Coach Sylvia Hatchell of North Carolina hadn't scanned through the NCAA Tournament bracket to check out other second-round matchups. Nothing she sees will change her mind about the toughest of those games.
That would be her 11th-ranked Tar Heels playing Purdue yet again on the biggest stage.
"When we played them before, it's either been like the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight or something like that," Hatchell said yesterday after practice at McKenzie Arena.
This time around, third-seeded North Carolina will play No. 6 seed Purdue tonight for the third time in four NCAA tournaments, in their earliest meeting yet with a trip to Oklahoma City for the regional semifinal on the line. The winner will play either Rutgers or Auburn on March 29.
"Whether it's destiny for us to always be that way, I guess we'll still see what happens," Coach Sharon Versyp of Purdue said.
Boilermakers guard FahKara Malone said that they did think, "Oh, here we go again," when they saw themselves headed toward another tournament game with North Carolina (28-6).
"It really doesn't matter what side of the bracket we're on. They're an amazing team. To have to go through the best and get to the top, that's what you have to do. We're happy to get to play them and challenge ourselves because they are such a great team," she said.
This series hasn't been good for Purdue (23-10).
North Carolina is 4-1 overall and has won the last three. The Tar Heels knocked Purdue out of the Dallas Regional Final in 2007 and pulled out a 70-68 win in the Cleveland Regional semifinal in 2006. North Carolina also beat the Boilermakers 90-72 on Nov. 29, 2007, in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.
Purdue didn't have Lindsay Wisdom-Hylton, the Big Ten's active leading scorer, or Jodi Howell, the Boilermakers' career 3-point leader, in that game. Wisdom-Hylton was recovering from a torn ACL that cost her last season with Howell working her way back from shoulder surgery.
Senior Rashanda McCants of the Tar Heels said that both teams are different from that last game. She knows the 6-2 Wisdom-Hylton from USA basketball and is confident in the Tar Heels' two 6-3 forwards in Jessica Breland, the ACC's top shot blocker, and Iman McFarland can help handle her.
"It is just going to be a fast-paced game, and I think we are going to probably have the upper hand in that," McCants said.
UNC likes to run and has the nation's second-best scoring average, averaging 83.1 points a game while Purdue is holding opponents to 56.6 points and 36.3 percent shooting. The Boilermakers forced a season-high 28 turnovers in its first-round win against UNC Charlotte.
,"Our defense has really picked up toward the end of the season," Wisdom-Hylton said. "I think we're playing really good basketball this year. Our defense, we've been switching up, doing man and zone, full-court pressing and doing different things. We just want to kind of mix things up for North Carolina, so that they won't get too comfortable."
Hatchell sees Purdue as talented enough to race up and down like her Tar Heels.
"They run too now. Off missed shots and turnovers, they can go. I think they would be a great fast-breaking team if that was the style they choose to play," Hatchell said.
This will be personal for the five Purdue seniors and the four in Carolina blue. Asked what she recalls of their NCAA tournament games, Wisdom-Hylton laughed and quipped, "Other than the losses?"
Then she got serious.
"They're very physical and very aggressive and they've been great every year we've played them.
"We need to match ... their aggressiveness and box out. Last time we played them, they did like to score. They score really easy...."
They got a lot of points on us. We need to play better defense," she said.
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