The Daily Campus

April 8th, 2008

Rocky Top, Fla.

11:20 p.m.

And it’s all over. Tennessee dominates, 64-48, in a game that never seemed all that close. The Lady Vols win their second consecutive title, their eighth overall, and re-cement their status as the best team in the history of the women’s game.

It was getting dicey for those two years or so, when Tennessee led UConn only 6-5 in titles.

But anyway, most of the crowd is happy, Pat Summitt is smiling and Candace Parker is relieved. The pressure on her shoulders is now over, she can rehab the shoulder a little bit, and prepare for life as a relatively-well-compensated member of the exclusive fraternity of professional basketball players.

And hey, maybe UConn deserves a little credit, too. Summitt just said (paraphrasing) in her press conference next door that she became more confident in her team’s chances after watching the Huskies press Stanford with great effectiveness on Sunday night.

 

The Vols lose their entire starting lineup, leaving about five scholarship players with college experience,so at least their reign of terror would appear to be over.

A meaningless, too-early top 5 for next year? How about:

UConn-Rutgers-Oklahoma-Stanford and Tennessee, just for the hell of it. And THAT is the most unqualified opinion statement you’ll read tonight.

 

So it looks like this is it. I didn’t imagine that my role on the UConn women beat would end quite like this, with Pat Summitt cutting down the net and the Huskies long-since departed for home. But so it is.

I’d like to thank everyone out there - a number I imagine is bordering on double-digits - for reading. It’s been a wild season, one left unfulfilled for UConn fans. More importantly, the Huskies have been on the long road back to national dominance since 2005. They’re one step closer, one year older to that goal than they were in October.

It’s a safe bet that the Huskies will be back here next year, when the Final Four moves to St. Louis.

In all probability, the blog will be there as well, even if I am not. So stay tuned here in the coming months for updates on the UConn women, as well as the rest of the UConn sporting world.

Good night and good season from Tampa, and once again thank you. It’s been good.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 10:48 pm and is filed under All Sports, Women's Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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