HuskieDan Wrote:The 2004 Women's championship, played on a Tuesday, featuredthe highest ESPN ratings ever for college basketball, men's or women's.
That was UConn v Tenn! A huge match up (and some friction between the two programs if I remember)
Anyway, didn't they have a different selection program for the women's tourney? What was that all about?
And when the game was on Sundays on CBS, this happened:
http://www.ncaasports.com/basketball/mens/story/7083996
"A SHOT TO REMEMBER
Ten years ago, Charlotte Smith's last-second three-pointer gave UNC the title. (NCAA Photos)
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The thing is, you can think of dozens of reasons why it should not have happened. Yet it did. It wasn't "the game" or "the player" or "the team" that made the 1994 NCAA women's basketball championship so crucial in the development of the sport.
It was "the shot." In women's hoops, there hadn't been anything quite like it before, and there hasn't been since.
With seven-tenths of a second left in the title game, North Carolina's Charlotte Smith sank a three-pointer that lifted the Tar Heels to a 60-59 victory over Louisiana Tech.
It's now been a decade, and the most "fantastic finish" in the women's game still resonates.
The Magic Johnson/Michigan State vs. Larry Bird/Indiana State title game in 1979 is considered the matchup that changed men's college basketball. It was the rocketlauncher that took a popular sport and truly elevated it into a national institution.
The 1994 matchup between North Carolina and Louisiana Tech provided women's basketball with a similar crucial stepping stone.
In 1993, women's hoops had made a breakthrough with its first advanced sellout of the Women's Final Four, in Atlanta. That title game did have a superstar matchup of considerable note, as Texas Tech senior Sheryl Swoopes faced Ohio State freshman Katie Smith.
Swoopes stole the show, though, with 47 points and the championship. It was a performance so compelling that it garnered recognition outside the women's hoops world. Two years later would come Connecticut, a wildly popular program with more media attention than any previous women's hoops team.
No one knew it, of course, but in '94 what the sport needed was a bridge between "the player" (Swoopes) and "the team" (Connecticut).
It needed "the moment." A situation highly dramatic and yet so compact and easy for anyone to grasp that it could just be one brief clip of film -- symbolizing the hair-thread difference between ultimate victory and searing defeat.
How did it turn out so perfectly, almost made-to-order?
The path had unexpected obstacles for the Tar Heels. Their two losses during the regular season were to Virginia, a team North Carolina then conquered in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament final.
But the Tar Heels were the NCAA East Region No. 3 seed in 1994, the first year of the 64-team field. They'd had to go through East No. 2 Vanderbilt without Smith, who'd been suspended a game for throwing a punch in the second round against Old Dominion.
Next was East No. 1 Connecticut, another North Carolina victory. Then, in the Women's Final Four semifinals, West No. 1 Purdue was conquered. Finally, another team that had overcome the seeding odds -- Mideast No. 4 Louisiana Tech -- awaited the Tar Heels in the last game.
The final wasn't particularly well-played. It was during a five-season period when the Women's Final Four semifinals and final were played on back-to-back days because of a CBS television contract. The players seemed a little ragged.
North Carolina shot 34.4 percent from the field, Louisiana Tech shot 35.7. The teams were tied at 32 at halftime. And it appeared Pam Thomas might be the hero when she hit a jumper with 15.4 seconds left, giving Louisiana Tech a 59-57 lead.
Had it ended that way, the game might not really be remembered -- outside of Louisiana Tech fans -- for anything except the fact that a future Olympic superstar was on the court that day.
Basketball, however, wasn't even Marion Jones' top sport. She started most of the 1993-94 season as a freshman guard for the Tar Heels, but track is where she would become world-famous.
But the game didn't end that way.
Jones had a crucial role in that final play -- after North Carolina had missed a shot, she tied up the ball with seventh-tenths of a second left. The possession arrow went to the Tar Heels.
North Carolina called a timeout and set up a play for center Sylvia Crawley. Inbounds passer Stephanie Lawrence saw it was covered, and called a second timeout. That's when Tar Heels coach Sylvia Hatchell switched plays and chose Smith for a three-pointer -- even though Smith was only eight of 31 from behind the arc for the season.
Years later, Crawley would recall that Smith actually didn't pick up the call, saying, "Sometimes you 'hear' things in the huddle, but you find out you weren't really listening."
As they went back on court, Smith asked what the play was. Crawley told her, trying to sound calm, "Charlotte, it's you."
Smith put up the shot ... and in some ways that's really "the moment." Smith at full extension, the ball suspended in mid-air and the fate of two teams hanging there with it.
It could have bounced off and been a missed-chance "phantom" that flitted around Smith and North Carolina forever. But it swished, and the haunting moved to Louisiana Tech.
"It was like destiny," is how Hatchell described it. For North Carolina and for women's basketball.
-- Mechelle Voepel "