Lady Vols Vanquished but Far From Finished

The NCAA, ESPN and the women’s basketball world have been granted two high-ranked items from their wish lists:

* Jackie Stiles, women’s basketball’s answer to “Pistol” Pete Maravich, is in the Final Four.

* And so are Connecticut and Notre Dame, poised now for a titanic rubber match in Friday’s national semifinals at St. Louis.

But for all the anticipation of Friday’s Southwest Missouri State-Purdue and Connecticut-Notre Dame matchups, the shock of Tennessee’s early ouster from the tournament will dominate conversation this weekend.

Xavier--later defeated by Purdue--brought the Lady Vols’ season to a stunning conclusion Saturday, its earliest exit from the NCAA tournament in seven years, with an 80-65 victory.

What has happened to the program that has won six national championships--three in a row at one point--and reached the Final Four 12 times?

This is where six national championships brings you. After a 31-3 season, the Tennessee faithful wonder if Coach Pat Summitt has lost it.

Has the well has run dry? Hardly. High school All-Americans, up and down the roster. And more on the way.

Chalk it up to three areas:

* Michelle Snow, the 6-foot-5 sophomore, gained fame as a two-time dunker this season but the fact remains she has significant liabilities as a defensive center.

* Tamika Catchings’ season-ending knee injury in January exposed defensive deficiencies in her teammates.

* The 1999 departure of Chamique Holdsclaw.

When Holdsclaw, as a junior, led a freshman-dominated unit to a 39-0 season and the 1998 NCAA crown, it seemed as if Summitt had launched a Woodenesque reign at Tennessee.

But when Holdsclaw left for the WNBA in 1999, all in her supporting cast except Catchings foundered as center-stage players. “Catch,” a high-energy player of immense talent, covered for many of her teammates’ deficiencies. But when she left, the Lady Vols no longer frightened anyone in championship-level games.

The most marked demise occurred to wing Semeka Randall, once thought of as a cinch WNBA player when she was a freshman. She didn’t score in her final game Saturday, going 0 for 9 from the field. Her stock among WNBA coaches has plummeted.

The same for guard Ace Clement, who never approached the high expectations placed on her when Summitt recruited her out of Philadelphia. She never shored up her perimeter defensive shortcomings and never was more than an average shooter.

All the post-mortem analysis and wailing over the Lady Vols’ unseemly exit is a problem entirely of Summitt’s own making, of course.

When you are named the Naismith “Coach of the Century,” it doesn’t exactly reduce expectations.

Summitt, by the way, was asked last week by the university’s president if she was interested in the vacant Tennessee men’s job. She said no, and was put on the search committee.

She was first asked that question several years ago during a previous men’s vacancy and gave the same answer. At the time, she gave this reason:

“I can coach men. The basketball part of it wouldn’t be any different. The problem might be recruiting. So many of these kids want to wind up in the NBA and they would all wonder: ‘Can this woman really get me there?’ ”

*

Next to Stiles’ 73-point regional at Spokane, the weekend’s highlight was the matchup of the nation’s two premier low-post players, Notre Dame senior Ruth Riley and Vanderbilt sophomore Chantelle Anderson.

Riley was the winner--and so was Notre Dame, 72-64--with 32 points to Anderson’s 14.

*

And the winner is--How can anyone pick against Connecticut?

Amazingly enough, the Huskies lost two first-team All-Americans to injury, Svetlana Abrosimova and Shea Ralph, yet finished the regular season 11-0 and are 4-0 in the tournament. In that span, they’ve had one close game, a 78-76 victory over Notre Dame in the Big East tournament title game at Connecticut.

*

Aprile Powell had poor grades in high school, was 65 pounds overweight, didn’t play much summer league basketball and slipped beneath the radar screens of Division I basketball coaches.

All that suited Cal Poly Pomona Coach Paul Thomas just fine.

A 6-3 redshirt freshman from Santa Ana Century High, Powell led her Cal Poly team to a 29-3 season and the Division II national championship last weekend with an 87-80 overtime victory over North Dakota.

Powell, who averaged 16.8 points and 10.4 rebounds this season, had 26 points and 18 rebounds in the title game.

“Aprile hasn’t even scratched the surface,” Thomas said. “She had serious skills in high school, but she needed to be in much better shape. She redshirted last season, lost the weight, got into a good running program and got her academics in order.”

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Oregon Athletic Director Bill Moos has retained the Kansas City-based law firm of Bond, Schoeneck and King to conduct an “independent evaluation” of the university’s women’s basketball program. The move is the result of players meeting with Moos and asking that Coach Judy Runge be fired. . . . The WNBA’s pre-draft camp will be held, as usual, at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago April 5-7. The draft is April 20.