About A Team

Summitt admitted that this title run felt different from the others. "I feel a real commitment to this team, and it's not about one person," she said outside the locker room after the game. "It's all about this team. They want to win championships as much as any team I've coached in a long time, and they've demonstrated it through their commitment to defense and rebounding. They have great chemistry, and they are fun to coach. And we have Candace Parker. We haven't had a big go-to player since [Chamique] Holdsclaw and [Tamika] Catchings, when we won our last championship. And they've accepted Candace. I'm not convinced that type of support was there a year ago. They were trying to do individual things. Now it's a team, and it's a big difference."

It was a team, true, but with Parker's winning Kodak All-America honors and the Wade Trophy on March 31—and with rumors persisting, despite her unequivocal denials, that she might declare for the WNBA draft the day after the final—the spotlight remained on her. The day before the final she talked about how she didn't want to be discussed as one of the Lady Vols greats until she had cut down a net in April. "I want my legacy to be that we hung banners during my career," she says. "All of us came here to win championships. And we haven't done that since 1998."

Tennessee's final opponent, No. 4 seed Rutgers, had never won an NCAA title, and neither had its legendary coach, C. Vivian Stringer, though she had taken three different teams to the Final Four in three decades. This particular group of Scarlet Knights was an unlikely finals participant: With no seniors and five freshmen, the team had struggled at the outset. It was only after Stringer took away their practice gear and locked them out of their plush locker room in January that the players started to coalesce and play the team defense she expected. In their first five games of the tournament they had been a revelation, beating fifth-seeded Michigan State on the Spartans' home floor in the second round and holding top-ranked Duke's All-America, Lindsey Harding, to five points in the Sweet 16. In their semifinal against LSU they had treated the Lady Tigers' 6' 6" star center, Sylvia Fowles, just as ruthlessly, holding her to five points in a stunning 59–35 blowout.

If the Lady Vols were concerned about Rutgers's vaunted defense, they weren't letting on. "We've played the toughest schedule in the country and have had a variety of different looks," Parker said. "I'm not really concerned. We need to come in and not necessarily focus on what they're going to do to us but on playing Tennessee basketball."

To emphasize that point in the locker room before the final, Lady Vols assistant coach Dean Lockwood took a baseball bat—symbolizing Basics, Attitude and Team—and smashed a Rutgers-LSU game tape to bits. "That game doesn't matter anymore!" he cried. Lockwood, who calls himself a frustrated English major, also read a poem he had written to encourage the players to embrace the warrior mentality.

If Lockwood's performance wasn't enough, Tennessee had plenty more inspiration sitting in the stands. Among the hundreds of Lady Vols fans in attendance were members of past Tennessee championship teams, including several players who had been part of the first, in 1987. When members of that team had gathered for a 20th reunion in February, they visited the current team and told stories about how close they were and still are, and how great it felt to win. "In 20 years we want to be able to come back and have our banner in the rafters and be able to celebrate and tell famous Pat stories," said Parker. "We'll roll her in in a wheelchair."

As with Tennessee's victory over Louisiana Tech in the '87 final, the Lady Vols required great defense, superior rebounding and a team effort to beat Rutgers 59–46 and win their seventh national title. Midway through the first half Tennessee took control of the game, going on a 17–6 run to stretch the lead to 29–18 by halftime. Auguste, a reserve forward, was the star of the run, scoring eight of her 10 points and grabbing four rebounds. Bobbitt, her fellow junior college transfer, would star in a second-half run, hitting three of her four three-pointers in less than three minutes, helping to push the score to 46–30 with 10 minutes to go.

At 5' 2", Bobbitt gave up seven inches to Scarlet Knights freshman point guard Epiphanny Prince, her former teammate at Murry Bergtraum High in New York City. Yet Bobbitt easily outplayed her, notching 13 points, three rebounds and three steals to Prince's three rebounds, two assists and two free throws. Meanwhile, Anosike was a steady menace on the boards, grabbing 10 of her 16 rebounds off the offensive glass. (As a team Tennessee had 42 rebounds—24 on offense—to Rutgers's 34.) Beset by double and triple teams all night, Parker still dropped in 17 points, pulled in seven rebounds and got to show off her most overlooked skill, passing out of the double team, hitting Anosike in the paint for a layup here and Bobbitt in the corner for a three there. "You are witnessing the best player in the world," Stringer would say later of Parker. "There is nobody who comes close to her."

Yet this win was also proof that there is a lot more to the Lady Vols than the Candace Parker Show. Shelley Sexton Collier, the captain of that 1987 team, was struck by the similarities between her team and this one. "There's a toughness," she said, "and you can tell they are close. They really are a team."

And so Tennessee's title drought came to an end, after nine years. As Summitt climbed the ladder as champion for the first time this century, the passage of time was marked in part by this detail: In order for her son, Tyler, to ascend with her as he had on every such occasion since he was born in 1990, a second ladder needed to be positioned under the rim for him. "Last time I was small enough to stand on the same ladder with her," said Tyler, now 16. "Now I'm too big."