THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 19, 1996 TAG: 9603190394
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Now it can be said - Virginia, Virginia, Virginia! - with no fear of overlooking the next opponent. Because for Old Dominion's women's basketball team, Virginia is the next opponent. Finally.
Virginia. Superior Virginia. Condescending Virginia, which for the last few years has refused to play ODU unless Monarchs coach Wendy Larry agreed to play only in Charlottesville.
``She doesn't want to come to our house,'' Larry said of Virginia coach Debbie Ryan after ODU reached the NCAA tournament's round of 16 Monday with a surprisingly narrow 72-66 victory over Toledo at an electric ODU field house.
Every year since 1991, the last time the two teams met, Larry says she has phoned Ryan for a game with what has been, for a decade, the state's premier program.
Every year, Ryan or an assistant gets on the horn and offers the same thing, a guaranteed gate but no return game. As if ODU was some bottom-feeder like Prairie View or somebody.
This Saturday, there's no getting around it. Unfortunately for ODU, the road to the Final Four in Charlotte goes through Charlottesville, where the sixth-ranked Monarchs will meet the 11th-ranked Cavaliers in the East Regional semifinals.
Fourth-ranked Tennessee will be there too, looming as the regional final foe. It's a killer bracket, but ODU is eager to take its chances. Knowing that there's a possibility Virginia could be their 30th victim - thus giving ODU its first 30-win season since the 1984-85 national championship team - already has the Monarchs bubbling.
``I think it's gonna be a heck of a game,'' said ODU senior Sarah Willyerd. ``There have been times when a lot of people say, `Why don't you guys play Virginia, why don't you play Virginia?' Well, they're not on our schedule, we don't know.
``We are looking forward to playing them because we've always heard so much about them. We've always heard that Virginia is the dominant power in Virginia. People kind of forget there's another team in Virginia, too. We do have something to prove down there.''
Once upon a time, the teams played every year. Really. From 1973 to the '90-91 season. Sometimes they played twice a year. ODU leads the series 14-8, but U.Va smoked the Monarchs five of the last six times as it burst to national prominence and ODU spun out.
But then the Monarchs started thrashing the weaklings in a new league, the Colonial Athletic Association, in '91-92 and Virginia disappeared from the schedule, never to be seen again.
You can see Ryan's point. If she's going to play a CAA team, she's going to make it a Virginia Commonwealth, let's say. Somebody who can't come within a mile of upsetting her club, and one who will gladly walk into a Charlottesville slaughter for the money and ask nothing in return.
The day Larry starts accepting away-only offers from anybody is the day she'll know she's in the wrong business at the wrong school.
``We're at a point, as far as our national recognition is concerned, that there are other teams that will play us in the top 10, and we can get them home-and-home,'' Larry said. ``We've started looking at other teams like Purdue, and we're talking with the Louisiana Techs and people like that. It's important that we get people home-and-home.''
Monday, at home, the Monarchs looked vulnerable for the first time in ages. Their transition defense was particularly ragged, perhaps because few teams have been able to push the ball on them. They led by 22 in the second half but despite great depth and a 10-rebound advantage, they couldn't put Toledo away.
``Fortunately for Old Dominion, the clock ran out,'' Larry said.
But with the final horn a different clock started ticking, in a long-anticipated countdown that ends Saturday at 2 p.m. in Charlottesville.
Two of the nation's 16 finest teams. The two best in the state.
It's about time. And right on schedule. ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Toledo guard Denise Pickenpaugh knocks the ball from Old Dominion
forward Esther Benjamin's hands during the Lady Monarch's
second-round victory. Benjamin scored 16 points and pulled down 10
rebounds.
Old Dominion's Shonda Deberry, in back, and Clarisse Machanguana,
right, put the squeeze on Toledo's Kim D'Angelo. Machanguana had 16
points and eight rebounds.
by CNB