Fans get close to the action at Stanford-Tennessee

	Coach Pat Summitt (center) and the Lady Vols hold the No. 1 spot in the latest AP poll. Greg Nelson/SI
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When one is consigned to the nosebleed press section of a college arena, one longs for spies on the bench. Budgets being what they are these days, that's difficult for most journalists to arrange. Lucky for me, the Stanford women's basketball booster club, the Fastbreak Club, did the necessary embedding for last Sunday's game against Tennessee.

Last summer, Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer called up Tennessee's Pat Summitt and asked her if the Fastbreak Club could auction off a seat on the Tennessee bench to a fan for their Dec. 4 game. Not only did Summitt enthusiastically agree -- as well she might, given that Stanford has generously contributed to her record 800-plus wins -- she also offered to bring the fan into the locker room at halftime and after the game.

That was enough for Douglas Lee, who shelled out $5,000 for an anniversary present for his wife, Kellee Noonan. "At first I thought it would be weird to not be rooting for Stanford," says Noonan, a Hewlett-Packard engineer and a former president of the Fastbreak Club. "Then I realized this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

A seat on the Stanford bench went for considerably less -- $800 -- and Merrallee Retallick, a Stanford season ticket holder for 15 years, considered that a bargain. Retallick runs the California operation of an IT consulting company, but fantasizes about being a Division I coach. Her regular seats are six rows behind the visitors' bench, so she has had some sense of how the more demonstrative coaches, such as Summitt, UCLA coach Kathy Olivier and former USC coach Chris Gobrecht, operate. "But I have always wanted to be closer to the Stanford bench," she says. Last Sunday, she got closer than most of us in the press ever get.

In a close game, which Tennessee won 74-67, Noonan and Retallick got players'-eye-views of how two of the best coaches in the business manage the game. Moreover, they gained some insight into what we might expect from these two teams down the road, and they were kind enough to share it with me.

After unsuccessfully poking her head into huddles among the much bigger bodies around her, Noonan settled on standing behind the Tennessee bench to hear what was being said during timeouts. In between fielding the towels and water bottles that were mistakenly thrown at her, Noonan got a better appreciation of Summitt as a game coach.

"When you see Pat on TV or from the bleachers, you see her glaring and waving her arms and it's a little scary," says Noonan. "She looks a little maniacal. But on the bench, she never yelled, she was never threatening. She kneeled down in front of players and gave them very specific feedback. After sitting on her bench, I have a much deeper respect for her as a coach. She gives her players everything she has. She really wants to win for them."

When Tennessee was whistled for its sixth foul a little more than three minutes into the game, Retallick craned her neck to see if Summitt "was having a heart attack over there." But Noonan reports that while Pat clearly wasn't happy with the Pac-10 officiating -- "she was tense" -- she did little more than admonish her players to adjust to it. As Tennessee hung onto a thin lead for most of the first half Summitt pointed out to individual players that they were being "lazy on defense" or "lacking in intensity." Other than that, she didn't harp on any negativity. At halftime, she focused on the missed opportunities on the offensive boards (and there were plenty, as Tennessee was only shooting 39 percent) and asked the question, "What are you post people doing?"

Things didn't get really tense until Stanford, which was down by seven at the half, went ahead 47-45 with fewer than 11 minutes remaining. "You could feel the tension on the bench," says Noonan. "I think it knocked them upside the head when Stanford went ahead. At that point there seemed to be a mental shift on the team. One of the players said, 'We have to get serious!' Once they made that shift they didn't let up." The Lady Vols started making shots, steals, assists and crashed the boards. "When they put their mind to it, they are a strong force," says Noonan. "They are going to be a tough team for anyone to beat."