According to the Minnesota Star-Tribune, former Connecticut Sun center Taj McWilliams-Franklin has been named an assistant women’s basketball coach at Rice.
McWilliams-Franklin of the Lynx, now in her 14th WNBA season, will join the Owls staff when the Lynx season ends.
This likely means that 2012 will the last of her career. At 41, she is the WNBA’s oldest player this season and has a one-year contract.
McWilliams-Franklin is averaging 7.5 points, 6.3 rebounds and 27.8 minutes through four games.
Minnesota plays the Connecticut Sun Friday at the Mohegan Sun Arena at 7.
During his discussion with reporters Tuesday at the Hartford Golf Club, Geno Auriemma said he wasn’t concerned about recent decisions that sent high school phenoms Diamond DeShields, Taya Reimer and Karlie Samuelson to North Carolina, Notre Dame and Stanford’s Class of 2013.
He promised UConn would fire back soon with verbal commitments of its own.
“Every year you recruit there are people you get, other you don’t,” Auriemma said. “But there are people we are going to get, this week, next week, the week after that hardly anyone knows about. Commitments are going to happen soon.”
And he was right.
Courtney Ekmark, a 6-foot sophomore guard from Phoenix, is coming to UConn, the first member of its Class of 2014. She had also made unofficial visits to Duke, North Carolina and Stanford.
Here is some information on Ekmark from espn.go.com
Here is more from Rebecca Gray of HoopGurlz.com
Courtney Ekmark, Phoenix, Ariz.: This 6-foot wing is a true student of the game. She was able to get shots from anywhere on the floor by simply reading her defender and making the necessary cut off a screen. Ekmark does not have blazing speed, but she makes up for it by using angles and thinking a step ahead. She was able score in a variety of ways, and it did not matter if the person guarding her was taller or faster because she knew how to work off the screen to get open. On defense, she was able to keep her opponent in front of her by giving a few steps and cutting off certain spots on the floor. The competition is never too big for Ekmark, and she proved that even when her challenger was faster, taller and sometimes even stronger.
Ekmark’s teammate, Shilpa Tummala, helped St. Mary’s go 30-0 and nab the Division I state crown and a national championship. St. Mary’s dominated at the Nike Tournament of Champions, winning the Joe Smith Division. They went 6-0 against out-of-state opponents and outside of a six-point win over Chandler in January, no team came close; St. Mary’s outscored Arizona opponents 1,617-762 in finishing with its second consecutive title.
UConn still has no players in the Class of 2013.
Divorce is never a good thing. Nastiness normally prevails. Families are disrupted. Mutual friends are left conflicted, forced to choose sides. And what to do during special occasions like weddings, baptisms and Final Four welcoming dinners? Do you leave two doors open in the ballroom so the parties at war can enter and exit separately?
That’s apparently where we are now with UConn and Tennessee. The Lady Vols served papers Tuesday night by issuing their one sentence rejection of UConn’s offer that they meet for coffee someone and try to talk things out. Geez, UConn was even going to pick up the check!
So now we know; what happened, whatever was said, whatever was done, imagined, supposed, suggested, rumored and floated was enough to really make the people at Tennessee so angry they believe there is no looking back. No olive branch. No arbitration. No peace Summitt.
Let me tell you, that’s very angry.
All that’s left to say now is fare thee well, Lady Vols. Good luck with your new coach, your new sports information director, the consolidation of your athletic department, the deposition of your pending lawsuits and trying to keep the ball moving in the way Coach Summitt rolled it.
We are sure the Pat Summitt Foundation will thrive without the boost of a UConn-Tennessee reunion on ESPN, perhaps in front of 19,000 at Madison Square Garden. We are sure the game of women’s basketball, with such declining relevance in the national media, will deal successfully with this, now without a chance to ever beat its chest again about one of the greatest rivalries in collegiate sports history.
We are sure the Lady Vols are certain they have made the right decision and can content themselves by playing everyone else in the nation except the program most associated with it, in terms of national prominence, WNBA player placement and historical significance.
We are sure, MLB will someday allow the Yankees and Red Sox to quit playing. Army and Navy can’t last forever. How long will it take before Yale gets really peeved at Harvard and takes home its tailgate candleabra.
That’s for the memories, Tennessee. See you down the road someday.
Just don’t stay mad forever. It’s not good for your health.
UConn will play Wake Forest, Marist and Purdue November 22-24 in the 2012 U.S. Virgin Islands Paradise Jam at the University of the Virgin Islands. The four teams will make up the Island Division tournament bracket.
Connecticut won the 2007 Paradise Jam in its only other appearance in the event, defeating Stanford, Old Dominion and Duke en route to the title.
UConn plays Wake November 22 at 6 p.m., Marist on November 23 at 8:15 p.m. and Purdue on November 24 at 8:15. All times are eastern.
Wake Forest finished the 2011-12 season with a 13-18 overall record, including at 4-12 mark in the ACC. The Demon Deacons finished the year ranked 87 in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). The Huskies are 2-0 all-time against Wake Forest with the last matchup coming on November 26, 2001.
Marist has made seven-straight NCAA Tournament appearances and finished the 2011-12 season with a 26-8 overall record, including a 17-1 mark in Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference action. The Red Foxes finished ranked No. 43 in the RPI and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Connecticut is 3-0 all-time against Marist and the two sides have not met since November 12, 2005.
Purdue finished 25-9 last year and posted an 11-5 mark in Big 10 play. The Boilermakers finished ranked No. 15 in the RPI and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the second-straight year. Connecticut is 4-1 all-time vs. Purdue most recently defeating the Boilers 64-40 in the second round of the 2011 NCAA Tournament at Gampel Pavilion.
Well, you can forget the concept of a renewal of the UConn-Tennessee rivalry in women’s basketball.
One on the same day UConn coach Geno Auriemmma re-affirmed the Huskies willingness to mend fences and talk about playing the Lady Vols for the first time since 2007, Tennessee shot the concept down in the most emphatic way.
“Tennessee has no plans to resume the series with UConn,” said Lady Vols spokesman Eric Trainer.
I guess the rivalry just got a little more intense.
I have been fortunate for the last four years to be invited to attend Geno Auriemma’s “Fore The Kids” golf tournament at the Hartford Golf Club. This year’s event, the 10th annual, was expected to raise about $100,000 for the Connecticut Children’s Hospital. And what could be better than that?
I do not play golf. Never have. But it’s nice hanging out at a beautiful venue, such as HGC, and get caught up with Coach Auriemma, a very busy man these days.
“This involves a lot of things that I enjoy doing,” Auriemma said. “I can get out on the golf course, be around great people that I’ve gotten to know over my 10 years here. I can have a nice glass of wine at the end of the night and raise a lot of money for a great cause and a great bunch of kids. Their parents rely on that. The doctors count on it for their research.
After losing both of his parents to cancer within six months of one another in 2002, Chuck Steedman, the senior vice president and General Manager of Hartford’s XL Center, decided he needed to do something to help in the fight against cancer.
On July 28, Chuck takes the road with his #CHUCK512 Cycling for Cancer Research Tour – raising funds and cancer awareness throughout the northeast. The journey will begin south of Buffalo where he will ride 512 miles to Sturbridge, MA, just in time for the beginning of his 10th consecutive Pan-Mass Challenge.
The PMC’s 192 mile bike ride is the largest athletic fundraising event in the United States and last year alone raised over $35 million for cancer research
Before a Tennessee spokesman told the Courant Tuesday night the Lady Vols will not consider a resumption of its series with UConn, Geno Auriemma said he was willing to discuss a new regular-season series between the two national powerhouses, as soon as the 2013-14 regular season.
Tuesday morning, before assuming his duties at the “Fore The Children” golf tournament at the Hartford Golf Club, which benefits the Connecticut Children’s Hospital to the tune of about $100,000 annual, Auriemma confirmed he iwas open to the idea.
Before assuming his duties as master of the house at his annual “Fore The Children” golf outing at Hartford Golf Club to benefit the Connecticut Children’s Hospital, UConn coach Geno Auriemma opened up about a lot of things, including his first extended statement about the Huskies decision to leave CPTV after 18 years for SNY.
“Listen, CPTV did a lot for our program. And we, in turn, helped them become the No. 1 public broadcasting station in the United States,” Auriemma said. “No one made more money then they did. The way it worked for all these years is, we helped make them what they are by televising our games; the most watched public broadcasting station in America – and the most profitable.
“In return, they gave us the platform and the exposure that no other women’s team in America had. It was such a great partnership, such a great relationship. It was unique. It didn’t exist anywhere else in the nation.
Five years after Pat Summitt suddenly put an end to the UConn-Tennessee women’s basketball rivalry both sides may now be in the mood to consider reconciliation.
A source from the UConn athletic program and another close to the Lady Vols told The Courant both sides would be willing to discuss the resumption of a regular-season series between the two national powerhouses, as soon as the 2013-14 regular season.
“I can understand why UConn would be interested in it,” said the Tennessee source. “It wasn’t their decision to end the series in the first place.”
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