For the Purdue Boilermakers, the postseason is all about the number one.
They are the No. 1 team in the country, the No. 1 seed in the Midwest region and beat everyone's preseason No. 1 Tennessee in their first game. Even their lone loss of the season-which came at the hands of Stanford-was by a single point. Not surprisingly, the Boilermakers are in the hunt for their first national championship.
Coach Carolyn Peck and her players enter the NCAA tournament as arguably the hottest team in the country. Since dropping the narrow decision to the Cardinal, Purdue has won every game since. Their impressive winning streak has reached 26 games, including a perfect 20-0 conference record and a sweep of the Big 10 tournament.
The Boilermakers (28-1) have proven themselves in non-conference play also. Along with wins over potential Regional opponents Arizona and Florida, they also took down La. Tech, avenging their defeat at the Techsters' hands in the 1998 tournament.
Aside from the revenge factor, Peck feels her team took something valuable away from its loss one game shy of last year's Final Four.
"I think we learned a lesson when we played in Lubbock last year," she said. "We talked about being 20 minutes away from being in the Final Four instead of taking it one possession at a time in that 20 minutes. If you get too hung up on the end of the tournament and you don't take care of business with the game at hand, you can struggle."
Taking care of business is what first-team All-America guard Stephanie White-McCarty does almost every time she steps on the court. The 5-foot-11 junior leads her team in scoring and assists and can crash the boards as well. Running mate Ukari Figgs is Purdue's secondary scorer and distributor.
Some of the main competition in the Midwest will try to beat the Boilermakers at their own game. Both third-seeded Rutgers (26-5) and fourth-seeded North Carolina (26-7) are led by dynamic guards. Shawnetta Stewart leads the Scarlett Knights in scoring and rebounding and is backed up by a balanced attack with four players averaging between 9.9 and 10.9 points per game.
Super soph Nikki Teasley is the engine that makes North Carolina go. But while classmates Juana Brown and LaQuanda Barksdale are next on the team in terms of talent, the ultimate fate of the Tar Heels may be decided by the inconsistent play of frontcourt players Chanel Wright and Yanick Clay.
No. 2 seed Texas Tech (28-3) relies on its inside game, specifically second team All-America center Angie Braziel. To keep opponents honest, guard Rene Hanebutt drained 103 three-pointers during the regular season.
The biggest problem for all three of Purdue's main rivals in the Midwest is a common one: a lack of big wins against non-conference foes. North Carolina beat No. 5 seed Alabama but lost at UCLA. Texas Tech won at Stanford but got trounced at Old Dominion.
With that in mind, Lady Raider coach Marsha Sharp knows even lower seeds could do some damage in her team's region.
"It used to be that the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds really didn't have too much trouble getting through, but that's not the case any more," she said. "It's more like it is on the men's side."
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