Vols Show Growth Of Women’s Game

A few years ago, Tennessee women’s coach Pat Summitt had an opportunity to coach the school’s men’s basketball team. Her explanation for turning down the offer was perfect in its simplicity.

“It wouldn’t be a step up,” she said.

As proof of the correctness of such a statement, we offer Sunday night’s NCAA championship game, one that was a celebration of the continued growth of the women’s game.

While the men’s game struggles to find itself in the age of premature defections to the NBA, the women’s game continues to grow, both technically and economically.

Another sellout crowd of 16,714 swelled Riverfront Coliseum, watching Tennessee win its second straight national championship, 68-59 over Old Dominion.

Outside a tugboat pushed a barge that hauled the Nike swoosh up and down the Ohio River. Merchandising banners hung from downtown buildings. All of it is part of the healthy commercialization of the game.

Dozens of coaches, scouts and administrators from both domestic professional leagues, the WNBA and ABL, watched the game, something that wouldn’t have happened a mere two years ago. As they watched this team for 40 minutes, they must have wondered how it could have lost 10 games. Those 10 losses are a tribute to the increasing depth in women’s basketball.

“We set so many negative records this year,” said Summitt, whose team finished the championship season 29-10. “I mean, I felt sorry for this team sometimes this year. … It was tough. And I was really tough on them.

“Abby (Conklin, senior forward) said earlier in the year, ‘If there’s a championship in this team, Coach Summitt will get it out of us.’ Well, somehow we got it. This team will always be special because it never folded. It hung tough through the bad times and won a national championship and now we’ve got a place in the history books.”

This was Summitt’s 10th Final Four, her fifth national title in 23 years at Tennessee. She is halfway to John Wooden’s record of 10 titles. Few people will bet against her breaking his mark.

Tennessee is only the second team to win back-to-back NCAA women’s titles. USC did it in 1983 and 1984. Summitt, 44, is Wooden and Dean Smith, Red Auerbach and Pat Riley. She is every successful coach who ever chalked an X and an O.

Old Dominion coach Wendy Larry called her “the X-Factor.” She is so important at Tennessee that quarterback Peyton Manning consulted with her before deciding to forgo the NFL and stay in college for his senior year.

Another national championship and the return of Peyton Manning and it isn’t even April. Welcome to Pat Summitt’s world.

“I’ve been very blessed,” she said. “Tennessee took a chance on me. I was 22 when I was hired and I had four players on my team who were 21. I made a lot of mistakes over the years and I’ve learned from” them.

Unlike Smith, Kentucky’s Rick Pitino and Arizona’s Lute Olson, Summitt will keep her players all four years. The two new women’s professional leagues have said they won’t recruit underclass players.

Summitt knows she will have gifted 6-foot-2 sophomore Chamique Holdsclaw, the best player in women’s college basketball not named Starbird, two more seasons.

Holdsclaw, who had 24 points in 39 minutes, wears Michael Jordan’s No. 23 and, like Jordan, she makes a hobby out of collecting championships. She won four state high school titles in New York and is two for two in college.

“She is a presence on the floor for us, if she touches the ball or not,” Summitt said. “She is a gifted athlete with great skills, but she has a tremendous desire to win and is a fierce competitor. There are a lot of great players, but I think she’s the best in the college game.”

With 7 minutes left and her team down 49-47, Holdsclaw scored 10 points the next 6 minutes as Tennessee pulled away.

She carried her team, the way a star is supposed to; the way she will the next two seasons.

“I think losing players early would really hurt the women’s college (team) more than the men’s,” Summitt said. “I mean, this is the greatest game that we have for our sport. If you look at the Final Four, this is it. This is our Super Bowl.

“I’d really hate to see us dip into the collegiate game and take away some of the best players and have them look at the WNBA. The WNBA is young yet. We have to see what happens. But right now, with our game, we have a great thing going.”

A half hour after the buzzer, Tennessee’s band blasted one last, lusty round of “Rocky Top,” the schools’ fight song.

The celebration of the growth of this game continues.