Lady Vols look scary
Posted: Friday October 23, 1998 04:18 PM
Sports Illustrated's Kelli Anderson checks in with the
second in a series of glances around the college basketball
scene.
Knoxville,
Tenn.
TEAM: Tennessee Lady
Vols
VENUE:
Thompson-Boling Arena
(24,535)
`97-98 record:
39-0 (won national
championship)
PREDICTED `98-99
STARTERS: F Tamika Catchings, G Kellie Jolly, F Chamique Holdsclaw,
G Semeka Randall, C LaShonda
Stephens
OBSERVATIONS: It's almost Halloween on the Tennessee campus in
Knoxville, but how can you tell? The color pumpkin rules
here all year long, as does sports information student
assistant
Jania "Pumpkin"
Marshall , my guide for my visit on Oct. 8 and 9. (I suspect,
though, that the pumpkin bread that was set out in a back
room in Stokely Auditorium on Friday is strictly a seasonal
offering.) Basketball season is around the corner, too, but
you wouldn't
necessarily know that either, from walking around the UT campus. The
Lady Vols are preparing to try to extend their 45-game
winning streak while the men are mustering the school's
first Top 10 team in years, but there is no rushing
football season. Georgia was on
everybody's mind. So, too, it seemed, was
Peyton
Manning , who still commands heavy ink in the
Knoxville
News-Sentinel sports section despite the fact that he hasn't
quarterbacked the Vols in nearly a year and now plays pro
football in Indianapolis. He remains fervently adored in
Big Orange country, and like coaching legends
Pat
Summitt and
Johnny
Majors , has had a campus street named after
him.
Will the Lady Vols transcendent star
Chamique
Holdsclaw ever be so honored? Perhaps, if she leads her team to the
conclusion everyone, perhaps unfairly, expects: another
perfect season and a fourth consecutive NCAA title. Barring
injury or other unforeseen disasters, this team will be
even better than last
year's, a group that was widely considered the greatest team
of all time. The Lady Vols lost no major contributors to
graduation, and they welcome back defensive stopper
Kyra
Elzy , who sat out most of last year with a knee injury. Plus,
they and add two highly touted freshmen post players,
6'3"
Shalon
Pillow of Addyston, Ohio, and 6'5"
Michelle
Snow of Pensacola, Fla. Summitt has been particularly impressed
with Snow, a slender shotblocker who can play at the rim.
"We've never had a post player like her," said
Summitt. Everybody else, including the storied "three
Meeks"—Holdsclaw,
Tamika
Catchings and
Semeka
Randall —are stronger, wiser and perhaps even hungrier than
last year. Assistant
Mickie
DeMoss has even teased Holdsclaw, who she says has "finally
gotten serious about her game" about her suspiciously
increased tempo in practice. "She was winning sprints
the other day!" exclaimed DeMoss. "I told her I
never thought I'd see the day. You can tell
it's her final
year."
Just one more year for Holdsclaw, a native New Yorker, to
soak up the glories of Knoxville, which surely exist
somewhere beyond the airport-to-gym-to-hotel triangle I've
been limited to in my three trips there. On this visit,
time constraints precluded
me from making it to Callahan's cholest-o-fest by the river
(among the most popular items on the menu: smoked ribs,
creamed spinach and Jack Daniels pie), so I had to indulge
in artery-hardening of a different order: the Burger King
on Cumberland Ave.,
which was the best option I could find near campus for
lunch. Oh well, Knoxville has never pretended to be a
terribly cutting-edge destination, food- or otherwise. At
Knoxville's Tyson-McGee Airport, you still have to walk
across the tarmac to board most
flights. If that experience doesn't take you back a few
decades, the aircraft will. As I climbed onto my delayed
TWA flight to St. Louis on Friday, a gentleman ahead of me
said to another adult, "Trust me, Bob, this plane was
built way before you were
born. What you are walking into here is aviation
history." As always, it was a pleasure to walk out of
it.
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