Friday, December 03, 2010

DAYTON, Ohio - The Lipscomb Lady Bisons have never been beyond the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That is something coach Brandon Rosenthal and his players would like to change in their third trip to postseason play.

Friday at 5 p.m. CST the Lady Bisons, 24-6, will face Ohio State, 22-11, at the Frericks Center on the campus of host Dayton. Dayton, the No. 14 seed, will face Butler in the second match. The winners will play Saturday at 4:30 CST.

The Lady Bisons enter owning the distinction as the lone team to have posted consecutive perfect conference records. Over the last two years, they put together a 34-0 mark against A-Sun competition. No other team in the country has active back-to-back perfect seasons - after Hawaii fell in WAC title game. Matching their perfect play on the court, Lipscomb has posted three consecutive 100 percent marks in the NCAA Graduation Success Rates. Among the 64-team field, 28 others join Lipscomb as owning 100 percent marks in the latest reporting period.

The Lady Bisons were the last team to practice Thursday night. It was a fairly routine hour or so of work.

“Last year at Ohio State we were taking pictures at practice,” Rosenthal said. “This time around it was just another practice on the road.

“That was kind of a neat thing in the progression of the program. We expect to be here.”

Trying to keep everything routine is one of the things Rosenthal has been working hard to do since the Lady Bisons qualified for the NCAA Tournament.

One thing that Rosenthal wants to avoid is the way the Lady Bisons played in the first two sets of the Atlantic Sun Conference Championship against ETSU.

“We don’t want to get frustrated,” Rosenthal said. “Against ETSU we got frustrated. We saw our season deflating. Playing against teams like ETSU and Xavier at the end of the season has helped us to prepare.”

This is the third time the Lady Bisons have earned a berth in the tournament. It is the third time they have played in the first round in Ohio and the second time they have played in the tournament at Dayton.

But there are also some firsts as well. This is the first time the Lady Bisons have faced a team in the first round that is not seeded. It is also the first time they have played Ohio State.

But even more significant the teams have three common opponents, the first that has happened.

The Lady Bisons beat both Kennesaw State and Pittsburgh 3-0. They lost 3-0 to Purdue.

Ohio State beat both Kennesaw State and Pittsburgh 3-0 and lost to Purdue twice, 3-0 and 3-2.

“That gives us a little bit of familiarity,” Rosenthal said. “It puts us a little bit at ease. The girls have been around volleyball long enough to look at scores and figure out what is going on.”