March 11, 2002
By CHUCK SCHOFFNER
AP Sports Writer
Tennessee performed over the long haul, Vanderbilt at the end.
Ultimately, the Commodores won out.
Vanderbilt edged out conference rival Tennessee for a No. 1 seed in theNCAAwomen's basketball tournament Sunday and joined Connecticut, Duke andOklahoma at the top of the brackets.
Top-ranked Connecticut (33-0) is the overwhelming favorite in thetournamentand was the No. 1 seed in the Mideast Regional. The Huskies will begintheirquest for a third national championship at home against St. Francis,champion of the Northeast Conference.
Duke was the No. 1 seed in the East, Vanderbilt in the Midwest and Oklahomain the West.
Vanderbilt was the surprise of the top four. The Commodores (27-6) finishedthree games behind regular-season champion Tennessee (25-4) in theSoutheastern Conference standings, but split two late games with the LadyVols and won the conference tournament.
"They've always said the last 10 games are really important, and I've heardthat over and over and over again," Vanderbilt coach Jim Foster said. "It'sreinforcing something that they're saying, the reality of, `We say it, wemean it.'
"I'm not surprised by it."
Tennessee lost to LSU in the semifinals of the SEC tournament and also hadalate-season loss to Texas. The Lady Vols were the No. 2 seed in theMidwest,and that puzzled coach Pat Summitt as much as not being a No. 1.
Why, she asked, would you put the two top teams from the SEC in the sameregional?
"I thought we had earned (a No. 1) with the schedule we played and our RPInumber one the country and we only lost one conference game in the SECwhichhad eight teams get in the tournament," Summitt said.
"So the conference tournament it appears, not only in our bracket but allbrackets, really became more of a factor than I had anticipated."
The three other No. 1 seeds all won their conference tournaments andregular-season titles.
It's only the second time in the last 15 years that Tennessee, a six-timenational champion, has not been a No. 1 seed. The Lady Vols were seededthird in 1997 - and won the national championship.
"The committee came down to how teams did at the very end and we justreallyfelt that Vanderbilt deserved that number one," said Maryalyce Jeremiah,whochairs the committee.
As for putting Tennessee and Vanderbilt in the same region, Jeremiah saiditwas done to remain true to the seeds. Vanderbilt ranked fourth among theNo.1 seeds, Tennessee was first among the No. 2-seeded teams.
"We would have compromised Tennessee's seed in order to move them,"Jeremiahsaid. "If we would have moved them to another region, it theoreticallywouldhave made them play someone with a higher seed."
Connecticut was the top overall No. 1 seed, followed by Oklahoma, Duke andVanderbilt. UConn was a No. 1 seed for the eighth time in nine years andgotthis one after a dominating season. The Huskies have won by an average of37points and only one team, Virginia Tech, kept the margin in single digits.
Invincible? Not necessarily, Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma said.
"We played about seven or eight teams this year that I thought if we didn'tplay well, we had a chance to lose," Auriemma said. "If we go in thinkingwe're unbeatable, we're going to get beat, just like everybody else whothinks like that."
Duke received a No. 1 seed for the second straight year, and Oklahoma forthe first time. Vanderbilt had been a No. 1 seed twice previously, in 1993and 1995.
The other No. 2s were Baylor in the East, Purdue in the Mideast andStanfordin the West.
In the women's tournament, the top four seeds in each region are the sitesfor first- and second-round games. Eight sites will have games on Fridayandthe eight others on Saturday.
Second-round games are Sunday and Monday and those winners advance toregionals in Raleigh (East), Milwaukee (Mideast), Ames, Iowa (Midwest) andBoise (West). The Final Four is in San Antonio. In the national semifinals,it will be the Mideast against the Midwest and East against the West.
Louisiana Tech is conspicuously absent from the top 16 seeds. The LadyTechsters (25-4), who won the Western Athletic Conference regular-seasonandtournament titles, are the No. 5 seed in the East.
This is the first time Tech has not been seeded among the top 16 since1993.Tech plays Cal Santa Barbara in Austin, Texas, on Friday.
"You have to live with it and we will deal with," Tech coach Leon Barmoresaid.
The brackets are laden with Southeastern Conference, Big 12 and Big Tenteams.
The SEC matched its record with eight teams in the tournament. That groupincludes Georgia, which went 6-8 in the league but is 19-10 overall and hasa strong RPI. The Lady Bulldogs were selected ahead of Alabama, 7-7 in theSEC.
Also in from the SEC are Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, LSU,Mississippi State and South Carolina.
Oklahoma and Baylor are among seven Big 12 teams in the field, joiningColorado, Iowa State, Kansas State, Texas and Texas Tech. All seven Big 12teams were seeded among the top 16 and will start the tournament at home.
The Big Ten put six in the tournament: Purdue, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota,Penn State and Wisconsin. Wisconsin made it despite a late season collapseduring which the Badgers lost 10 of 13. They started 15-1 and were rankedas high as fifth.