Women enter final half of Big East play

One team has dominated every opponent it has come across this season and has all but locked up a top-seed in the NCAA Tournament. The other has bounced back and forth around the middle of the Big East and is looking for any leverage they can to get into the tournament picture.

Entering the final halves of their Big East seasons, Marquette's and No. 1 UConn's vastly differing paths will cross when the two teams face off at the Al McGuire Center in Milwaukee (8 p.m., CPTV).

Since defeating Georgia Tech 82-71 in the opening game of the season, UConn has won each game by no fewer than 14 points and holds the highest win margin in the NCAA at 33.3 points per game.

While the Huskies have cruised through the Big East to an 8-0 record, they've encountered their fair share of physical teams, but that's something the team has come to expect from every opponent in the conference.

"The teams are better," said senior captain Renee Montgomery. "They're physical with talent … I think every night we go in and teams are giving us a run. I just think everybody's physical."

The Huskies, despite all their dominance so far, are still prone to rough stretches where the team underperforms during games as they showed in Tuesday night's 75-56 win over Rutgers.

After going up 22-11 in the first half, UConn allowed Rutgers to post an 11-0 run to get back into the game before pushing the lead back to 34-28 at halftime and blowing the Scarlet Knights out in the second half.

After the game, coach Geno Auriemma said that a lot of it came down to making sure the team did the little things right.

"Every one of these games is like an NCAA game," Auriemma said Tuesday. "You're going to have to do some little things other than just stand there and shoot 3's. Not everyone is just going to let you shoot them, so you have to figure out other ways to make things happen."

Center Tina Charles struggled mightily in the win. Charles played just 14 minutes, her second-lowest total of the season, and scored a season-low two points on 1-for-6 shooting. A lot of her problems Tuesday stemmed from shaken confidence, according to senior captain Renee Montgomery.

"I think also when you're sitting on the bench a lot you're thinking too much about why you're sitting on the bench and what you did wrong," Montgomery said. "[Charles] came back in and it was just hard for her to get a flow and that's pretty much it."

Marquette (13-9, 4-4) will likely attack UConn with their backcourt tandem of Krystal Ellis and Angel Robinson.

With eight points against South Florida on Tuesday, Ellis became Marquette's all-time scoring leader with 1,824 career points. Ellis, a two-time First Team All-Big East selection, is averaging 13.2 points per game, a full six points below her average of 19.2 per game in 2007-08, but has a 30-point game and has led the Golden Eagles in points in seven games this year.

Robinson, a Big East All-Freshman Team member last year, leads the Golden Eagles with 14.5 points per game and has a pair of 30-plus point scoring nights this year.

Just outside the NCAA Tournament bubble according to ESPN.com's Charlie Creme's bracket, Marquette would almost certainly improve their chances at nabbing a tournament bid with a major upset of the top-ranked Huskies. The Golden Eagles are 0-3 all time against the Huskies.