Gators’ Bite Severs USC’s NCAA Quest

GAINESVILLE, Fla. â€”  USC was here on a mission.

The Trojans wanted to show the women’s basketball community that Stanford isn’t the only Pacific 10 team that can play the game well, even against vaunted Southeastern Conference teams.

Then came Monday night at Florida’s O’Connell Center, in Round Two of the NCAA tournament.

Whoops.

Mission failure. Crash. Call some ambulances.

With all sirens wailing and red lights blinking, Florida’s third-place Southeastern Conference team, ranked seventh in the country, was an overpowering, 92-78 winner, before 3,569. It was a game that at one point appeared heading toward USC’s worst defeat. Yes, even worse than some of those Stanford thumpings.

Here’s the statement Florida made: There’s a reason eight Southeastern Conference teams finished ranked in the final AP poll--four in the Top 10--and USC went unranked.

The Gators are better than Pac-10 teams. Much better.

Florida (23-8) won in less time than the Gators needed to tape their ankles.

Six minutes into this Mideast sub-regional final, it was 12-1. It was 25-3 after 11 minutes.

With Florida’s 6-foot-1 DeLisha Milton bearing the defensive load and Murriel Page hitting 14 of 18 shots, scoring 35 points and grabbing 16 rebounds, and both hammering USC’s Tina Thompson every time she touched the ball, the Trojans seemed rattled, even intimidated at times.

It was 46-22 at halftime.

“They pounded us,� said Thompson, the senior second-team All-American.

“They kept pushing, pushing . . . like they were trying to put as many points on the board as they could. They did a good job of keeping the ball away from me, and when I got it, they didn’t give me a whole lot of room to work with.

“Their double-teaming was tenacious and very effective.�

Thompson, who led the Pac-10 in scoring and finished seventh in the nation with a 22.7-point average, had 13 on Monday, with five rebounds.

Florida Coach Carol Ross, whose team advances to the Mideast regional at Purdue, where it will play Louisiana Tech, denied Thompson was a marked woman.

“Our plan was to double up on anyone who came into the paint with the ball, no matter who it was,� Ross said.

“DeLisha took that defensive assignment on Thompson and did a great job, but so did the whole team. We had a tremendous effort in practice all week. When your players play with this kind of commitment, you get these kinds of results.�

USC’s defensive effort fell far short of Florida’s. After the Trojans defeated San Francisco on Saturday, they watched Florida point guard Dana Smith throw in three three-point baskets against Florida International.

Against USC, she was five for seven from behind the arc.

Smith was a major scorer in the critical first 12 minutes, with three three-point baskets. When that wasn’t happening, Page was soaring up and over the 6-3 Thompson and 6-5 Michelle Campbell.

In the opening run to 25-3, Page scored five times from inside, including the basket that made it 25-3, when she went over Thompson.

Florida had a 30-point lead early in the first half and had it up to 37, 71-34, before Ross began some mercy substitutions. If she hadn’t, Florida might have approached the record for USC’s worst beating, 109-53, by Stanford in 1995.

Tempo and tone. Two words on a chalkboard.

“That’s what we stressed before we took the floor,� Ross said.

“We wanted every player, every position, thinking tempo and tone.

“We wanted to play hard and fast, and when we had open shots, to let them go.�

Milton, who hounded Thompson--who made three of 11 shots--said she tried to keep the Trojan senior off-balance when she got the ball.

“I could sense she [Thompson] was getting frustrated,� Milton said.

“We tried our best to not let her get the ball.�

Ross said she wanted to go to Purdue with her team feeling it’s the team to beat.

“I want them feeling like they’re on a roll, not just happy to be there,� she said.