ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 26, 1996 TAG: 9603260075
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
There's no place like home ... there's no place like home ...
For most of Monday evening's NCAA East Regional championship game, Wendy and Jenny and Tora and Monick and DeMya had to be thinking like a cinematic Dorothy once did.
There was only one problem on the road to the women's Final Four for Virginia's basketball team, however.
The Cavaliers couldn't have put Toto in the basket.
The highway from Charlottesville to Charlotte, N.C., certainly was strewn with orange bricks. After Tennessee made 6 of 32 shots in the first half, you had to think no team could shoot that poorly in the second half.
UVa tried. The Cavaliers hit 7 of 33. The Lady Vols found some courage and rebounding, made a 23-point turnaround and riding mostly on the wind from a sigh of relief, headed to the Final Four with a 52-46 victory.
``It hurts to lose, to have it end this way,'' said Virginia senior forward Wendy Palmer. ``It hurts even worse for it to happen the way it did.''
It was an excruciating game to watch, and even more so to play.
``We had to expend a lot of energy,'' explained Tennessee coach Pat Summitt when asked why the Lady Vols didn't seem to enjoy their 30th win of the season. ``I think we're all happy. We're just exhausted.''
Tennessee, the game's most storied program and alone in playing in all 15 NCAA women's tournaments, hadn't scored so little and won since a season-opening 52-47 triumph over West Virginia in November 1983.
In describing the game that took her program to its ninth Final Four, Summitt used the word ``ugly.'' When UVa coach Debbie Ryan first sat down before the postgame session, the assembled media heard her mutter another, unprintable, four-letter word.
It was that kind of night for the Cavaliers, who had a 17-point lead with that many minutes left. Tennessee led for exactly 3 minutes, 50 seconds, including the last 2:27.
The Lady Vols put bookends on the Virginia season, too, but with two very different wins - 78-51 in the season-opening Tipoff Classic, and then an NCAA great escape.
``No one expected us to be right there,'' Palmer said. ``Except us.''
Six times in seven years, UVa has gotten at least as far as the regional final. It was the third time in the past four seasons the Cavaliers' season ended one win short of the Final Four. Ryan's teams lost those games by a combined 12 points.
They had the Lady Vols right where they wanted them - in University Hall, a place Tennessee hadn't visited until arriving as the top seed in the East Regional.
On a floor where the Cavaliers had won 16 straight NCAA games since a loss a decade ago to James Madison, Ryan's team played with everything except shooting accuracy.
There has been much written about how much women's hoops needs to build interest, and keeping some teams at home through four rounds - unlike the neutral-site men's tourney - helps the sport.
It's a notion Summitt has supported. It's also a situation her team somehow coped with, as a noisy U-Hall house voiced its support for the third-seeded Cavs.
``I think the crowd inspired Virginia more than it hurt Tennessee,'' Summitt said. ``The crowd wasn't playing defense on Tennessee. Virginia was. There was a lot of emotion there.''
Yes, and the Cavaliers seemed to play with a little less of it when point guard Tora Suber went down with a knee sprain with 12:25 remaining. Suber returned five minutes later, but Virginia wasn't the same.
Neither was Tennessee.
``In the first half, we had one person with the ball and four people stood,'' Summitt said.
What was important was that in another fashion, the Lady Vols kept standing. It took 54-percent shooting in the second half, plus a marvelous final five minutes by point guard Michelle Marciniak to finish the Cavaliers' 13th straight NCAA run.
``We were never in the game until midway through the second half,'' said Vols guard Latina Davis.
They also were never out of it. When you shoot 18.8 percent in a half and you're only down 13, you can't play any worse when you're Tennessee.
When UVa (26-7) lost to Clemson in the ACC tournament semifinals, the Cavaliers kept hearing how this NCAA Tournament might not last long for them.
``We knew we'd be playing at home,'' said Palmer, the All-American who finished her career as UVa's No.3 career scorer, behind Dawn Staley and Heather Burge. ``That gave us confidence.
``I still think, if we hadn't lost to Clemson, we'd never have been here tonight. We needed that to wake us up. We came out here and did the best we could do.
``We knew Tennessee would keep making runs. They're a great team. I hope they win it all next weekend. When you play as hard as we did, you can't have any regrets.''
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. UVa coach Debbie Ryan only could watch Monday as herby CNBteam blew a 17-point lead. color.