Connecticut Has a Perfect Ending--35-0 and the Title

MINNEAPOLIS —  Her only regret, Rebecca Lobo said later, was that she and her teammates didn’t carry their coach, Geno Auriemma, off the floor after Connecticut defeated Tennessee, 70-64, for the national women’s college basketball championship.

Giggling while talking to the media in a Target Center hallway, she told a tale out of school.

“He (said) once he’d kill me if I ever told anyone this, but I’m going to tell it,” she said. “When Coach was recruiting me, he told me his dream was to win a huge game, just once in his career, and have his players carry him off the floor and have the crowd chanting: ‘GE-NO! GE-NO!’ ”

That didn’t happen, but his jubilant players--half of them crying, the other half laughing--did manage to muss his hair, possibly a first.

Small price to pay, he said, for a “little piece of history.”

His Huskies, at 35-0, became only the second women’s team to finish a season undefeated, joining Texas, which went 34-0 in 1986.

And for the second consecutive year, the women’s title game was a dandy, this time featuring a surging UConn second-half comeback with all its stars in foul trouble.

It was the perfect matchup. Only Tennessee and UConn had been rated No. 1 this season, and Auriemma had said anyone who didn’t want a UConn-Tennessee final was “un-American.”

Tennessee finished 34-3--and 0-2 against UConn. The Huskies took away the Volunteers’ No. 1 ranking with a 77-66 victory at home on Jan. 16. But Sunday, before a sellout 18,038, it seemed for a half and then some that Coach Pat Summitt’s team was on its way to her fourth national championship.

UConn, in foul trouble almost immediately, had to sit Naismith Award winner Lobo, Kara Wolters and point guard Jennifer Rizzotti for much of the first half, enabling Tennessee to take a 38-32 halftime lead.

Lobo, who was named the outstanding player of the NCAA Women’s Final Four, sat out the last 12 minutes of the first half with three fouls. When the 6-foot-7 Wolters got her second, she sat too. Then out came Rizzotti with her third, with 6:08 left before intermission.

Auriemma said his non-star lineup saved the day by keeping UConn within striking distance.

Lobo put the Huskies in position to overhaul the Volunteers in the second half with a down-the-paint drive and a baseline layup, which pared Tennessee’s lead to 58-55.

Then UConn’s most dangerous player, Rizzotti, made perhaps the game’s best play, stealing the ball in the forecourt and outracing Michelle Marciniak to the basket for a layup. UConn trailed by one with 7:11 to go.

Next came a move, by Husky Jamelle Elliott, that Auriemma called “a play I’ll remember all my life.”

She got the ball in the paint, double-pumped and made the basket. At 59-58, UConn had its first lead since 23-21, and several thousand of its partisans made the roof tremble.

At this point, Tennessee was in a dry spell that would cost it the game. The Volunteers scored 10 points in the final 10:24, while UConn scored 20.

Tennessee had one more lead, at 61-59, but after Rizzotti made another steal and breakaway, it never led again.

In the interview room, a ringing telephone interrupted Auriemma’s remarks. It was the White House calling. With Lobo, Elliott and Rizzotti giggling nearby and throwing paper wads at selected reporters, the operator put the UConn coach on hold for about 10 minutes.

“They’re coaching him on how to pronounce my name,” he said, one hand cupped over the receiver.

President Clinton said all the right things, then invited the winners to the White House. Auriemma replied: “Thank you, Mr. President. This time we’ll come in the front door.”

He explained that his team had a January White House tour arranged, but no one showed up to open the gate. “It was so cold standing there, we just left,” he said.

When it came her turn, Summitt spoke of pain.

“I hurt for this team,” she said. “I’m proud of our effort. Our rebounding and defense got us here, but against this team it just wasn’t enough.”

Auriemma, only the second male coach to win a women’s NCAA basketball title, felt for her.

“To play that game the way we had to play it, and to beat that team. . . . It’s the greatest feeling I could have. You saw some great players show some great character out there.”

Lobo, asked what she thought as time was running out, said it hadn’t sunk in--and won’t for “a day or two.”

“When it got to zero, for one of the few times in my life, I didn’t have a single thought in my head,” she said.

Asked to explain UConn’s second-half comeback, Auriemma said he delivered a simple, blunt halftime talk.

“I just told the players if we outrebound them in the second half, we’d win the basketball game. It wasn’t a complicated situation for us.

“In the last minutes, those shots that (had been) dropping for Tennessee with 15, 16 minutes left--I think I saw those players all of a sudden didn’t want to take those shots, and they wanted to get the ball into the low post.

“Well, we forced them to take those shots, and they didn’t fall.”