"We look our longest road trip of the season. I'm writing this at the airport. The minute the game was over, we packed up our crap and headed straight for the biggest place in North Carolina that had an airplane.
Actually, I didn't feel lost in Greenville. Two of my friends came to see me from high school ball. We were all on the same team. It was about a seven or eight hour drive for them, and they'd both have to ride on the interstate all night, just to get back home the next day, but it was worth it to see them again. I hope my high school coach doesn't find out. Coach, just don't notice those "Brenda is the Best" and "We Love UTEP #13" signs if you have a secret TV feed to the game that the public doesn't know about. (I really didn't want them to drive that far, but I couldn't stop them.)
Coach Ballard told me all week, "watch out for Princess Abair", "watch out for Princess Abair" and I've heard so much about what she does that I'm sick. "You lapse on defense, Dean, and Abair's going to light you up!" We've really been working on defense, because the Pirates can put the ball up.
So I say hi to my friends, we meet for forty minutes before the game. (Until Coach Ballard calls me back into the locker room.) When we come out, it's a nice little crowd, but not so big that I could lose either of my friends. "Plenty of empty seats."
Anyway, Letell Hanson hits a 3-pointer to put us up 8-6 and for a long time we never look back. We come out hard in a pure zone and they look really tentative. They say a good zone looks like a man to man and we were doing all the right switches. We started to pull head, slowly, and had a 23-13 lead early on.
But East Carolina is dangerous. Abair steps back off that 3-point line like it was electrocuted. She doesn't make use of every inch of space; she'll take those shots a foot off the line, and she hit one that must have been from NBA distance. East Carolina closed back within single digits.
We had a 10-2 run at one point in the first half and at one point we led 41-25. We were playing well enough, but East Carolina was really pushing us off the boards. We had like 12 rebounds in the first half and they had 11. The Pirates closed to within 41-29.
Coach told us straight up. "You're not dominating. It's your free throws that are keeping you in it. (We were 10-for-13.) You're still reacting to them. You have to play your game and have faith in your game. It's UTEP basketball that's going to win this. The other team never knows what's coming!"
In the second half, our faith would be tested. We got cold on the court but East Carolina was still knocking them down and made adjustments, mixing up a pressure defense with a weak side trap whenever we tried to pass the ball. East Carolina started to close in. #12 (Serena Backes) hit a couple of 3-pointers. It was a 10-0 run I was told and the Pirates closed to 52-48.
Tia Ownby was pretty good out there. She hit a little midrange jumper that tied the game 56-56. We were now just hanging in there. "Have faith!" Coach said. "Spread them out, make sure you communicate, avoid the trap."
We were up 63-61, and East Carolina just fell apart. We went up on a 10-2 run, and led 73-63 going into the final few minutes. East Carolina looked busted. They failed the gut check. We passed it and got the win.
There were three pretenders. Now there are just two. There's us, there Southern Miss and there's friggin SMU. All 8-1 in conference. We're going back home feeling better about ourselves. Maybe I can turn this into a psych paper. Abair had 15 points, but I had 18 - not that I look at such things."
--Brenda Dean
This was a very tight game, and played out pretty much as our narrator said it did. UTEP's shooting sagged to 34 percent in the second half which gave the Pirates space to come back. But the Miners made a run as the game was down to the final minutes, and East Carolina just imploded.
Also: the head coach of East Carolina picked up two technical fouls before that final run. Maybe East Carolina didn't have a deep "coaching bench" and without the coach the team just fell apart. Whether Sharon Baldwin-Tener - the real coach of East Carolina - has ever picked up a technical foul is left as an aside.
Oh yes, and the final AP RPI rank and Coaches RPI rank.
API Poll RPI: 48
Coaches Poll RPI: 40
Up next: Marshall, back in El Paso.
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