NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four : Long Beach Doesn’t Know Which Team It’s Playing

AUSTIN, Tex. — There are no Cinderella stories at the women’s Final Four. No sleepers, no unlikely survivors.

But there is something of a surprise team. A surprise team making its sixth straight appearance in the national semifinals, its eighth in the last 11. A team that this season has victories over two of the best teams in the country.

Such is the unusual contradiction that faces Tennessee this week. It’s only fitting, though, since this has been an unusual season for Coach Pat Summitt and the Volunteers, Cal State Long Beach’s opponent Friday evening at the Erwin Center.

Normally a slow starting team, the Volunteers won 8 straight, 11 of 12 and, for the first time since December of 1978, were ranked No. 1 in the nation after beating top-ranked Texas here.

Then, they went the other way, losing to Vanderbilt and Louisiana Tech near the end of the regular season, entering the Southeastern Conference tournament as the fourth-seeded team and losing to Auburn in the semifinals.

Finally, the NCAA tournament arrives and Tennessee (26-6) has been unbeatable, even while juggling the starting lineup. Among the wins was an avenging victory over No. 2 Auburn last Saturday in the Mideast Regional Final.

“I have no idea what team we’ll see in Austin,” Summitt, the 1984 U.S. Olympic coach, said Wednesday. “I’m leaning to thinking that it will be the Tennessee team that has played it smarter than some of the other times this season.

“I’d call this a surprising group. They surprised me in November and December and they surprised me in February. I thought we were ready for the SEC tournament, and then we struggled. We should not have beaten LSU.

“Don’t get me wrong. This is a good team, but it’s not in the top three in terms of everything coming together. We’ve got good chemistry now, but it took us a while to get going.”

All four teams here have faced two of the others, but the Long Beach-Tennessee matchup is not among them. Neither is Texas-Louisiana Tech, Friday’s other game.

Still, it didn’t exactly take a great scouting job for Summitt to figure out the 49ers, who continue to lead the nation in scoring at 96.7 points a game and have topped the 100-point mark 15 times.

“The sun comes up, they rebound and they run,” she said, figuring the high-tempo Long Beach offense as an everyday happening. “They run no matter what. They run on makes and misses.

“If we don’t get down the floor fast enough, it could be a big embarrassment for the big orange.”

True story: Someone called the Texas sports information office the other day and asked how many teams are in the Final Four.

When she first came to Texas, Ellen Bayer, a 6-8 freshman center from Scottsdale, Ariz., gave the equipment people fits. Now, she seems to be doing the same to Longhorn Coach Jody Conradt.

Bayer, the second-tallest player in the country, wears size 15 1/2 shoes, a problem that is compounded by slender feet.

Five custom-made pairs were returned to Converse--Conradt suggested giving them away as plant holders--before someone finally molded a cast of her feet to get the exact size.

That taken care of, trainer Tina Bonci soon had to order mouthpieces for all the players, what with Bayer swinging her elbows at the same level as her teammates’ mouths in practice.

Conradt’s mouth is fine this week, much to Bayer’s dismay. As the team worked on post-play offense and defense this week in preparation of Louisiana Tech and its standout center, 6-4 Tori Harrison, Conradt has paid plenty of attention to Bayer, doing her best to light a fire that has been missing for much of the season.

“I keep telling everyone how you have good hands,” Conradt shouted during Tuesday’s practice. “But these days you couldn’t even catch me.”

And then Wednesday: “I don’t have time to take a poll to see if you want to play. Show me you want to.”

Although Bayer is considered something of a project, the Longhorns believe she will be worth the wait.

“I saw Anne Donovan (of Old Dominion) when she came out of high school,” Texas assistant coach Colleen Matsuhara said. “Right now, I’d say that Ellen is farther along at this stage.”

In other words, she should fit the program just fine.