OU in Hawaii Tourney with UCONN

[vickie1ok]

See link to story. Apparently OU will play in Hawaii tourney in late November which also includes Uconn and North Carolina. An interesting start for the year!

http://espn.go.com/ncw/news/2002/0724/1409756.html

[elfdenmom]

Now that is a tournament I would love to see!

[HuskerFan86]

Wow, what an awesome tournament that should be. I think a lot of people are expecting UConn, OU, and Carolina to be down this upcoming year. UConn and OU each graduated 4 starters from their team and North Carolina lost one of my favorite players, the exciting Nikki Teasley to graduation. But I believe all three of them will surprise quite a few people this year. OU returns Caton Hill and Dionnah Jackson, and Coale brought in quite a few talented newcomers. Sooners will be tough.

UConn, as always, graduated a ton of talent, and replaced it with even more. Leadership and how well the youngsters come together will determine how far the Huskies will go this year (I'm guessing Geno won't let them fall too far).

As for UNC, they should be a big time darkhorse in the ACC. Sure they lost Nikki Teasley, but they replace her with talented freshman LaTangela Atkinson, a 6'1" guard who appears to be very similar to Teasley. The Tar Heels will be very tall, very athletic, and very dangerous. If Atkinson is as advertised and Carolina can be more consistent, they will make the Elite 8. Coretta Brown is force to be reckoned with at shooting guard and 6'0" sophmore forward Nikita Bell made huge strides last season. UNC's biggest asset, pun intended, may be 6'6" center Candace Sutton. She fills the paint wonderfully and is one of the most underated post players in the nation. Sutton may be what gives the Heels the edge over Duke this season, as the Devils have no proven post players who can effectively guard her. It would be quite hilarious to see Duke's "post" Iciss Tillis try to guard Sutton, because she is all power. I really like N.C.'s chances this season and it will be great to see them butt heads with power houses like OU and UConn.

[NoDakSt]

I think UNC will definitely be stronger this year than last year and I am not sure of the format of the tourney but I think in the early stages of the year, they could take UCONN to the woodshed (last year's UCONN blowout should provide plenty of incentive). UNC and DUke are definitely the front runners in the ACC. With each game last year, UNC closed a little bit closer on Duke losing by margins of 20, 15, and 7. Duke had the better (albeit smaller) bench in those matchups and I think that bench strength for DUke is even stonger this year. A luxury for UNC as opposed to OK and UCONN is that the frosh for UNC doesn't have to step it up right away and has time to learn the system.