Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992                   TAG: 9203010063
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: D9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Bill Brill
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.                                LENGTH: Medium

CAVS NO. 1 AT HOME, ON THE ROAD

Staley for President. GReissed lightning. Can't Beat Staley. UVa No. 1. L.A. Bound.

Typical for a nationally televised game on CBS. But on the road?

They love the Cavaliers. Home and away. Are you listening, Jeff Jones? This is the women's team.

Sold out of season tickets in University Hall. No. 1 in the polls and No. 1 in home attendance (5,838 average).

If Virginia doesn't have the nation's top women's program, and Debbie Ryan isn't the top coach, it's close.

All the Cavaliers have to do is win that elusive national championship, perhaps against the team, Tennessee, and the coach, Pat Head Summitt, who edged them in overtime in last year's NCAA final.

To get to the pinnacle, clearly UVa has to climb past Tennessee, No. 2 in the polls and in crowd numbers.

Tennessee beat UVa in the NCAA Tournament five of the past seven seasons. The one year the Cavs won, 1990, they reached the Final Four for the first time, losing to eventual champion Stanford.

This time, the path to the Final Four looks tantalizingly easy. In their final chance, superb guards Dawn Staley and Tammi Reiss won't have to leave home until the plane departs for Los Angeles.

"We have such high expectations," said Reiss. "And so do our fans. They know what our goals are, and that's as it should be."

Having closed out a 26-1 season with a tough 76-74 victory over N.C. State on Saturday, the Cavs will get an opening NCAA game at home after the ACC Tournament, and the regional also is played at University Hall.

Virginia has been dominant all season except against Maryland. UVa lost at home by two and won by one at College Park before a crowd of 14,500.

Otherwise, until Saturday, only two games have been remotely close, 77-70 at Auburn and 85-81 at Clemson after UVa had a 20-point lead. The average score has been 82-57.

The thought may be that when Staley, the 5-foot-5 dynamo who not only was the national player of the year but also the women's collegiate athlete of the year, and Reiss depart, then the Cavs may slip.

But Ryan's recruiting year has built this program, and it continues unabated.

Next year, Virginia could start an all-Palos Verdes front line. And each of the Californians will be 6-5. Joining the twins, Heather and Heidi Burge, will be Jeffra Gausepohl, leading scorer on USA Today's unbeaten No. 1 girls team.

Wendy Palmer, a 6-3 all-purpose player from Roxboro, N.C., will take her 37-point average to Charlottesville, where she won't be the highest-scoring recruit. That honor belongs to Kristen Symogyi, the leading scorer in New Jersey history. She averages 40. Her father held the former record.

Ryan was hired 15 years ago by her uncle, Gene Corrigan, then the UVa athletic director and now the ACC commissioner. Any thoughts of nepotism vanished rapidly, and in the past nine years Ryan's record is 229-48.

The past three, with Staley and Reiss, it's 86-10.

These Cavaliers know how to win. Witness Staley's two free throws with no time remaining that beat N.C. State, a year after these teams had battled in three overtimes here before the Cavs prevailed, 123-120.

Having taken Virginia all the way to the top, only one step remains for Ryan.

That would be April 5 in the Los Angeles Sports Arena. For the Burges, it would be a homecoming. But from the East to the West, it's all Virginia territory. Ryan has taken this program coast-to-coast.

Keywords:
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