BASKETBALL

Below the Rim

A recap of the much ballyhooed game

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by Teri Bostian

As a superstitious sort as well as a Lady Vols fan, I hoped Michelle Snow’s game-opening tip back to herself was a felicitious sign that Tennessee would knock off number one-ranked Connecticut for the national title. Maybe everything would go their way all night.

But the real sign came just seconds later, with Shea Ralph’s first steal of six for the night. UConn’s defense smothered Tennessee from that moment on.

After Tennessee went to UConn and won earlier in the season, I was hopeful for Pat Summitt’s team in the NCAA finals. I had a feeling, though, that they wouldn’t be able to pull off another fly-by-the-seat-of-their-shorts win against the Huskies. The Lady Vols’ half-court offense made me nervous, as did the loss of their two cornerstone seniors in 1999, scrappy Kelly Jolly and Chamique Holdsclaw, just selected the Basketball Player of the Century. Still, I couldn’t imagine UConn would rout Tennessee 71-52 in a game that was never as close as the final score suggests.

On the Tennessee bench sat shooting guard "Ace" Clement, wearing chunky silver hoop earrings that told me she wouldn’t play in the final match-up: she’d sprained her ankle in the team’s shoot-around on Sunday. With Clement out, Summitt started senior Kyra Elzy, little more than a defensive gnat – all arm-waving and annoyance, but without any real bite. The loss of Clement seemed to affect the Lady Vols’ rhythm and confidence from beginning to end.

Though stacked with top offensive finesse players and smooth movers, Tennessee’s offense looked downright lackluster. In past games, I have loved to watch Catchings drive to the bucket – she’s rangy and quick, improvising like a jazz artist. To my eyes, Catchings is more talented than Holdsclaw, though not as consistent. Catchings and Holdsclaw both look like a next-generation players, women who play somewhere higher than ground-level. But, against UConn for the final, Catchings was firmly anchored, scoring 16 hard-won points. Her only open looks came at the free-throw line.

Michelle Snow, who at a lithe 6’5" is the heir apparent of the "three Meeks" – Chamique Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings, and Sameka Randall – looked only gangly and out of her league against the Huskies. Randall, usually the Lady Vols’ emotional center, also had a quiet night, making just 1 of 11 shots from the field. In Randall’s most aggressive play, she banged the ball off a UConn player’s head for the out-of-bounds call, only to get the whistle for first having stepped out herself. Pat Summitt, who typically prowls the sidelines, sat on the bench, stunned into silence, already accepting her fate.

On the other end, the Huskies couldn’t miss, relatively speaking. In the first half, they shot 44 percent to Tennessee’s 19 percent, going on a 21-6 run to start the game. Though UConn’s point guard Sue Bird had a quiet scoring game, she and Svetlana Ambrosimova executed the classic Geno Auriemma offense – with give-and-goes, good screens, and especially quick backdoor passes to the basket. Lay-up after easy UConn lay-up blitzed a usually tough Tennessee defense. UConn played a offensive game John Wooden would be proud of – old school, back-to-basics basketball.

For all the hype of the women’s championship week, the game didn’t live up to the billing. All the talk on ESPN was about how this game might take women’s college hoops to a new level of popularity. Philly-grown stars like Dawn Staley and Bill Cosby were enlisted as pitchmen for the women’s game, and the sell-out crowd and past record-breaking ratings for ESPN seemed to heighten expectations. Commentator Robin Roberts reminded viewers of UConn’s 1995 championship run and how it led to a national surge in interest for the women’s tournament. With a Tennessee-UConn rematch, the 2000 championship game should have been a nail-biter.

Instead UConn played down-and-dirty women’s basketball – hounding every play, swiping at every dribble and pass, diving and scrambling on the floor for loose balls. No Tennessee player flew high above the madding crowd at the altitude I have come to expect from Summitt’s squads. They couldn’t move away from the grabby Huskies, who never gave the Lady Vols room to work their magic.

UConn’s play in the final game was a perfect example of what I most love and hate about the women’s college game. At its best, this style is well-conceived and executed. It’s by-the-book but also in-your-face: there’s no arguing with solid skills, cerebral play, and consistent execution. I admire fierce competitors like Shea Ralph, who reminds me of another old-school player, John Stockton – they know the game and play it as it was meant to be played.

At the same time, all that rolling around on the floor for loose balls drives me crazy! The sort of nearly above-the-rim play favored by Catchings and Randall never developed with all that grab-grab-grabbing on the ground. When I watch such women’s games, I often feel short of breath, claustrophobic, like I need room to move. An ESPN report likened the game to a mosh pit – both Tennessee and I felt smothered in the throng.

Before the UConn-Tennessee game, I asked a male friend which team he preferred. He didn’t know, he said, because he couldn’t bear to watch women’s basketball. He explained that despite how much better the game had gotten in recent years (because of bigger and better players as well as improved training and coaching), the style of play was pretty much the same as ever. He meant that the women hadn’t taken flight yet, the way the men had years ago.

It’s true – such evolution has been incremental, dependent mostly on individual athletes like Catchings and Holdsclaw. The emphasis in women’s college hoops is on the execution of classic basketball technique rather than on the sort of dramatic above-the-rim style of the men’s game – and by necessity must be until more women players are physiologically big enough to choose a style different from that which John Wooden once taught and John Stockton still plays.

Despite my own hopes that Catchings’ and Randall’s beautiful and exciting athleticism would move another step toward that evolution, tonight’s overwhelming UConn win was rather a harbinger for women’s college hoops of what’s to come: more of the same.

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