George Washington Hosts Boise St. In First Round

Colonials enter NCAA tournament with highest seed in decade

March 17, 2007

George Washington enters the NCAA tournament with its highest seed in a decade, but a disappointing loss in its conference tournament may have cost it an even better one.

The Colonials look to use that defeat as motivation for the tournament and they'll try to get off to a fast start when they host Boise State in a first-round game in Los Angeles on Saturday.

George Washington (26-3) went undefeated in Atlantic 10 play during the regular season, and brought a 19-game winning streak into its conference tournament semifinal matchup with Saint Joseph's. The Colonials had a 13-point lead with five minutes remaining, but collapsed and lost 57-55.

"We're not done," said point guard Kimberly Beck, the A-10 defensive player of the year. "This kind of throws us in the fire. We've got to clean up stuff and try to make a run in the (NCAA) tournament."

The loss dropped the Colonials seven spots in the AP poll to No. 15, and took some luster off what has been the best season in school history.

Although they earned a fifth seed in the Dallas Regional - their best since being a No. 5 seed in 1997 - they had been hoping for better.

"I was a little disappointed," said Joe McKeown, the A-10 coach of the year. "I thought we earned the right to be a 3 or 4 seed with the kind of year we had."

The only other losses for McKeown's team came on the road to then-No. 1 Maryland and then-No. 6 Tennessee. The Colonials became the fifth team to go through an A-10 season undefeated en route to their sixth straight regular-season title.

George Washington is making its fifth consecutive NCAA tournament appearance and 14th overall.

"When we woke up a week ago, we were eighth in the country," McKeown said. "You know you can compete with anybody, but you also know there's a lot of land mines out there. You can't look past Boise State in the first round, but I do think we have the potential.

"We scheduled at Tennessee, at Maryland, at Georgia. We played all those teams nonconference to prepare for this time of year."

Sarah-Jo Lawrence is also averaging 13.1 points while Kenan Cole provides solid shooting from the perimeter, connecting on 40.9 percent (38-of-93) of her 3-pointers.

Boise State (24-8) is making just its second trip to the NCAA tournament after defeating host New Mexico State 49-46 to win the WAC tournament for the first time in school history.

Broncos sophomore guard Jessica Thompson was named tournament MVP, averaging 16.3 points and 4.7 rebounds in three games.

The Broncos also were WAC co-champions in the regular season with the top scoring offense (69.0 ppg) and defense (60.5 ppg) in the conference.

Boise State's only other trip to the NCAA tournament came in 1994 when it was an at-large team out of the Big Sky Conference, losing in the first round to Washington.

Saturday's winner plays either fourth-seeded Texas A&M or 13th seed Texas-Arlington in the second round on Monday.