Lady Vols

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma likes to joke, when asked about Sue Bird, his point guard from New York, that she grew up on "the mean streets of Syosset," where the only thing that was stolen was a newspaper from someone's front porch. The implication, of course, is that Bird's surroundings weren't exactly tough, yet the 5-foot-9 sophomore was plenty tough enough to engineer the top-ranked Huskies' 74-67 win over No. 2 Tennessee yesterday. Bird was brilliant, hitting eight of 10 shots from the floor, as well as seven of eight free throws for a game-high 25 points, along with four steals.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- If ever a team were unfamiliar with the concept of underdog, you'd have to figure it would be the Tennessee women's basketball team. The Lady Vols are the standard-bearers of their sport of the college game, with six national championship banners hanging from the rafters of Thompson-Boling Arena. But, heading into today's nationally televised showdown with No. 1 Connecticut here (Channel 13, 4 p.m.), the second-ranked Lady Vols are playing Avis to the Huskies' Hertz, and they don't seem to mind.

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- It's probably a measure of how little they were regarded that the three Duke women's basketball players and their coach were actually startled last night when someone suggested at a post-game interview that they had made history.Indeed, in knocking off the three-time defending champion Tennessee Lady Vols, 69-63, before 12,235 stunned fans, the 10th-ranked Blue Devils pulled off one of the greatest upsets in the history of the relatively nascent sport of women's basketball.

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- In one of the biggest upsets in the history of the relatively nascent sport of women's basketball, Duke ended Tennessee's run of three straight championships with a 69-63 win in the East Regional final last night.The Blue Devils (28-6), who lost by 14 to the Lady Vols in a December game, stared down the Tennessee mystique with a flawless game plan and clutch shooting to capture the school's first Final Four berth.Hardly anyone outside Durham gave Duke a chance to stay with, much less beat the top-seeded Lady Vols (31-3)

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Generally speaking, there aren't many nuggets of optimism that can be mined from a 14-point loss, but the 10th-ranked Duke women's basketball team is hoping to pick a few from its December encounter with No. 2 Tennessee.The Blue Devils dropped a 74-60 decision to the Lady Vols at a holiday doubleheader at Walt Disney World, and believe, heading into tonight's rematch in the NCAA East Regional final, that they are different."We're older, wiser, smarter. We've grown as a team, and I think we're a better team than we were.

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- It's been said everyone has a plan until they get hit. The Virginia Tech women's basketball team had a plan entering yesterday's NCAA East regional semifinal against No. 2 Tennessee: limit the Lady Vols' transition opportunities and keep them from ripping off back-breaking runs.Part one of the Hokies' plan worked well, as they kept the Lady Vols from running at will. But the second part failed miserably, and, as a result, Tennessee pounded their way into tomorrow night's regional final with a 68-52 win."

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Here's all you may need to know about the remainder of the women's NCAA tournament:Pat Summitt, coach of three-time defending champion Tennessee, said yesterday that if her Lady Vols are at their peak, it will be time to order that fourth championship trophy."

In October, the women's college basketball season seemed like a foregone conclusion, just as it had the year before. The three-time defending champion Tennessee Lady Vols were returning all five starters from last year's unbeaten team. By Nov. 15, when Purdue ended Tennessee's 45-game winning streak, there was hope that maybe, just maybe, this could be the year that someone other than the Lady Vols wins the title. And now, with less than a month to go in the regular season, things are back to normal, as Tennessee has returned to form, with an 18-game winning streak, including victories over once and former Top 10 teams Louisiana Tech, Duke, UCLA, Connecticut, Georgia (twice)

STORRS, Conn. -- Normally, it takes maybe decades of hard-fought competition, played out on grand stages, for a rivalry to build to the level that the Connecticut-Tennessee women's basketball series has reached in just four years.And though the Lady Vols-Huskies matchup doesn't have the long-lasting cachet of, say, Duke-North Carolina on the men's college front or the Lakers-Celtics dramas of the NBA of old, these two teams have pushed each other to impressive heights in only eight meetings.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Funny, how folks deal with losing around here.The football team went undefeated, and after winning the national championship Monday night, the players talked about how much last year's Orange Bowl defeat had motivated them.The women's basketball team -- the beloved Lady Vols to everyone in the so-called "Orange Nation" -- suffered their first loss in more than a year back in mid-November, and the players, not to mention coach Pat Summitt, talked in the same cliches.Can you imagine how motivated Tennessee would be if it loses again, say today on its trip to Storrs for a much-anticipated showdown with top-ranked Connecticut?