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Women’s basketball releases 2008-09 schedule
Diane Nordstrom
September 4, 2008
MADISON, Wis. -- The University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team will play seven games on the Big Ten Network during the 2008-09 season as the Badgers’ schedule was released today. UW will also play eight games against 2008 NCAA tournament teams, seven games vs. opponents that were ranked or received votes in the final 2008 Associated Press poll and 13 games against teams that competed in the 2008 WNIT.
"The Big Ten Network is great national exposure for our program,” said UW head coach Lisa Stone. “For our fans and recruits, this is the perfect opportunity for everyone to get a close look at the Badgers. We’re really excited for the season and I think our fans will want to watch us play.”
The Badgers play all seven televised games on the Big Ten Network during the Big Ten Conference season. Wisconsin will also appear on the network during the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis and could also make a wildcard appearance during the last week of the regular season. In addition, several games will be streamed over the Internet by the network, above the 55 games that will be broadcast.
Highlighting the Badgers’ non-conference schedule is Baylor, which ended the season ranked 12th in the AP poll. Wisconsin plays the Bears, who advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament, finishing with a 25-7 mark, in the final round of the Paradise Jam in the U.S. Virgin Islands. At the same tournament, UW will also get a rematch with Villanova, which ousted the Badgers in the 2008 WNIT Tournament.
Four other nonconference opponents competed in the WNIT last season, including tournament champion Marquette. The Golden Eagles (21-14 in 2007-08) won the championship with a win over Michigan State. Wisconsin hosts Marquette as well as Drake (23-11) while taking to the road to compete at South Dakota State (23-7) and UW-Green Bay (26-6).
"Our 2008 nonconference schedule will be very competitive,” said Stone. “Six non-conference opponents reached post-season play during the 2007-08 season. We're playing teams from major conferences, which will prepare us very well for the Big Ten season. “
Wisconsin opens the Big Ten season on Dec. 22 by hosting Iowa (21-11), which received votes in the final AP poll and competed in the 2008 NCAA tournament. The Badgers make their first appearance on the BTN on Dec. 29, when they host Minnesota (20-12) at 8 p.m. in the Kohl Center. The meeting with the Golden Gophers, who lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament, is the only one during the regular season.
UW faces No. 25 Ohio State (22-9) twice during the season as well as Purdue (18-15), which received votes in the final AP poll. Four other Big Ten schools competed in the 2008 WNIT – Illinois (20-15), Indiana (18-15), Michigan (18-13) and Michigan State (20-13).
“I believe the Big Ten Conference will be as strong as it has been for quite some time,” said Stone. “Some of the top teams to watch are going to be Purdue and Ohio State. We have a challenging schedule ahead of us, but we are very much looking forward to having a great year."
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WAC, ESPN agree on extension through 2016-17
September 4, 2008
The Western Athletic Conference and ESPN have agreed to a seven-year contract extension that will give the network multi-platform rights through the 2016-17 academic year.
As a result of the comprehensive deal, ESPN will receive rights to distribute WAC football, basketball, Olympic sports and conference championships across its television networks, as well as ESPN360.com and ESPN Mobile TV. As part of the agreement, ESPNU will obtain rights to televise conference-controlled games for the first time beginning with the 2008-09 season.
"For the past five years, WAC football has benefited greatly from the exposure it has received from ESPN," said WAC commissioner Karl Benson. "The WAC values its relationship with the 'leader in college sports' and is confident that this extension will allow WAC football to continue to be a prominent player in the BCS. But just as important, this deal will finally get the WAC's men's basketball teams the type of national exposure it deserves. And finally, for the first time ever, women's basketball regular-season games will be aired on the ESPN networks along with the championship contests for volleyball and women's basketball."
"The WAC is a significant player on the college landscape and we are thrilled they will call ESPN home through 2016-17," said ESPN senior vice president Burke Magnus. "You cannot talk championship level teams without including WAC members in that conversation. With this agreement, college sports fans will continue to see -- in a bigger and better way -- the quality and depth of the conference as well as the passion and enthusiasm of their supporters."
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Kerri Hanks came back to Notre Dame and is focused on bringing a title to South Bend.
By Graham.Hays
Septermber 4, 2008
The daughter of Gary Hanks, a former semipro footballer in England who moved to Texas before she was born, Hanks is the most prolific offensive player in the college game today. She won the Hermann Trophy as a sophomore in 2006 -- the only sophomore, male or female, ever to win college soccer's most prestigious individual award -- and joined former North Carolina legend Mia Hamm as the only two players to lead the nation in both goals and assists for a season. With nearly a full season left to play, she needs one more assist to become the sixth women's player in NCAA history to total 60 goals and 60 assists during a career; barring injury, she should become just the third to reach 70 and 70.
She's fast, but there are faster forwards. She's strong and possesses a powerful shot, but there are stronger strikers. She's nimble with the ball but not noticeably more so than some other elite technicians. Where Hanks stands alone is in her ability to harness all of those myriad physical abilities within a tactician's mindset.
"If you just watch Kerri in the game, she is the best soccer brain on our team," senior teammate Brittany Bock said. "She knows where to run, when to run, when to tell players -- when I played at forward the last few seasons, I would go to her for my questions, because I knew she knew what she was talking about. On the field, she makes perfect runs; she knows exactly where to play the ball. ... It's really fun to watch and fun to play with, because she's always in the right place at the right time."
But after three successive postseason disappointments for a program which Bock said enters each season measuring success almost solely in terms of championships, Hanks wasn't sure she wanted to come back for her final season of eligibility. First came a quarterfinal loss against eventual champion Portland in 2005, erasing Notre Dame's opportunity to become the first school other than North Carolina to win back-to-back national championships and negating Hanks' 28-goal rookie campaign. Then a loss to North Carolina in the title game in 2006, just a day after Hanks edged out Tar Heels cornerstone Heather O'Reilly for the Hermann. And finally a semifinal loss to Florida State last season after a 3-4-1 start that included a 7-1 loss against Santa Clara.
Talking about Mami Yamaguchi, the 2007 Hermann Trophy winner, Hanks sounded almost wistful when it came to the pressure on a returning winner. Yamaguchi left a year of eligibility on the table at Florida State to sign a professional contract with Umea in Sweden.
"She had a great season, an amazing season," Hanks said. "If there was a time to leave, that was the time for her. Having to repeat that season, I think, would have probably been really hard."
Hanks arrived at Notre Dame for the 2004-05 academic year but wasn't on campus that fall while competing for the United States team at the Under-19 Women's World Cup in Thailand (contested every two years, the tournament is now an Under-20 event). But despite admitting that school "isn't my thing," the former National Honor Society scholar earned her degree in sociology last spring in just 31⁄2 years. With Women's Professional Soccer restoring a domestic league next spring -- including a franchise in Dallas, near Hanks' Plano home -- earning her degree left her to mull a decision as to whether she should return to South Bend (and play out her eligibility while pursuing graduate studies) or train full time for the next soccer step at home in Texas.
She sounds like a professional-in-waiting when discussing the various pros and cons she considered before making a decision. But one other significant factor weighed on her mind as she pondered this summer, and in talking about that, her typically dispassionate directness gave way to an intensity scarcely concealed in a few simple words.
"Also, I haven't won yet, and I kind of really want to win," Hanks said. "Not just for me, but for the team. For the four years, our senior class, we've gotten so close."
Wanting to win is something of an understatement when it comes to Hanks. As she herself admits, she may be the game's most ill-tempered soul in defeat. Notoriously demonstrative when showing displeasure on the field, she barks without hesitation at opponents, referees and even teammates who don't correctly assess a situation.
"I think maybe I don't come across verbally -- I'm really hard on my teammates, just because I expect the best out of them every day, day in and day out," Hanks admitted. "If it's an easy practice or if it's a game, I expect them to give 110 percent. So I'll ride my teammates, but I think I've done really well in the leadership of showing it on the field, of just going out there and giving my hardest every single chance I get. Hopefully the freshmen will get that out of me."
It wouldn't hurt the program's future if some of them also picked up her study habits.
Disappointed because she can't afford anything more than basic cable on a college student's budget, thus limiting her access to the likes of Fox Soccer Channel, Hanks watches soccer like many of her peers watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert -- religiously. A longtime Michael Owen fan, she only grudgingly admits to watching Chelsea matches in deference to the assortment of individual talent Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich continues to stockpile in London. She watches because she's a soccer junkie, but she also watches with the eye of a student eager to learn.
"I watch so much of it and I think that's one of the benefits I have over most girls, especially with my dad helping me," Hanks said. "Not only what they do on the ball, but I watch a lot of what they do off the ball. A lot of people, if they don't know the game, they're not going to look to see what you do off the ball, but I realized that, especially after my sophomore year, that I'm going to be a marked player. So I have to do a lot more off the ball. ... So the runs, the timing, even the placement of the ball whenever I have the ball is going to be so important. So I watch a lot, and I really look up to those players who create so many chances for themselves and for other people. And I think I just have a knack for that, knowing where to go and where to be. I thank my dad a lot for that."
It may be that Hanks will always be a player who is more easily applauded than embraced by a wider population not linked by rooting interest to her team. That may not be entirely, or even largely, her own doing. Searching for a way to describe both the skill and intensity of her teammate's game, Bock came to the conclusion that she "plays like a guy." From Bock, no shrinking violet herself on the field and a veteran of competition with and against male players, it was a complimentary assessment. But perhaps the flip side of that in women's college soccer, a sport in which rooting for players is a far more developed skill than rooting against players, is that Hanks opens herself up to the same sort of vitriol regularly directed toward a Wayne Rooney or Cristiano Ronaldo, players whose unique styles grate even as their skills amaze.
Of course, while her records make it easy to forget a time before she arrived on the scene, Hanks is still just 23. And even now, after considering a life beyond college soccer and opting instead to return, her perspective may be shifting and evolving.
"She's really seemed to enjoy it," Irish coach Randy Waldrum said of the early stages of her final season. "I think she struggled with the decision, like she said, not knowing what she really wanted to do. But I think once she made it, she was fully committed to it. And you're kind of seeing now with her this year, she seems to be relaxed and really not stressed and seems to be handling the pressure in a different way."
Hanks is immensely gifted on the field and frequently forthright off the field. Like many who possess a single-minded passion for something, she is a complex character.
But more than anything, she is a soccer junkie. And she wants a championship.
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Bock Talk
Brittany Bock speaks to Kerri Hanks' strengths for reasons beyond proximity on the field for the last four seasons.
Although her background is different as the daughter of a former college baseball player at the University of Illinois and a multi-sport athlete growing up, she has become a soccer addict happy to fall asleep on the couch watching Fox Soccer Channel. "She's a great tandem with Kerri, because they both are soccer junkies, and they have an understanding of the game," coach Randy Waldrum explained. "They can really key off of each other, probably better than any other players we have, because they have such a good understanding."
Back at midfield, at least for now, after moving back and forth between midfield and forward throughout her first three seasons, Bock has scored 40 goals in 73 career games, placing her No. 14 all time in Notre Dame's long and storied history.
"She's an animal," Hanks laughed. "I don't know; she's just Bock. She's great in the air, physical; she'll go out there and give 110 percent, great with holding the ball, even posting up as a target player. She's great at seeing the field all over, good at switching.
She's a well-rounded player; she can play in the mid, up top. And I wouldn't want to play against her."
Expect her to have no choice next year in the WPS.
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