The No. 1 question in women’s college basketball this week concerns the sport’s No. 1 team, coach Pat Summitt’s unbeaten Tennessee Lady Vols:
Have the Vols, frequently labeled “greatest ever” in their sport, already passed their toughest test en route to a perfect season and a third straight NCAA championship?
Sylvia Hatchell thinks so. She is Summitt’s longtime friend and coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels, who came within a whisker and a whistle of knocking off the Vols in Monday’s final game of the Mideast Regional.
“Nobody in the Final Four is going to do to Tennessee what we did to them,” said Hatchell.
The Tar Heels led the Vols by 12 points with 8 minutes to play before falling 76-70 as the Vols rallied behind 6-foot-2-inch player of the year Chamique Holdsclaw, also sometimes described as “greatest ever.”
Hatchell is probably right about Tennessee’s having gotten past its toughest opponent. The Vols have won this season by an average of 31 points a game. Their margin of victory fell below double digits only three times.
Alabama lost by seven and four by slowing the tempo. Tracy Reid, Chanel Wright, Nikki Teasley and the other Tar Heels lost by six when they audaciously took on the Vols at their own up-tempo, fast-break style.
“During the timeout, when we were 12 points down,” said freshman Tamika Catchings, “Pat (Summitt) said, `You guys are being beaten by your own game.’ We thought, `That’s right. We have to play Tennessee style.’ “
That ought to be good enough to run the Vols’ season to 39-0 and its winning streak to 45. Look at the Final Four field for this weekend’s showdown in Kansas City.
In Friday’s semifinal, Tennessee, the lone No. 1 seed left, opposes Southeastern Conference rival Arkansas, a team it buried by 30 points in the regular season.
Should Chamique Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings and the third “Meek”–Semeka Randall–reach Sunday night’s title game against Friday’s Louisiana Tech-North Carolina State survivor, odds would favor the Meeks’ inheriting the title. Tennessee beat Louisiana Tech by 14 in the regular season.
Tennessee has led a southern domination of the tournament. Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina State and Louisiana Tech all reached the Final Four.
The Elite Eight included North Carolina State, North Carolina and Duke from the Atlantic Coast Conference; Tennessee and Arkansas from the Southeastern; Louisiana Tech from the Sun Belt and only two teams from the North, Purdue of the Big 10 and Connecticut of the Big East.
As much as Big 10 coaches talked of their league’s strength, it could not match the SEC or the ACC in the tournament.
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Wisconsin and Iowa disappointed with early losses. Michigan didn’t last long. A bad stretch early in the second half doomed Illinois against Carolina.
Purdue and its first-year head coach, Carolyn Peck, reached the final eight and recruited a strong class. The Boilermakers look like Final Four material for 1999.
But Tennessee still looks like No. 1 in 1999. Holdsclaw, Catchings and Randall all return.
And Summitt has a couple of 6-5 recruits coming in to beef up the only position that hasn’t been super.
Could the pro leagues break their understanding not to sign underclasswomen and get into a bidding war for Holdsclaw?
Would Chamique forgo her senior season and sign for megabucks?
Holdsclaw’s closest family member is her grandmother, June Holdsclaw, who reared her. Grandma June sounds as though she would like to see the Meeks remain in school for another year.
“She tells me I don’t go to school for her. I go to school for me,” Holdsclaw has said, “She wants me to get my degree.”