OPENING DAY ALERT!!

It's finally here: WNBA Opening Day, 2009! The day we get our first real look at the re-made Mystics. Unfortunately, it's going to take a little longer than expected to get that look.

If, like the BasketCases, you'd planned on watching the Mystics' season opener against the Connecticut Sun live today at 4 PM from Mohegan via the WNBA's much-hyped web "Live Access," well, you can forget about it. An email from the Mystics yesterday informed us that the game "will not be shown live due to the national broadcast of the Detroit Shock at Los Angeles Sparks game, live on ABC, beginning at 2:30pm EDT."

So even though the Mystics/Sun game will probably only overlap with the Shock/Farmers game for maybe a half hour, no WNBA Live Access for Mystics fans! Instead we'll be treated to WNBA Resuscitated Access -- a web archive of the game later in the day, available at some undisclosed time.

Fortunately, you can still follow the game live by listening to Frank "voice of the Mystics" Hanrahan's audio broadcast of the game via WNBA.com. Better than no live report, but the BasketCases prefer watching their live sports live. (Speaking of live: Terps fans can catch KT's regular season WNBA debut live on NBA TV tonight at 8 PM. Kristi and her Chicago Sky teammates are playing the Lynx on the road in Minneapolis.)

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Yesterday was the day for teams to trim their rosters to the required regular-season 11. It was a day full of hard choices for GMs all around the league. Bernice Mosby was the last player waived by the Mystics. GM Angela Taylor opted to keep rookie Josephine Owino, a 6'3" Center from Union University in Tennessee. Owino, whose hometown is Mombasa, Kenya, is the 2-time NAIA player of the year, and helped lead her college team to 3 NAIA National Championships, including during her senior 2008-09 season.

We haven't yet had the pleasure of seeing Jo play, but we did have the pleasure of meeting her at the open house. A very nice young lady . . . and physique-wise she reminds us of Cheryl Ford. We won't be surprised if Jo doesn't get much playing time this season; she may be more of a developmental player. However, we assume that GM Taylor sees Jo as a diamond in the rough, otherwise why would you keep a third-round draft pick (the only 3rd-rounder to make a team in the WNBA this season!) over a returning player? We're looking forward to seeing Jo develop as a pro. [But we do hope that, by now, someone has told her that she's in Washington, D.C. and not Indiana.]

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Mike Fratto in the Times and Katie Carrera in the Post both have opening day articles, here and here. They are a bit similar in their obvious it's a "new day" for the Mystics theme. The print edition of the Washington Post also includes nice pictures and snapshots of each player.