Story Links
March 25, 2000
By TERESA M. WALKER
AP Sports Writer
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – A year of waiting for a chance at redemption finallyis over for the Tennessee Lady Vols.
Tamika Catchings scored 28 points as top-seeded Tennessee beat Virginia77-56 Saturday in the Mideast Regional semifinals of the NCAA women’stournament. Now the Lady Vols hope to erase the disappointment of last year’sEast championship loss to Duke, which cost them a chance at a fourth straightnational title.
“We’ve tried for a year to be playing on Monday night to get to a FinalFour,” Tennessee coach Pat Summitt said.
“They’ve worked hard. The freshmen may not understand how much we wanted tobe in that game. We don’t care who we play. We just want to bring our game.”
Tennessee (31-3) reached its sixth straight regional championship and 16thin 19 years with its 18th straight victory. The Lady Vols will play either No.2 seed Notre Dame or third-seeded Texas Tech Monday night.
“I hope we’ll come out and put all the things that we’ve learned to use,”Catchings said.
That includes rebounding and not easing up when grabbing the lead. Catchingsscored the first six points, and Tennessee quickly built its lead to 18 asVirginia, which averaged 17.3 turnovers a game, had 17 in the first half.
The Lady Vols had their lead trimmed to three in the second half and had toscramble to put away Virginia.
“The defensive intensity, we have to put it up for 40 minutes,” Catchingssaid. “We had some lapses. If we can put that together and put it togetherwith our rebounding, we’ll be all right.”
The last thing Virginia (25-9) wanted was to run with the quicker Lady Vols,but the Cavaliers found themselves sprinting from the outset.
“The first five minutes were like a nightmare,” Virginia coach Debbie Ryansaid. “I knew that would be the case, but I felt we were prepared. I thoughtwe would be able to weather the storm.”
The Lady Vols’ pressure defense made the Cavaliers look nervous and forcedthem into numerous turnovers.
Virginia finished with a season-high 27 turnovers compared to 13 forTennessee, which also outrebounded the Cavaliers 42-31. Virginia got only sixoffensive rebounds.
“It was very difficult to get a second shot with them,” Ryan said. “We’venot been a strong rebounding team all year. That’s the one thing we’ll takeaway from this game. I think our team learned a lesson today about playing onthis level.”
Semeka Randall added 19 points for Tennessee, which has beaten Virginia 10times in their 11-game series. Michelle Snow added 11 points and nine rebounds,and April McDivitt had 13 points.
Virginia, trying to reach its first regional final since 1996, finallysettled down in front of the pro-Tennessee crowd. The Cavaliers outplayedTennessee over the first eight minutes of the second half and got within 45-42,the smallest margin since the opening minute, on an 11-0 run keyed by two LisaHosac 3-pointers.
Tennessee responded with a 20-3 run. The Lady Vols took their biggest leadof the game at 22 twice, the last at 18:21 on a McDivitt jumper at the top ofthe key.
Svetlana Volnaya led Virginia with 18 points. Schuye LaRue had 10 points andnine turnovers.