Lady Vols Seek to Three-Peat Under Summitt

Stars Kara Wolters and Kate Starbird turned pro. Coaches Van Chancellor and Angela Beck are gone, too. Paul Sanderford has a new home in Nebraska and many colleges have already lost players to injuries.

There’s always change in women’s basketball, but there’s also one constant.

Tennessee.

After winning their second straight NCAA championship last season and fifth overall, the Lady Vols have no seniors and coach Pat Summitt is relying heavily on freshmen.

No matter: Tennessee could become the first women’s Division 1 basketball team to win three straight NCAA titles. The school has a brilliant coach calling the shots, the best player in the country in Chamique Holdsclaw and a recruiting class that might be the best ever.

As usual, the Lady Vols have the nation’s toughest schedule, a slate loaded with potential top 10 teams. But all that does is prepare Tennessee for the tournament. Last winter, it lost 10 games--but it couldn’t be topped in March.

This season opens Nov. 14 and ends with the Final Four in Kansas City on March 27 and 29.

“I want to do something no one has ever done before,” Holdsclaw said. “We want to be the first team in history to win three, maybe four in a row. We definitely have the talent. We just have to put it together.”

But there’s a reason why repeating as national champs is so tough.

Tennessee’s last ballyhooed recruiting class, the one headed by Nikki McCray, never won a national title and didn’t even get to the Final Four until those players were seniors. Then there’s the opposition.

Louisiana Tech is loaded, returning all five starters from a 31-4 team. Flashy point guard Ticha Penicheiro took advantage of a rule giving her another year of eligibility and returned to Old Dominion, which brings back two other starters and the top reserves from the team that lost to Tennessee in the national title game.

Stanford, as always, is laden with talent, Nykesha Sales and some talented youngsters will keep Connecticut in the hunt and if you’re looking for a darkhorse, try Illinois, where former Rutgers coach Theresa Grentz has turned the Illini into a force going into just her third season.

As for the coaching changes, the most intriguing move was Sanderford’s from Western Kentucky to Nebraska to replace Beck, now the coach of the San Jose Lasers of the American Basketball League.

Western Kentucky made 12 NCAA appearances and three Final Four trips under Sanderford, who thought he had a Final Four contender there this season, too.

“(Athletic director) Bill Byrne basically convinced me that Nebraska was heaven,” Sanderford said, joking that he was told it was 75 degrees year round and that football coach Tom Osborne was going to help him recruit.

Chancellor left Mississippi after 14 NCAA appearances in 19 seasons for the Houston Comets, who won the first WNBA title in August. He was replaced by Ron Aldy, a former player who had been an assistant at Florida.

Ohio State fired Nancy Darsch, who took the Buckeyes to the 1993 Final Four and later became coach of the WNBA’s New York Liberty. Darsch was replaced by San Diego State’s Beth Burns, who faces a major rebuilding job after the Buckeyes went 12-16 last season and won only three Big Ten games.

“I have the biggest team I’ve ever had,” Burns said. “But every oop needs an alley and we’re short of alleys right now.”

Veteran coach Bud Childers resigned at Louisville to take the James Madison job and was replaced by assistants Sara White and Martin Clapp. They were named co-head coaches and now share much more than a job--they were married in August.

Purdue promoted top assistant Carolyn Peck to replace Nell Fortner, who was named the U.S. national coach. Chris Gobrecht had to pay to become the new coach at her alma mater, Southern Cal. She left after only one season at Florida State, which sued her for $380,000. They settled on $108,000.

One coach who isn’t going anywhere--except the Hall of Fame some day--is Texas’ Jody Conradt. She begins the season needing three victories to become the first women’s coach to reach 700. Conradt is 697-195 in a 28-year career that began in 1969 at Sam Houston State--12 years before the sport came under the NCAA.

All those coaches may have to do some juggling this season: Injuries have already sidelined a number of players.

Connecticut’s Shea Ralph is out all season after tearing knee ligaments a second time and a knee injury has ended Laurie Milligan’s career at Tennessee.

Injuries also have sidelined Monick Foote at Virginia, Jessica Gaspar at North Carolina, Mahogany Hudson at Florida and Keisha Brown and Signe Antvorskov of Georgia. It got so bad at Georgia, which had only eight healthy players, that coach Andy Landers asked the student newspaper to run a plea for walk-ons so he’d have enough bodies for practice.

Wolters and Starbird, two first-team All-Americans now in the ABL, were the two most prominent players who moved on. Wolters helped Connecticut to a 132-8 record, two Final Four trips and one national championship in four seasons. Stanford was 118-14 with three Final Four appearances in Starbird’s four seasons.

But Holdsclaw and Penicheiro are still around after earning first-team All-America honors last season. Sales was a second-team pick along with North Carolina’s Tracy Reid, who also returns.

The two new pro leagues aren’t paying enough to entice college players to leave early, although Colorado coach Ceal Barry sees that changing one day.

“Unfortunately, I think it will happen, especially if there’s a bidding war for a senior player,” Barry said.

But it’s not happening yet and for that, the college coaches are grateful.