At the Summit of the game - Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summit; includes related article

As the University of Tennessee men's basketball team struggled through the 1987-88 season, the solution seemed so easy and obvious to some fans. They could see it without opening the door to Thompson-Boling Arena.

The solution was to hire Pat Summitt as coach. She was young, only 35, yet had won a national championship, been to eight Final Fours and had won more games than any U.T. coach except Ray Mears.

The fact that she was a she didn't matter.

The new local sports columnist appreciated their loyalty, if not their logic. Yes, she was a great coach, but with a one-word disclaimer. She was a great women's coach.

Gerry Faust was a great high school football coach. But he shouldn't have been hired to coach football at Notre Dame. Right? Similarly, the men's game was too big for even a big-time women's basketball coach. Bigger crowds, bigger demands, bigger players, bigger egos.

Six years and another coach later, the struggle continued for U.T. basketball. Yet the solution seemed easy and obvious to an older, wiser local columnist. The solution was Pat Summitt.

Summitt could coach. Xs or O's, men or women -- it didn't matter.

The columnist was as convinced as any member of the Summitt fan club. He had observed her in practice, games and championship games. He had heard the testimonials from players and coaches -- men's and women's. He had served as her assistant coach on a mixed-doubles team of former Tennessee men and women players in an exhibition game against the 1992 U.S. women's Olympic team.

The Olympians were leading, 65-58, with less than four minutes to play. Summitt turned to her three media assistants and asked: "Do you want to win?"

This was no time for patriotism. We nodded our approval, and Summitt replaced two women with men. The lineup of one woman and four men, including three men 6-foot-4 or taller, outscored the Olympians 16-1 and won, 74-66.

During the next season, the columnist occasionally asked men players from various college teams if they could play for a woman coach. The consensus was: If she were a good coach, it wouldn't matter.

The consensus doesn't matter to Summitt.

"Why would I go and coach men's basketball?" Summitt asked herself. "There's the novelty of it, the challenge of whether I can do it. Maybe by proving a woman could be successful coaching a men's team, that would open the door for other women.

"But why would I want to walk away from this program? This program is 20 years of my life. It would be like starting all over."

Her husband, R.B., says: "I've probably thought about it more than she has."

So have some of her fans. It's as though Summitt is an east Tennessee treasure they want to show off. And the men's game offers a bigger spotlight. Other Summitt fans look beyond basketball and encourage her to enter politics. "One politician in the family is enough," says Summitt, whose brother, Tommy, is a state representative.

But the question Summitt hears the most is not about men's basketball or politics. It's about retirement.

"What would I do?" Summitt says. "I'm only 42 years old. I think people ask that because I've been here so long, because I've already won three national championships, that there are no challenges left."

Summitt became the Lady Vols' head coach as a 22-year-old graduate assistant. She worked on her master's, taught four physical education courses and coached her first team to a 16-8 record. Nineteen years later, she has Olympic gold medals as a player and coach, three national championships, 530 victories and the No. 1-ranking. Yet she is challenged by the next recruit, the next practice, the next season. And her enthusiasm for the game is no less than when she learned to play it in a hayloft on her family's farm in Henrietta, Tenn.

The men's program is now Kevin O'Neill's challenge. He was hired away from Marquette last March as the successor to Wade Houston, whose last team lost 22 of 27 games.

"I'm thrilled he's here," Summitt says. "His discipline, intensity in practice...we have the same work ethic."

O'Neill has noticed that, too. A friend told Summit that O'Neill spoke highly of her, saying, "I just think of her as a basketball coach."

So does Don Meyer, the basketball coach at Lipscomb University in Nashville, and a guru to other coaches. He and Summitt once rode together for nine hours on the way to a basketball clinic. "We talked basketball for eight hours," Summitt says.

"She is to women's basketball what John Wooden was to men's basketball," Meyer says. "When people ask who has had the greatest impact on women's basketball from the fledgling years on up, there's no doubt it's going to be her.

"I do clinics all over the country. When I tell them to pick out coaches to study, she is automatically on that list."

As the championships pile up, Summitt's gender seems less and less important. She shares the dais at coaching clinics with the premier men's coaches. Last month, ESPN did a program on the "greatest motivators." The coaches featured were Lou Holtz, Mike Ditka, Mike Krzyzewski, Phil Jackson, Wooden and Summitt.

She has been compared to Bob Knight in the men's game. She takes it as a compliment. "I think it's because we have discipline, because we put so much emphasis on defense," Summitt says. "Bob Knight really cares about his players as people. That's why you see so many of his players return and contribute to the program."

Three former Lady Vols -- Lisa McGill, Bridgette Gordon and Daedra Charles -- contributed $5,000 each toward a scholarship fund. Dozens of players returned last season when Summitt was honored.

But as junior point guard Michelle Marciniak will tell you, "Not everybody can play for Pat. You have to be tough-minded."

Marciniak, who transferred from Notre Dame, says she wasn't tough enough last year. "Everybody told me how Pat was on and off the court, about how you couldn't take the criticism personally.

"I knew it, but I didn't want to believe that she would get after me. When she did, it hurt."

Marciniak's best game last season was Tennessee's worst. In the NCAA Mideast Regional, she came off the bench to score 14 points and spark a comeback that fell three points short against Louisiana Tech.

In the midst of the comeback, Marciniak hit a 3-pointer, only to give up a baseline basket on Louisiana Tech's next possession. Summitt summoned her to courtside, grabbed her jersey and berated her for the defensive lapse. An Associated Press photographer caught the grab and grimace. The picture was published in newspapers throughout the country.

"I got letters about it, and a lot of people asked me about it." Marciniak says. "Pat even called my mom to make sure she understood. Mom was OK with it."

So is Marciniak. She keeps the picture on the dashboard of the car for motivation. "Pat says that's how she wants me to think of her," Marciniak says, smiling.

The players think of Summitt differently on and off the court. On the floor, she's a taskmaster; off the floor, she's their best friend or a substitute mother.

"You can see her change when we go into the gym," Marciniak says. "She even walks differently."

Freshman point guard Laurie Milligan didn't take long to distinguish between the two Summitts. After Summitt had blistered her during a practice, Milligan saw her coach getting on an elevator outside the locker room. "Coach, have a great day," a cheery Milligan said.

Says Summitt: "That's not what I would have said if I was the player."

Assistant coach Holly Warlick can empathize with U.T.'s point guards. She was Summitt's point guard from 1976 through '80.

"I remember leaving the gym as a freshman, wondering what I was doing to my body and myself," Warlick says. "And thinking, 'That woman is crazy.' We did a lot of two-a-days and fast-break drills for 30 minutes. We used to dread coming back after Christmas break. We knew she would kill us."

Summitt has mellowed in recent years. "Too much," she concluded in the last off-season after the Lady Vols failed for the third consecutive season to reach the Final Four.

"I think I got caught up too much in team cohesion," Summitt says. "And I realize that while we were getting along and having a lot of fun, we weren't as mentally prepared, as tough mentally as we have been in past years."

So, no more Ms. Nice Guy. Or, as she puts it, less mother, more father. "My mother (Hazel) is a loving, gentle person," Summitt says. "She taught me to be compassionate.... I want to be like my mom off the court and my dad on the court."

Summitt was 12 years old when her father, Richard, left her alone in a field to rake hay. "But, Daddy, I've never done this; I don't know how," she said.

"You've seen it done," he said. "I'll be back in two hours."

"I was so nervous," she says. "But when he came back, it was perfect."

She seeks the same perfection in her teams and herself. To that end, she is constantly re-evaluating. Her teams have been too predictable, she decided, so she studied Lute Olson's video on the 1-1-3 zone defense, discussed it further with O'Neill, a former Olson assistant at Arizona, and installed it.

The team picked it up quickly in what appeared to be a great practice. Great, but not perfect.

Summitt glared at the imperfections. She coached, cajoled and chastized.

And even though her commands were punctuated with "ladies," you realized it was just another day at the office for one of the best coaches in college basketball.

Off and running

Thompson-Boling Arena was designed to be big, not beautiful. But there is beauty to be found backstage in the northeast corner of the 24,535-seat arena.

The women's basketball team's luxurious locker room has become the main tourist attraction of the 7-year-old arena. When the University of Tennessee played host to the 1990 women's Final Four, hundreds of coaches took a look.

"It's as big as my house," South Carolina Coach Nancy Wilson says.

The spacious living room has a leather chair and pit-group sofa that face a 27-inch television screen. The walls are decorated with pictures of U.T.'s three national-championship teams, Olympians and All-Americans.

"It's a showcase to women's basketball," Tennessee Athletic Director Joan Cronan says. It is also a reminder of what Coach Pat Summitt's last three teams haven't accomplished.

When the locker room was redone after last season, all the clocks were changed. The lettering above the numerals reads: "It's Time For A Championship."

The Lady Vols were 31-2 last season. They were ranked No. 1 in the preseason and in the last regular-season polls. But in the Mideast Regional, they lost, 71-68, to Louisiana Tech, a team they beat by 34 points during the regular season.

The ending to that season was painfully similar to the previous two. In 1993, they finished 29-3, upset by lowa in the final of the Mideast Regional. In 1992, they finished 28-3, losing to Western Kentucky in the Mideast Regional.

This senior class -- the most publicized recruiting class in school history -- has never lost a home game. Its 49-game, home-court winning steak is the longest in the country. Overall, it is 88-8. All eights, but no Final Fours.

"There's a lot of pressure on us," senior post player Vonda Ward says. "We were the No. 1 recruiting class, and we haven't gotten to a Final Four."

The other returning seniors are All-American forward Nikki McCray; All-SEC senior center Dana Johnson; and All-SEC guard Tiffany Woosley. Guard Nikki Caldwell is the only player who didn't return from last season. But with the addition of freshman point guard Laurie Milligan and freshman center Tiffani Johnson, the team is deeper and more talented than the one that won 31 games.

Summitt scheduled accordingly. The Lady Vols will play 17 teams ranked in the preseason Top 25, and eight of the Top Ten. Tennessee hosted No. 2-ranked Stanford last Thursday. Tennessee won 105-69, becoming the first team to score more than 100 points against Stanford.

"The ultimate goal of this team is pointed toward an NCAA title," Summitt says. "Anything short of a run at the title would be a great disappointment to them."

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