Quartet Playing to Lesser Audience : Women: Tech hopes to stay on roll against Alabama. Purdue tries to keep dream alive against North Carolina.

A year ago, things were looking up for women’s college basketball.

For the 1993 Final Four in Atlanta, the women filled the 17,500-seat Omni two consecutive days, found a superstar in Texas Tech’s Sheryl Swoopes (who scored 47 points in the title game), and the Texas Tech-Ohio State championship game had a TV rating of 5.5, the sport’s highest for a title game since 1987.

So what comes next? Having shown they could sell out a big-city facility, the women’s Final Four now moves to a small-city arena, 11,966-seat Richmond Coliseum.

And so before what will be the smallest Final Four crowds in three years, Louisiana Tech (30-3) meets Alabama (26-6) in one semifinal, followed by Purdue (29-4) and North Carolina (31-2).

The winners play Sunday for the national championship.

Louisiana Tech, which beat USC at the Mideast Regional, was the focus of attention here this week.

Do the Lady Techsters have anything left, after punishing back-to-back victories over No. 1-ranked Tennessee and No. 7 USC?

Tech Coach Leon Barmore was asked if he was concerned about his players’ near-50% free throw shooting against Tennessee and USC.

“You’d miss free throws, too, if you had to play Tennessee and USC back-to-back,” he said.

Alabama has already beaten Tech (99-77, in December), but so had Tennessee earlier, and by 34.

“Louisiana Tech has the same players, the same coach and they’re running the same plays, but they’re doing everything on a much higher level than when we played them,” Alabama Coach Rick Moody said.

“Their perimeter game is much better. When we played before, we packed it in tight on their interior people and their guards didn’t hurt us. Now, those two are breaking down every defense they see.”

He referred to Debra Williams, the Mideast MVP, and Pam Thomas, called by some the game’s best guards.

Purdue arrives as the Final Four’s biggest upset winner. The Boilermakers beat heavy favorite Stanford last Saturday, 82-65, in Palo Alto.

And when her players celebrated around Coach Lin Dunn, they started a chant: “Tat-TOO! Tat-TOO!” Seems Dunn promised her team earlier if they took her to the Final Four, she would get tattooed.

“I said I’d do it and I will,” she said. “But it’s going to be very small, and in a place where no one will ever see it.”

So while she’s sure to leave here tattooed, she hopes to avoid being dunked upon.

Two North Carolina players, 6-5 Sylvia Crawley and 6-0 Charlotte Smith have dunked in warm-ups, but not in a game. Crawley has tried twice, only to pin the ball off the rim. The only woman to have dunked in an NCAA game remains West Virginia’s 6-7 Georgeann Wells, who did it three times in the 1983-84 season.

Tar Heel freshman guard Marion Jones, from Thousand Oaks, is the fastest player in women’s basketball. One of the nation’s best sprinters, she has 105 steals in 33 games.

Notes

North Carolina’s players spent Friday afternoon painting the arm cast of Coach Sylvia Hatchell’s son, Van, 5. Seems he fell while trying to stand on a basketball. He was due to have a Carolina blue cast. . . . Whatever became of Sheryl Swoopes, last year’s standout? She’s back in school at Texas Tech, after playing pro ball briefly in Italy last summer. . . . Marion Jones, on critics who told her to concentrate on track and not play basketball: “I’m in the Final Four, and they’re not.”