With all the updates on the letter of intent signings of the five high school seniors committed to UConn and the attempt to update the situation of the highly-touted Chiney Ogwumike, who make her college decision known tomorrow, it is easy to forget there is actually a game on Saturday.

Northeastern, in quest of its first winning season since going 17-13 in the 1999-2000 season, will come to Gampel Pavilion for a 2 p.m. game.

There will be a story about Northeastern senior forward/center Kendra Walton, a former Wilbur Cross star, in Thursday's New Haven Register. I also spoke with fourth-year Northeastern coach Daynia La-Force Mann. Here's some info you may not know about her.

First, she was a member of the last Georgetown team to beat UConn. She had two points in three minutes in the Hoyas' 64-62 win over UConn at Gampel Pavilion on Feb. 27, 1993. As a coach, she was on the Long Island staff when LIU lost to UConn in the first round of the 2001 NCAA tournament and spent three years as an assistant at St. John's. From a local standpoint, she may be remembered for coaching the University of New Haven team to the NYCAC regular-season and tournament titles during the 2005-06 season, leading the Chargers into the NCAA Division II tournament.

Here are some of her thoughts

First on what Northeastern gets out of playing UConn
"I have always been a proponent of allowing your teams to compete against the best and that is the only way you can teasch them how to compete at a high level. Every year since I have been here we have played a Big East opponent. I want my kids to be exposed to what it is like to compete at the highest level and to play against a program which such a rich tradition, just the way the whole the entire UConn organization operates. I think our kids need to see and value being on the floor like the University of Connecticut."

Of course I asked her to reflect on the win at Gampel considering that the Huskies are 245-17 at Gampel since it opened in January of 1990.
"The one thing about Gampel Pavilion, you walk in and you are so intimidated by the crowd and the support their women's basketball program gets, you are not only competing against the players on the women's basketball team but you are competing against every fan that's in the building. I just remembered when I was a player and I walked into Gampel, it was a sellout crowd and the entire place was obviously against Georgetown. The one memory I had of that game was we were able to silence that crowd, it wasn't about the fact that we won the game or beat the University of Connecticut but we silenced the crowd and that is a moment that I will cherish forever.

I also asked her about the decision to leave New Haven after just one year to take the job at Northeastern.
"It was difficult because I had bonded with the players. I had bonded with the university and program in general so it was pretty difficult for me to move on but I just felt like in my career, I needed an opportunity to experience rebuilding a program, something that I was familiar with being at Long island University and being at St. John's, I had the experience of rebuilding a program and I felt that Northeastern will be a great place for me to start, really practice the things I have learned over the years."