Tennessee back atop the summit
Lady Vols stifle Stanford to win 2d straight title
TAMPA - Some 34 years ago, 22-year-old Pat Head coached her first college game as the $250-a-month mentor at Tennessee. She lost, by 1 point, to Mercer College. She called home to report the news and her no-nonsense father, Richard, paused for the longest time before telling his soon-to-be rich, famous, and successful daughter, "Don't take donkeys to the Kentucky Derby."
Pretty quickly, Pat Head understood what her father meant.
"You've got to get players," she said. "It stuck with me."
Now, Pat Summitt doesn't just get players, she gets winners. Last night, before a raucous, Tennessee-flavored sellout of 21,655 at the St. Pete Times Forum, Tennessee won its second straight NCAA women's basketball championship, dispatching addled, mistake-prone Stanford, 64-48. It is Tennessee's record eighth NCAA championship, all under Summitt, who heeded her father's advice.
The player of all players to come to Rocky Top at Summitt's behest, All-American Candace Parker, was a force with one good shoulder, scoring 17 points and grabbing nine rebounds to repeat as the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player in her final game for Tennessee.
Seniors Nicky Anosike (12 points, 8 rebounds, 6 steals) and Shannon Bobbitt (13 points) also came up large for the Lady Vols, who avenged a December loss to the Cardinal in Palo Alto and finished the year 35-2.
"My mind-set was that I wasn't going home without a national championship," said Anosike, who was a defensive force for much of the game. "If we lost, I was going to live here. I wasn't going home without a championship."
Summitt said, "I thought this was one of our best defensive efforts."
No kidding, coach. The Lady Vols clamped down on Stanford with 40 minutes of traps and presses, all of which thoroughly bewildered the Cardinal, who had trouble getting the ball inbounds, let alone over halfcourt, or into their trademark triangle offense. Stanford turned it over a ghastly 25 times, leading to 26 points.
"I thought we made a lot of uncharacteristic turnovers and very bad decisions," said Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, whose team had a 23-game winning streak snapped and finished 35-4. "We were not able to run anything offensively. People could not get open. We struggled in every facet of the game. They took us out of everything we tried to do."
Stanford's Candice Wiggins, arguably the best player in the tournament going into last night, struggled all game with turnovers (six) and missed shots (6 of 16, including a pair of airballs). She finished with 14 points, after averaging 27.4 in the first five games of the tournament. Jayne Appel led Stanford with 17 points.
"We were well-prepared for the game. Nothing was really new," Wiggins said. "You can't second-guess yourself. They just did a great job on defense."
Neither team shot the ball well; both were under 40 percent. But Tennessee set the tone early, turning a 7-7 game into a 15-7 game with an 8-0 run and a defensive effort that forced four missed shots (including a Wiggins airball) and five turnovers in a stretch of 2:44.
"A lot of people underestimate our defense," Parker said.
Added Anosike, "We took them out of everything they tried to do. They didn't know what to do."
The 8-point margin held at the half (37-29) thanks to a buzzer-beating fallaway by Stanford's Jillian Harmon. And when the Cardinal opened the second half with 4 points to pull within 37-33, it looked as if there might finally be a competitive game.
But a 9-2 Tennessee run, with Parker scoring the final 5 points, blew the lead out to 11 with 16:09 left and Stanford spent the rest of the game swimming upstream, never getting closer than 8 and playing most of the final 13 minutes with a double-digit deficit.
Summitt now is only two championships shy of the legendary John Wooden at UCLA, but insisted last night that that is not something she's thinking about. She loses her entire starting five, but, she said, that's what made this one so sweet.
"I am extremely excited for what these seniors left," Summitt said.
And now, it's time for her to get more players. Anyone out there think she won't?
Peter May can be reached at pmay@globe.com 