bgorman@heraldsun.com; 419-6668
CHAPEL HILL -- The top-ranked Connecticut women's basketball team has won 53 consecutive games, the third-longest winning streak in NCAA history, which includes a national championship in April.
So when No. 7 North Carolina visits UConn today (4 p.m., WRAL), UNC coach Sylvia Hatchell knows most people are assuming the Huskies will roll to their 54th straight victory to tie the second-longest win streak in NCAA history set by LSU from 1980-82.
"I don't think anybody's expecting us to beat them -- except maybe us," Hatchell said.
Today marks the sixth straight year the two schools have met in the regular season, but the matchup has been one-sided recently. After UNC won the first three games in the series, UConn has won the past two matchups, including an 88-58 victory in Chapel Hill in 2009.
"We have nothing to lose, so I've just been telling everybody we just got to go out there and play hard and leave it on the floor," UNC guard Cetera DeGraffenreid said. "We don't want to come out having regrets like we did last year."
Hatchell said even though she hasn't seen any weaknesses in the Huskies (14-0), whose closest victory this season was an 80-68 win over No. 2 Stanford, that does not mean they're unbeatable.
"They are human and so somewhere along the way they're going to have a bad game," Hatchell said. "They are human, so they'll lose sometime or the other. [Today's] fine with me."
But injuries also could play a role in today's game, as each team might be without a starting guard.
UNC freshman Tierra Ruffin-Pratt separated her shoulder in a win over Winston-Salem State on Jan. 2 and didn't play in Wednesday's win over Georgia Tech. Hatchell said after the Georgia Tech game that she was hopeful Ruffin-Pratt, who has started five games this season for the Tar Heels (13-1), could play but said her shoulder still was sore and is listed as day-to-day.
"[Tierra] does a lot of things that don't get on the stat sheet," Hatchel said. "She's a smart player. She usually plays good defense. She sees everything out there. She's a really intelligent player."
The Huskies could be without sophomore shooting guard Tiffany Hayes, who sprained her left foot in the first 2 ¬
