March 12, 2002
Complete Release in PDF Format
Download Free Acrobat Reader
THIS WEEK
NCAA First and Second Rounds (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
vs. No. 5 seed Minnesota * March 16 at 2 p.m. (PST)
DATE WITH DESTINY
The 12th-seeded UNLV women's basketball team (23-7) makes its eighth appearance in the NCAA Tournament after being selected as one of 64 teams to play in the 2002 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship. The Lady Rebels will face fifth-seeded Minnesota on Saturday, March 16 at 2 p.m. (PST) in Chapel Hill, N.C. Should UNLV advance, it would play the winner of game two of the sub-regional between fourth-seeded North Carolina, the campus host, and 13th-seeded Harvard on Monday, March 18 at 3:36 p.m (PST) which will be televised nationally on ESPN2. The Lady Rebels are a part of the 16-team field in the Midwest Region. All postseason tournament action will be broadcast in Las Vegas on KENO 1460 AM radio and via an Internet link on unlvrebels.com.
EIGHT YEARS OUT
The Lady Rebels are making their first NCAA tourney appearance since the 1994 season. They were one-of-33 teams to receive an at-large bid by the NCAA Selection Committee and one-of-four teams representing the Mountain West Conference, the most teams ever to be selected from the three-year-old league. UNLV is 3-7 all-time in the NCAA Tournament. They have appeared in the tournament on eight occasions (1984, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994 and 2002).
FREQUENT FLYER MILES
UNLV will depart Las Vegas on Thursday, March 14. They will arrive in North Carolina on the same day and stay at the Wyndham Garden Hotel in Raleigh, N.C. This will be the second longest coast-to-coast trip the Lady Rebels have endured in the last 10 years. UNLV will travel 4,102 miles from Las Vegas to Chapel Hill, N.C. and back. In 1996, the Lady Rebels logged 5,312 flyer miles to play in the Hartford Courant Classic hosted by perennial national power Connecticut in Hartford, Conn.
SCOUTING THE BRACKET
Minnesota (21-7): The Golden Gophers are also making their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1994, although only their second berth in school history. Similar to UNLV, Minnesota has made headlines all season long. With Big Ten Player of the Year Lindsay Whalen, who averages 21.7 ppg and 5.6 rpg, UMN won a school record 21 games this year and rebounded from a 1-15 season in conference play in 2001 to an 11-5 second-place finish in 2002. They are 1-1 all-time in NCAA Tournament competition and are guided by first-year head coach Brenda Oldfield, one of the youngest head coaches (31) in the nation.
North Carolina (24-8): The Tar Heels, members of the ACC Conference, have always been a perennial powerhouse in both men's and women's basketball. The second-best team in the fourth best league in the country, the No. 16 North Carolina earned the fourth-seed in the Midwest Region. They currently are one of the top 5 schools in the nation in offense, scoring 80.6 points per game. Three players are averaging double digits in points per game: junior Nikki Teasley (15.8), junior Coretta Brown (16.6) and sophomore Candace Sutton (11.7). UNC is 1-5 this season against top-25 opponents, while instate and league rival Duke handed the Tar Heels three of those losses.
Harvard (22-5): The Crimson went 13-1 in conference play to take the Ivy League regular season title outright and earn the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. (The Ivy League does not hold a postseason conference tournament.) Harvard's claim to fame is becoming the first No. 16 seed in NCAA Tournament history (men's and women's) to upset a No. 1 seed. Harvard beat Stanford in 1998. They are currently riding a 13-game winning streak and have not lost since a Jan. 11 59-55 loss to Princeton. Like UNLV, the Crimson have had their fare share of foreign national team players. Freshman Reka Cserny, who hails from Hungary, is the team's second leading scorer averaging 16.0 ppg and 7.7 rpg. Sophomore Hana Peljto (Brooklyn Park, Minn.) leads with 20.4 ppg and 9.6 rpg.
SERIES HISTORY
UNLV vs. Minnesota:
The Lady Rebels lead the series 1-0. Both teams first met each other in the title game of the 1998 Golden Gopher Classic in Minneapolis. Four current players, seniors Kinesha Davis, Linda Fr?hlich, Erin Johansson and Courtney Swanson were freshmen when UNLV defeated Minnesota, 75-61, for the championship trophy.
UNLV vs. North Carolina:
The Tar Heels lead the series 1-0, last meeting UNL V in 1986 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. UNC has a favorable statistic on their side - since 1995, 92 percent of sub-regional host teams have won at their home site. Ironically, former Lady Rebel standout Misty Thomas ended her four-year career against North Carolina in that particular postseason berth. Thomas scored 16 points in UNLV's 82-76 loss to UNC and set the all-time women's scoring record at 1,892 points, which held up for 15 years until Linda Fr?hlich broke the record on Dec. 9, 2001.
UNLV vs. Harvard:
The Ivy League school and UNLV have never met in each program's history.
MORE MILLER TIME
UNLV coach Regina Miller has now taken two teams to the NCAA Tournament in her overall head coaching career - Western Illinois in 1995 and UNLV in 2002. She is also making a return trip to North Carolina. In her last trip to the NCAA Tournament, at the end of Western Illinois' 1994-95 season, the team began first round play at North Carolina. The No. 16 Westerwinds (who won the Mid-Continent Conference's automatic bid) lost to top-seeded North Carolina, 89-48, in the West Region.
FEELING MINNESOTA
One player on the current UNLV roster hails from the state of Minnesota. Senior Kinesha Davis (Brooklyn Center, Minn.) was an all-state guard out of Blake High School. She was also one of four freshman in 1998 to play the Golden Gophers in the Golden Gopher Classic title game. UNLV athletic trainer Ann Dovenmuehler (Mankato State grad) once worked in the University of Minnesota Women's Athletics Department from 1997-2000 and handled athletic medicine duties for both the women's basketball and gymnastics programs at UMN. Sisters Dishawn and Sherry McCracklin are also related to Minnesota guard Leslie Hill (2.7 ppg, 2.0 rpg, 24-of-28 games this season), who is a cousin on their father's side of the family.
BACK TO CAROLINA
It will be a homecoming for several members of the Lady Rebel basketball program. UNLV coach Regina Miller is a native of Lumber Bridge, N.C., which is about an hours drive from the University of North Carolina campus. Miller attended Louisburg (N.C.) Junior College, before transferring to Old Dominion where she helped the Lady Monarchs to the NCAA Final Four. Sophomore center Padra Strong hails from Fayetteville, N.C. and attended Pine Forest High School, where she was a two-time Street & Smith's honorable mention All-American. Director of Basketball Operations Jan Bethea also calls the Tar Heel State home (Raleigh).
ARENA WITH A HISTORY
Carmichael Auditorium on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will serve as the facility for the NCAA first and second round site. The arena holds 10,000 fans and was once home to Tarheel legend Michael Jordan before the men's basketball team moved to its newer facility, now known as the Dean Smith Center "Dean Dome" in 1986. Junior Constance Jinks, who is a Chicago native and a huge fan of the former Chicago Bull, will step foot on the hardwood floor that the "greatest athlete on the planet" once played on.
NCAA TOURNAMENT ARCHIVE
The Lady Rebels made seven appearances in the NCAA Tournament prior to their berth in 2002. They have only advanced out of the first round two times (1989 and 1991) and moved on to the Sweet 16 once (1989).
* 1984, lost to Long Beach State, 78-58 (-20)* 1985, lost to San Diego State, 70-68 (-2)* 1986, lost to North Carolina, 82-76 (-6)* 1989, beat Utah, 67-53 (+14)* 1989, beat Colorado, 84-74 (+10)* 1989, lost to Texas, 88-77 (-11)* 1990, lost to Mississippi, 66-62 (-4)* 1991, beat Texas Tech, 70-65 (+5)* 1991, lost to Georgia, 86-62 (-24)* 1994, lost to Montana, 77-67 (-10)
TOURNAMENT TEAM LINKS
UNLV played against six teams this season who eventually advanced to the NCAA Tournament field of 64. Conference rivals, New Mexico (beat twice), nationally-ranked Colorado State (beat twice), Brigham Young (lost three times) made it to the postseason, while non-conference opponents Georgia (lost once) and UC Santa Barbara (beat once) were selected as well. UCSB won the Big West Conference title for an automatic bid as did BYU in the Mountain West Conference. CSU, New Mexico and Georgia all received at-large bids.
FR?HLICH vs. WHALEN
UNLV senior Linda Fr?hlich and Minnesota sophomore Lindsay Whalen have several things in common - they both were named conference player of the year this season, currently lead their teams in scoring and were recently named to The Associated Press and Kodak All-America teams. Fr?hlich is a three-time Mountain West Conference Player of the Year averaging 20.9 ppg and 10.5 rpg, while Whalen is the reigning Big Ten Conference Player of the Year turning out 21.7 ppg and 5.6 rpg. Fr?hlich and Whalen received Kodak All-America honorable mention honors on March 11 and are finalists for the Kodak All-America Team to be announced at the 2002 NCAA Women's Final Four in San Antonio, Texas. The pair were also honored on the AP Women's Basketball All-America team on March 12 with both being named third team selections. Fr?hlich, who had only received honorable mention honors the past two years, became only the fifth women's basketball player in school history to earn All-American status. She is also the first third-team selection.
UNIFORM RELATION
In all 30 games this season, UNLV has won more games (15) in its white home uniforms than in its red away jerseys (8). The Lady Rebels would be defeated in more games when wearing red (5) than in white (2).
LADY REBELS ON THE AIR
The 2001/02 season marks the 18th year and 15th consecutive season that Lady Rebel basketball games will be broadcast over the radio waves. It will also be the third year for all of the women's basketball schedule to be heard over the Internet and throughout the world on www.unlvrebels.com. Bob Blum, the dean of West Coast broadcasters, is in his 15th season calling play-by-play for Lady Rebel Basketball on KENO 1460 AM. Joining him for her fifth season on air will be former Lady Rebel Cheryl Kosewicz. Blum will host the Regina Miller Show 10-minutes prior to the tip-off for each game.
