Women’s Basketball: Panthers look to upset No. 2 Huskies

The night before New Year’s Eve, the Connecticut Huskies women’s basketball team lost for… The night before New Year’s Eve, the Connecticut Huskies women’s basketball team lost for the first time in 90 games and nearly two years.

On Saturday night, Pitt’s women’s basketball team will travel to the Gampel Pavillion in Connecticut and do everything it can to hand Connecticut its second loss in 95 contests.

Maya Moore, who is widely accepted by experts as the best player in women’s basketball, leads the Huskies. Moore averages 24 points and 7.7 rebounds per game, numbers good enough to lead the No. 2 team in the country in both categories. Her efficiency is one of the reasons that the Connecticut women have been nearly unbeatable.

Since their lost to Stanford, Moore and the rest of the Huskies have been rolling. Their last game wasn’t much of a contest, as they destroyed No. 10 North Carolina, 83-57. Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma, who has seven national championships and boasts a 735-122 all-time record, thinks the Huskies are starting to hit their stride once again.

“There was a different feel to our team today,” Auriemma said after Monday’s game. “You can’t explain it, but you can feel it in the locker room. You can feel it during timeouts. There was just something going on with the team today that was reminiscent of last year’s team.”

In the win over the Tar Heels, the Huskies started the game by hitting 14 of their first 18 shots. That’s exactly the kind of run the Panthers will need to prevent.

After Moore, Pitt’s next focus will likely be junior guard Tiffany Hayes. Hayes went off for 29 points against North Carolina, leading all scorers and making it very clear that the Huskies are a threat to opponets all across the board.

The Panther team is made up of four seniors and seven freshmen, and each one of those freshmen will be experiencing play against Connecticut for the first time. But Pitt head coach Agnus Berenato said this isn’t a typical freshman class.

“They knew when they decided to come here that we want to be champions, and they knew we would be asking a lot of them early on,” she said.

The Pitt women are coming off a tough 82-50 Saturday loss to No. 12 Notre Dame — a team Connecticut squeaked by just a couple of weeks ago.

“Pitt is a very physical team, and they are used to running straight to the rim,” Notre Dame forward Devereaux Peters said after the game. “The key is to hit their players before they get there and push them back early so they don’t have the chance to score.”

The Panthers will undoubtedly need big games from their starters, and you can expect them to turn to senior guard Jania Sims, who is averaging 14 points and just less than five assists per game.

Also leading the way for the Panthers will be senior Taneisha Harrison, who recently broke the 1,000-point mark for her career. Harrison, who is on Sims’ tail with 13.8 points per game, will need to step up both offensively and defensively to help the Panthers contain Moore and Hayes.

At 9-8 overall, the Panthers are now 11th in the Big East but still have time to make that ground up. With 12 more games against Big East opponents, a good showing against a team like Connecticut could be the boost the Panthers need for the season’s final stretch.

Considering the fact that the Panthers have lost 25 straight to Connecticut, a win this weekend could be the turning point in the Panthers’ season.

Despite all the attention and hype surrounding the Huskies winning streak, this is not a new position for Berenato or the four senior starters on the team. They’ve faced Connecticut, and they understand the magnitude of the team’s success.

After the Huskies beat the Panthers by 32 points last season, Pitt coach Agnus Berenato told the media that they witnessed one of the best teams of all time that day.

“You’re watching a dynasty,” Berenato said. “They could break John Wooden’s record of 88-0.”

Berenato was right. But that streak has ended, and the Panther seniors will get one more chance to defeat the Huskies on Connecticut’s home floor.