Tennessee Can Reach Summitt Once Again

It was a quip that Tennessee Coach Pat Summitt had primed and ready, and sure enough, it was the first question asked at a news conference on the eve of the NCAA women’s basketball championship game.

Question: “Coach, where would you be now without Chamique Holdsclaw?”

Answer: “Spring break.”

Instead, Tennessee (28-10) and its standout forward Holdsclaw will play Old Dominion (34-1) in tonight’s final.

This was supposed to be a “tweener” season for Summitt and Tennessee, coming after the 1996 NCAA title and before her best recruiting class comes in next season.

Tennessee finished fifth in the Southeastern Conference, third in the SEC tournament, and made the NCAA tournament as an uncharacteristic No. 3 seed.

In the tournament, the Volunteers brushed aside Grambling, struggled to defeat Oregon, took care of Colorado before upsetting previously unbeaten and No. 1-ranked Connecticut, 91-81.

Summitt brought her Tennessee team to Cincinnati with more losses than the rest of the Final Four field combined. But she has won four national championships, and Tennessee could become the first repeat winner since Cheryl Miller led USC to the 1983 and ’84 titles.

And it is Miller’s game to which Chamique (pronounced Sha-meek-wa) Holdsclaw’s elegant yet powerful game is most often compared. She’s a scorer inside and out, a rebounder at both ends, a superb passer, a blocker of shots and a stealer of passes.

She did it to Notre Dame on Friday, scoring 31 in an 80-66 Tennessee victory, after Old Dominion had won its 33rd in a row with an 83-82 overtime victory against Stanford.

Old Dominion Coach Wendy Larry said Saturday: “Chamique is from another planet.”

Many felt that way after watching Ticha Penicheiro, the slashing, driving Old Dominion point guard, on Friday.

Penicheiro learned her game on beach courts playing against men while growing up in Figueira da Foz, Portugal, where her family will follow her game tonight on the Internet. They don’t get ESPN.

Penicheiro: “I wanted to call my father late last night, but he’d gone out of town to watch my brother’s game. So I called this morning and my Dad already knew. He was laughing and screaming. I said: ‘OK, you already know, right?’ With all this technology, you can’t even surprise anyone anymore.”

Penicheiro, a tenacious defender, shrugged when asked about the challenge of Holdsclaw.

“We took away [Stanford’s Kate] Starbird’s game when we had to, we just have to take away Chamique’s too.”

When Penicheiro arrived at Old Dominion three years ago, her teammates often had to have their noses iced down after practices. She has a great no-look that she delivers with great velocity.

Said teammate Stacy Himes: “When she got here, we couldn’t handle her passes at first. We’d have our hands up, but she’d still bounce them off our noses. It’s a miracle she didn’t break anyone’s nose.”

Women’s Basketball Notes

Like Friday’s Old Dominion-Stanford game, tonight’s game is a rematch too. Old Dominion defeated Tennessee, 83-72, in January and outrebounded the Volunteers by 16. Holdsclaw had 27 points while Penicheiro had 25 points, five steals and nine assists. . . . Penicheiro, on her future in pro basketball: “I have adjusted to American culture now, so I want to play in the United States. The WNBA would be best for me, because I could play for them in the summer, then go to Europe and play in the winter.” . . . Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer, 319-65 in 11 seasons, took Friday’s loss hard. “I can’t think of a game at Stanford that was more painful to me,” she said. “This was a team that could have won the championship but didn’t do several things in the game we’d worked on in practice and I’m disturbed by it.” . . . VanDerveer, whose new three-year contract is reportedly worth $450,000, on Starbird’s pro future: “If I’m Kate Starbird, I want to be in a league that’s the less physical of the two and on a team that’s going to run, and that team would be the L.A. Sparks. Their point guard is Penny Toler, and that tells me that’s a running team.”