A record-breaking lies ahead.
If the top-seeded Lady Vols win the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, UT coach Pat Summitt will become the all-time winningest coach in college basketball with 880 wins.
But there are bigger issues at hand.
“I haven’t discussed it (the record) with our team,” Summitt said. “It hasn’t been discussed once. I’m sure they are aware of it. Records are made to be broken and I’m sure if it happens this year, someone else will come along and break that record eventually.
“The season comes down to March for us. The players know that and that is our focus right now.”
March means tournament time — a period that most consider to be Tennessee’s time to shine. But since whipping through a string of three consecutive national titles in the late 1990s, the program hasn’t won one since.
But just because the Lady Vols haven’t collected any hardware recently doesn’t mean they haven’t maintained a presence on the national scene.
Since 1998, when Tennessee last brought home an NCAA championship banner, the Lady Vols have been to four Final Fours and three national title games.
This year’s players, however, have reached their fill of coming in second.
“We realize that we haven’t won one in a while,” junior guard Shanna Zolman said. “We’ve been right there but haven’t finished. We want to take care of that.”
The road to taking care of business for Tennessee begins Sunday with a 9:30 p.m. contest against Southern Conference champion Western Carolina at Thompson-Boling Arena.
The Lady Vols (26-4) face the 16th-seeded Catamounts (18-13) in the nightcap of a four-game session. Western Carolina is coached by former Lady Vol point guard Kellie Jolly Harper, who is in her first year at the helm.
Harper led the Catamounts to their first NCAA Tournament in the program’s 40-year history.
With a number of her former players and assistants coaching across the nation, Summitt is pleased with the prospect of two protégés returning to Thompson-Boling for the opening NCAA round. Former Lady Vol Bridgette Gordon, whose number is one of only five retired by the Lady Vols, makes her return as an assistant for Stetson, who faces LSU at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
“The makeup of this bracket for our fans will be good, with Kellie Jolly coming from Western Carolina and Bridgette Gordon coming as an assistant coach with Stetson,” Summitt said. “It will be a homecoming for those two and our fans.”
A win over Western Carolina in the opening round would pit UT against the winner of eighth-seeded New Mexico and ninth-seeded Purdue in a second-round game on Tuesday. The Lobos (26-4) face off against the Boilermakers (16-12) in Sunday’s 7 p.m. matchup.
Regardless of the opponent, the Lady Vols’ preparation stays the same — striving for perfection.
“In practice, we are just fine-tuning our plays and executing everything as many times as possible,” freshman guard Alexis Hornbuckle said. “We are trying not to take possessions off. We want perfect possession after perfect possession.”
Part of the key for Tennessee as it heads into the NCAA Tournament is to carry over the mentality from the SEC championship.
“We want to have the same attitude that we had in the SEC Tournament,” Hornbuckle said. “Basically, that attitude is to fight and come out on top no matter what. We went back and forth with LSU (in a 67-65 championship game win), but there was just this burning desire to win.”
Heading into the NCAA Tournament two weeks removed from the program’s first SEC postseason title since 2000 gives additional momentum to a Lady Vol team on an eight-game winning streak.
“Winning the SEC Tournament gives us a lot of momentum,” senior point guard Loree Moore said. “We have gone into the tournament before and not won, but now that we are over that hump, we are ready to go. We’re not satisfied with just winning the conference.
“We want to win it all.”
