Utah-Purdue Preview

3/20/2008 10:33 AM

By JEFF MEZYDLO
STATS Senior Writer

A last-second basket has Purdue in the NCAA tournament for a 15th straight season. A shocking upset in its most recent game could have cost Utah a better seed.

The ninth-seeded Boilermakers look to continue their surge when they host the eighth-seeded Utes in a first-round game of the Oklahoma City Regional on Sunday.

Purdue (18-14) needed to win a second straight Big Ten tournament title to clinch an automatic NCAA bid and keep the nation's fifth-longest streak for consecutive tournament appearances intact.

That's what happened when Lakisha Freeman's putback off her own miss with 0.3 seconds left gave the Boilermakers a 58-56 victory over Illinois in the conference championship game on March 9.

The win capped off an impressive run for Purdue, which won three games in three days after losing four of its final six regular-season contests. The Boilermakers averaged 67.3 points in the Big Ten tournament after just 58.2 during the regular season.

"It's just great, it's a tradition here at Purdue (to make the NCAA tournament) and we're playing really good basketball coming off the Big Ten tournament," said Freeman, the team's co-leader at 12.3 points per game. "So we're just looking to go out there and do great things."

After an inconsistent regular season that began with the Boilermakers knowing they would be without returning starters Lyndsay Wisdom-Hylton and Jodi Howell due to season-ending injuries, they could now host as many as two tournament games at Mackey Arena.

A victory Sunday and the Boilermakers will likely meet top-seeded Tennessee in Tuesday's second round. The Volunteers face 16th-seeded Oral Roberts on Sunday.

Purdue, which lost to North Carolina in the regional finals in 2007, has reached the round of 16 in four of the last five seasons.

"A lot of teams couldn't do what we did losing their two best players and playing the second-best schedule in the country," said Purdue coach Sharon Versyp, whose team went 11-3 at home in 2007-08. "That's been our year, up and down, and it was good it finished the way it did."

Utah (27-4), meanwhile, went 16-0 to win the Mountain West regular-season title and could have been headed for a higher seed before losing 60-52 to Colorado State - which went winless in league play - in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament on March 12.

The loss snapped a 22-game winning streak for the Utes, who shot a season-low 29.3 percent and scored their second-fewest points of the season.

"Rather it be (in the conference tournament) than the first round of the NCAAs when you know you're done for good," said Utah forward Morgan Warburton, who averages a team-leading 17.2 points but was held to 11 against Colorado State. "Maybe this is just a little bit of a wake-up call for us."

Though the 18th-ranked Utes hold the higher seed, they will be playing in a road-game environment as they return to the NCAA tournament after failing to make the field in 2007 and reaching the regional finals in 2006. Utah went 11-1 on the road this season.

Purdue must contain point guard and MWC player of the year Leilani Mitchell, who averaged 16.8 points and 7.5 assists in her first season with Utah after transferring from Idaho.

This will be the first meeting between these schools.