a 76-54 win over fifth-seeded Kentucky<\/a> in the Sweet 16 on Saturday.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Neither guard is very tall. Harmon\u2019s pushing 5-foot-6 at best while\u00a0Daniels is listed at 5-7 with a grim-faced demeanor that\u2019s fitting for a small guard who doesn\u2019t shy away from contact and had an impressive nine rebounds in Michigan\u2019s 71-52 blowout of Louisville on Saturday.<\/p>\n
But Harmon isn\u2019t taking a backseat to anyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really pay much attention to that,\u201d Harmon said of the website ranking. \u201cThe game hasn\u2019t been played yet. I don\u2019t pay it any mind. I\u2019ll do whatever I can to help my team, and she\u2019ll do what she can to help team win.\u201d<\/p>\n
So while the Wolverines outwardly stew over the presumption Texas will win Monday and advance to a second straight Final Four, the Longhorns appear to be simmering just under the surface about Michigan\u2019s irritation.<\/p>\n
In other words, bring it on. Let\u2019s just say Michigan has gotten Texas\u2019 attention, which might be dangerous for a Wolverines program that has only been to the Sweet 16 three times in school history.<\/p>\n
The point should not be lost, however, that coach Kim Barnes Arico has a very good club and these two teams are very much mirror images of each other. Both strongly emphasize defensive play as the trademarks of their program.<\/p>\n
Arico goes so far as to reward her Michigan players with UM stickers for details like diving for loose balls and taking charges. No one has more than Daniels.<\/p>\n
Asked how many she has, Daniels estimated she has \u201clike 30 to 35.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teammate Syla Swords corrected her, however, saying, \u201cOh, you\u2019ve got more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arico isn\u2019t as established as Schaefer, but the 14-year head coach is building something big in Ann Arbor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to get to the level of being a consistent Final Four team and have that experience,\u201d Arico said. \u201cTexas only has three losses. The way they pressure and defend, their toughness and relentlessness, those are things we definitely pride ourselves on. I would say the way we want to play the game is very similar, but they have a little more experience and depth.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Wolverines don\u2019t have a player taller than 6-3. Texas starts 6-4 Breya Cunningham at center and brings in the impactful 6-6 Kyla Oldacre off the bench. The Longhorns also have very physical players in 6-1 forward Justice Carlton as well as 6-1 guards Madison Booker and Aaliyah Crump.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the matter off location. Of the 11,197 on hand for Texas\u2019 win over Kentucky on Saturday, a big majority of them were wearing burnt orange.<\/p>\n
Arico did mention that Michigan considers this venues as \u201ca little bit of a home game\u201d for Texas, whose campus is 190 miles south of Dickies Arena.<\/p>\n
In his turn at the podium, Schaefer said, \u201cWe treat this as a road game, and there are certain things we have to do on the road to win. Defense is certainly a part of what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uh, that\u2019s the biggest understatement of the postseason since Texas picks up opponents at the concession-stand line. So does Michigan, which applies just as much pressure.<\/p>\n
While the Longhorns measure their defensive prowess in bruises instead of stickers, they do keep tabs on many of their standards. They proudly promote their 30 five-second violations forced\u00a0\u2014 which are a dozen more than any other women\u2019s Division I team\u00a0\u2014 and 101 charges. Harmon has a team-high 40 of those.<\/p>\n
She and Daniels have a chance to set the record straight but so much more is at stake.<\/p>\n
That said, the brewing controversy may have legs. The Wolverines seem to think so.<\/p>\n
As Michigan\u2019s Alyssa Crockett said, \u201cWe were, like, \u2018Did they mean to do that? \u2019 And we were like, \u2018Ah, they definitely did.\u2019 We\u2019re a 2 seed. We shouldn\u2019t be forgotten about. We shouldn\u2019t be overlooked just because we\u2019re not the No. 1 seed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oh, trust us, Alyssa, they\u2019ll remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longhorn players placing Texas in the regional champion spot on the bracket after beating Kentucky on Saturday rubbed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-226119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}