DALLAS — Anything is possible.
That seems to all but sum up the collective battle cry of Mississippi State women’s basketball fans who traveled to Dallas this week to see the Bulldogs’ Final Four tilt with the juggernaut Connecticut Huskies — a team riding a 111-game winning streak coming into tonight’s national semifinal, which tips off at 9 at American Airlines Center.
Last year, many fans admittedly only faintly hoped the Bulldogs could beat Connecticut before the Huskies thoroughly dashed those hopes with a 98-38 trouncing in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 round. Those same fans, however, are embracing tonight’s rematch with belief their team will do what they couldn’t do last season — and what no other team so far has done this season.
“We are here to win,” said Carol Hazard of West Point. “This is a new year.”
Carol and her husband Steve joined a few dozen other MSU fans in the Hilton Anatole hotel atrium Thursday night who gathered for an on-site broadcast of the DawgTalk radio show. Vic Schaefer, head coach for the record-setting 33-4 Bulldogs who are playing in the program’s first Final Four, appeared personally to stoke the fire of the cowbell-clanging horde, many of whom were armed with at least a short list of reasons why MSU not “could,” but “would” get sweet revenge by knocking off the Huskies.
“Our team is tough as nails,” Steve Hazard said. “They had opportunities to give up already in this tournament, against Washington (in the Sweet 16) and Baylor (in an overtime win in the Elite Eight), but they didn’t. And they won’t give up (today) either.”
Carol, as did others, pointed to MSU’s experience, with a team led primarily by battle-tested juniors and seniors. Connecticut, on the other hand, lost three of last year’s stars to the WNBA and have a much younger squad.
“(The Bulldogs) are a cohesive unit,” she said. “They are a team. And they are ready.”
As to UConn’s streak, the conventional wisdom among MSU fans is that all good things must come to an end.
“Somebody’s got to beat them, and it might as well be us,” said Beth Crawford of Mayhew, who brought her husband, John, along to watch the Final Four. “UConn just needs to be surprised.”
“We’re better than we were last year, and they’re not,” John chimed in.
The Crawfords said they have followed Bulldog athletics since moving to Starkville in 1978. They’ve seen lean years and great ones, in several sports. And while Beth certainly has no plans to embrace a “happy to be here” attitude on behalf of this women’s basketball team, she begrudgingly admits there are worse things than losing to UConn in the Final Four.
“I’ll be crushed,” she said. “But it’s an honor for anybody to get this far. I mean, (MSU) is one of the top four teams in the nation, and nobody can take that away from them.”
UConn fans
At an Omni hotel just walking distance from the arena, Charlotte Ackerman and Liz Wilson stood at a table bedecked with Final Four paraphernalia discussing where all they could go on the shuttle. They were also discussing their Huskies’ prospects in the coming game.
Ackerman, of Gramdy, and Wilson, of Simsbury, both towns in Connecticut, are long-time UConn women’s basketball season ticket holders who began watching the team play in the 1990s when the games were still broadcast on Connecticut public television.
They don’t pay attention to the scores of UConn’s games unless they’re close, which they rarely are. But they remember specific plays from the handful of games the Huskies have lost over those years, and they don’t take anything for granted — especially not tonight.
“Mississippi State is a fantastic team with a great coach,” Ackerman said. “They have great size, and we’re so small. I think we’ll win, but it won’t be an easy game.”
Both Ackerman and Wilson anxiously recalled games this year when they’ve watched their team “struggle,” when “nothing came easy.” Some of those games, they later admitted, were double-digit UConn victories.
Wilson noted that against UCLA in this year’s Sweet 16, the Huskies fell behind 9-2 before bouncing the Bruins by an 86-71 score.
The Huskies this year are playing in their 10th straight Final Four and for their fifth straight title.
Both Ackerman and Wilson remember names of players on those teams and talk about them like they’re relatives. They discuss about Xs and Os from specific match-ups, and they also celebrate the joy of being fans of one of sports’ most successful programs in history — albeit they do it with a modicum of humility and a nod to MSU’s mantra tonight that “anything can happen.”
“It has been a long time, but we have seen them lose,” Wilson said of the Huskies.
But the women said this year’s team has been among the most entertaining to watch, especially since their eliteness was in question before the season began.
“These kids have really worked hard, and you can see the emotion when they play,” Ackerman said. “You can see the joy on their faces. And that’s what we like.”
How to watch
Time: Tonight at 9 p.m. CST
TV: ESPN2
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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