008-09 Stats)
#51 Takia Starks, G, 5-8, Sr. (15.7 ppg, 4.3 rpg)
#22 Tanisha Smith, G/F, 6-0, Jr. (10.3 ppg, 3.7 rpg)
#55 Danielle Gant, G/F, 5-11, Sr. (14.1 ppg, 6.9 rpg)
#12 La Toya Micheaux, C, 6-3, Sr. (2.6 ppg, 6.5 rpg)

MINNESOTA
No. Name (2008-09 Stats)
#12 Brittany McCoy, G, 5-10 Jr. (6.8 ppg, 4.2 apg)
#4 Emily Fox, G, 5-9, Sr. (13.2 ppg, 3.0 rpg)
#35 Katie Ohm, G, 5-11, Jr. (9.1 ppg, 3.0 rpg)
#21 Ashley Ellis-Milan, F, 6-2, Jr. (11.8 ppg, 7.3 rpg)
#45 Jackie Voigt, F, 6-1, Fr. (5.9 ppg, 5.5 rpg)

AGAINST THE BIG TEN
The Aggies went 2-0 against Big Ten Conference opponents en route to posting a program-best 12-1 mark in non-conference play this season. A&M beat Michigan (59-56) on Nov. 20 in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Penn State (61-57) in the first round of the Timeout 4 HIV/AIDS Tournament hosted by Pepperdine on Nov. 28 in Malibu, Calif. Both Big 12-Big Ten matchups were decided by four points or less. Historically, the Aggies are 7-7 lifetime versus schools hailing from the 11-member conference including Indiana (1-0), Michigan (2-0), Michigan State (0-1), Minnesota (2-3), Northwestern (0-1), Penn State (1-0), Purdue (0-2) and Wisconsin (1-0).

SERIES INSIGHT
Minnesota holds a 3-2 advantage in the all-time series with Texas A&M. The Golden Gophers last faced the Aggies six years ago in the Caribbean as both teams were part of the four-team Lucaya Division of the inaugural Junkanoo Jam in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island in 2003. A&M went on to play Seton Hall in the consolation game and made one of the largest comebacks (20+ points in the second half) in school history with a 54-52 win over the Pirates. A&M's two wins in the Minnesota series occurred back in 1989 (W, 84-80) and 1995 (W, 92-49) on the Aggies' home court in College Station.

MINNESOTA FLASHBACK
No. 9 Minnesota jumped out to a 50-25 halftime lead and hung on to capture an 88-72 victory over Texas A&M in the first round of the Junkanoo Jam in the Bahamas on Nov. 28, 2003. The Golden Gophers moved on to face USC in the championship game. Minnesota shot 67.7 percent in the first half and former All-Americans Lindsay Whalen and Janel McCarville had 13 points by the intermission. The second half was a different story as the fouls mounted for the Gophers. McCarville played only five minutes in the second half before fouling out. Texas A&M cut a 32-point second half deficit to as few as 11 points with 1:58 to play. Kadidja Andersson paced the Gophers in the second half, scoring 10 of her 18 points in the second half. Whalen and McCarville added 17 points a piece. Toccara Williams led the Aggies with 22 points and was named to the all-tournament team.

W2W4
• Senior All-America candidate Danielle Gant (Oklahoma City, Okla.) is on the brink of setting a career milestone on the boards. Gant has grabbed 909 career rebounds to date which ranks third behind all-time leader Prissy Sharpe (920) and Lisa Jordan (911). She is now 12 shy of the whole shebang and three short of moving into second on the all-time rebounding list.
• Should A&M advance past the second round, it would mark its second-straight trip to the Sweet 16 and third overall in program history next to its 1994 and 2008 NCAA Tournament berths.
• Texas A&M head coach Gary Blair has led six teams to the NCAA Sweet 16 at Stephen F. Austin (4), Arkansas (1) and A&M (1) combined. Blair is one of the all-time winningest Division I coaches with 19 career NCAA Tournament wins in 33 tries. He will be looking for his 20th career victory in postseason tournament play against Minnesota.

THE AGGIE WRECKING CREW
The Wrecking Crew. A nickname first coined in Aggieland by former defensive back Chet Brooks to describe the defense of the Texas A&M football team during former head coach R.C. Slocum's tenure in the 80's and 90's. A little over three decades later, the A&M women's basketball team has earned similar recognition for its in-your-face defense led by the high standards of execution by associate head coach Vic Schaefer. Evansville became the sixth opponent this season to fall victim to Coach Blair's "Wrecking Crew" leading to an opponent season-high 30 turnovers which the Aggies converted into a season-best 43 points in their NCAA first-round matchup with the Purple Aces on March 22. In all, a total of 22 opponents this season have turned over the ball 20-or-more times in a ballgame. A&M has reaped the rewards of its hard-nosed defense with a total of 750 of its overall points coming off of 718 turnovers by opponents for an average of one point per turnover.

AGGIE SIDEBARS
• Texas A&M head coach Gary Blair is 1-1 lifetime versus Minnesota in his 24-year head coaching career. Meanwhile, the Aggies are 4-1 versus Big Ten opponents in the Gary Blair Era. The only Big Ten loss was to the Pam Borton-coached Minnesota squad in the inaugural Junkanoo Jam in the Bahamas on Nov. 28, 2003.

• Will the real Tanisha Smith please stand up? Ironically, both the A&M and Minnesota squads have a player named Tanisha Smith on their rosters. A&M's Smith, a junior transfer from Arkansas-Fort Smith out of Kansas City, Mo., was tabbed Big 12 Newcomer of the Year and is currently third on the team in scoring at 10.3 points per game. One of the Aggies' core starters, she is shooting the three ball with a 43.5 percent accuracy from the floor. Meanwhile, U of M's Smith is a sophomore forward from Ontario, Canada, but is sidelined for the season after rupturing her Achilles tendon in preseason conditioning drills.

• Texas A&M associate head coach Kelly Bond is a 1998 graduate of Illinois where she played for former women's basketball coach Theresa Grentz and won the Big Ten championship title in 1997. Bond made two NCAA Tournament appearances with the Fighting Illini and will have numerous family members and former teammates in attendance on Tuesday night. Many will make the 90-mile, full tank of gas trek from her hometown of Chicago, where she attended Whitney Young High School which is also the alma mater of First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama and Michael Jordan's son, Marcus, who recently won a class 4A state championship for the Dolphins.

• Takia Starks, who is a hoops and March Madness junkie, has watched Minnesota play on television in the NCAA Tournament in the past. Her favorites to watch include former Minnesota stars Lindsay Whalen and Janel McCarville. Starks says she continues to watch Whalen play for the WNBA's Connecticut Sun and notes McCarville as her favorite center who plays for the New York Liberty.

EVANSVILLE RECAP
Texas A&M 80, Evansville 45
• For the 16th time this season, Texas A&M used the starting lineup of Takia Starks, Takia Starks registered an NCAA Tournament career-high 19 points and became the school's all-time leading scorer on a three-point play at the 3:07 minute mark of the second half. She surpassed former A&M All-American Lisa Branch (1,939) and has now recorded 1,942 career points to date.
• Tanisha Smith made her first NCAA Tournament appearance and turned in a career-high 20 points. It marked her first 20-point game of her Aggie career and eclipsed a previous high of 19 against Baylor on Jan. 21. A&M had two 20-point scorers in a single game for the second time this season next to a season-high 27 points by Gant and 24 points by Starks against No. 25 New Mexico on Dec. 30.
• La Toya Micheaux tied a team-high with six rebounds against Evansville to become only the fourth player in school history to bring down 800 career rebounds (805) next to Gant, Sharpe and Lisa Jordon (911).
• The A&M defense forced the Purple Aces to an opponent season-high 30 turnovers in the game which the Aggies converted into a season-high 44 of its total 80 points for the ballgame. A&M's previous high was 41 points off of 26 turnovers against SMU on Dec. 7. It marked the sixth time this season in which A&M scored 80 points-or-more against an opponent. It was also the second-most points scored by the Aggies in an NCAA Tournament game behind 91 points in the first round against UTSA in 2008.
• The Aggies shot 94.1 percent from the charity stripe (16-of-17) which bested its 2-of-2 performance at Kansas State in Big 12 Conference regular-season play on March 1.
• A&M had a season-high 18 steals against the Purple Aces. The Aggies had 10 players tally at least one steal in the first-round contest.
• Northwestern head coach Joe McKeown, one of head coach Gary Blair's best friends in the business who previously coached at George Washington, was in attendance for A&M's first-round matchup in South Bend.

AGGIE NOTEABLE QUOTABLES
"Right now, our focus is on our defense. Their players are a lot bigger than us and are built like football players. They like to get up and down the floor. We might be challenged in some areas, but I know we can get the job done. Playing in the NCAA Tournament is very special and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We just want to continue to be successful and keep this going." - Junior combination forward/guard Tanisha Smith on Minnesota and playing in her first NCAA Tournament

"They are aggressive and have three Micheaux's in there who are very physical. They run the floor and have great point guard play. This is the kind of game that I love to be a part of. It will take the best of our abilities to compete with them. You cannot compare them to Oklahoma, because we have not played a team this size and physical. Everyone thinks of Texas A&M as being aggressive, but we will have to go out fighting against another team as aggressive as us tomorrow." - Senior center La Toya Micheaux on Minnesota's inside game and presence

"It will be a tough and physical matchup for us. They are taller and stronger. We have to use our quickness on offense and defense. We need to get on the boards and help each other out in the paint. We cannot allow open three pointers and we have to contest every shot. - Senior All-America candidate Takia Starks on the Minnesota matchup

AGGIES ON THE RADIO
All Texas A&M women's basketball NCAA Championship games can be heard via a radio broadcast on the Texas A&M Sports Network. Play-by-play announcer Mike Wright will call second-round action live from the Joyce Center alongside color analyst and former player Katy Pounds on KZNE 1150 AM. A live audio feed will also be available on www.AggieAthletics.com.