Teams Will Get A Day Off For ‘96 Final

The teams playing in the 1996 women’s NCAA championship game in Charlotte, N.C., will get a welcome day off between the semifinals and finals.

With ESPN to televise the tournament instead of CBS, the semifinals will be played on Friday night and the semifinals on Sunday. Under the CBS contract in effect the last five years, the Final Four was played on Saturday and Sunday.

Coaches have long complained it was unfair to make the women’s teams play their championship game without a day to get ready.

The ESPN contract also will mean new dates for subregionals and regionals. To avoid conflicting with the men’s games, the subregionals will be played on a Friday-Sunday or Saturday-Monday schedule.

The regional semifinals and finals will be played Saturday and Monday.

Regional sites are Charlottesville, Va. (East), Chicago (Mideast), Nacogdoches, Texas (Midwest) and Seattle (West).

All-tourney talk

Rebecca Lobo, the consensus national player of the year, finished her college career with one more individual award: outstanding player of the Final Four.

Lobo was joined by three teammates on the all-tournament team, the first time four players from the same team were selected among the top five. Kara Wolters, Jennifer Rizzotti and Jamelle Elliott of Connecticut joined Tennessee forward Nikki McCray, a first-team All-American.

Lobo, Rizzotti and Wolters have starred for the Huskies all season, and were named first-, second- and third-team All-Americans, respectively. But the loudest cheer from the Connecticut fans was for Elliott.

Juggernaut

Connecticut not only went 35-0, the Huskies demolished opponents on the way to the national title.

They won by an average of 33.17 points this season, including a 107-27 victory over Morgan State in the first game. The average margin of victory is a women’s NCAA record, edging the 33-point margin Louisiana Tech beat opponents by on its way to the first NCAA title in 1982.

Ready for the world

USA Basketball will spend $3 million on the soon-to-be chosen women’s national team, which will prepare for the 1996 Olympics by playing in Europe, Asia and possibly Australia.

The team also will play some of the nation’s top college teams next fall and hopes to play conference all-star teams in the spring of 1996, Susan Blackwood of USA Basketball said Sunday.

Blackwood said her organization hopes to choose the national team coach this month. She gave no indication who it might be other than to say it would be someone who is currently coaching in college and that person would have to leave the college program for a year.

Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer and North Carolina’s Sylvia Hatchell are thought to be the leading contenders.

The trials are May 18-25 at Colorado Springs and the team, which is expected to become the Olympic team, will begin training immediately afterward. Previously, the team was chosen in the spring prior to the Olympics.

Blackwood, USA Basketball’s vice president for women, said the $3 million budget for the national team will cover training costs, travel expenses, support and salaries. The players will be paid, and while that figure hasn’t been released, it apparently will be around $50,000.