TAMPA, Fla. — The practices are over, the tape recorders and notebooks are full of quotes, the posters have been signed in the heat of a summer afternoon on the concourse of the St. Pete Times Forum concourse and now all that is left is for four teams to play each other in the national semifinals to determine the two teams still standing for the national finals on Tuesday.
LSU and Tennessee will meet at approximately 8:30 p.m. CDT in the second national semifinal following Connecticut and Stanford (6 p.m.).
For Van Chancellor it’s all about respect for his Lady Tigers who are trying to win their first national semifinal in this their fifth straight appearance in the national semifinal game.
“It’s been an amazing deal for me,” said Chancellor, taking his first team to the Final Four in his first year back as a college coach. I’m amazed that a team that’s been to five Final Fours in a row has very little respect. I get here, turn on the television and I see outside the lines with ESPN and I see a guy saying it’s going to be ? welcome to Monday’s press conference between Pat Summitt and Geno. Like LSU’s not playing. I pick up today’s paper and I see where a coach says it’s going to be a great game between Tennessee and Connecticut Tuesday. But our team is pretty good. Our team has done some pretty nice things … We’re excited to be here. I just think this team deserves a little more respect than what it’s getting.”
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When the Lady Tigers took the floor for their open practice on Saturday, among those there to greet them, along with the Tiger girls, Tiger cheerleaders and the Bengal Brass were Coach Chancellor’s four grand kids (Nicholas, Jacob, Joseph, Zachary) all with LSU! spelled out across their chests. The youngest loss the draw and had to accept the exclamation point. The kids were easy targets for the photographers on hand and Coach Chancellor came over and hugged and high five the quartet shortly after the practice session started.
The Lady Tigers had the fourth and final practice session of the afternoon and by then a crowd that numbered a few thousand at its peak had dwindled to mostly the several hundred LSU fans late in the Lady Tigers 60-minute session.
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LSU and Tennessee continue a Southeastern Conference trend in which SEC teams have been in the NCAA Women’s Final Four 25-of-the-last 27 years … A number one see has won the event 18 times but a two seed has captured six titles and a No. 3 seed has two wins … Seeds four on down have yet to hold the trophy.
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It seemed an interesting question and maybe not surprising at the press conferences Saturday, but Pat Summitt was asked what would be acceptable by LSU as far as LSU’s treatment of the injured Candace Parker during Sunday’s game as far as hard screens or hard fouls.
“I don’t expect to see a hard foul from LSU intentionally,” she said. “I just don’t see that as who they are. I think they’ll come and play a very aggressive, competitive game. But that’s the only way that I’ve seen then play over the year and certainly Van coming in is ? to me he’s going to have his team ready to play. But I would ? that thought has never crossed my mind. Maybe I’m na?ve, but the only Van told me when I got here (Friday) is that he had never cheered so hard in his life for Texas A&M. So I had to laugh. I said only Van would tell me that.”
The same question was asked of Chancellor with the phrasing “How do you react knowing a lot of people are going to be looking closely at the type of screens that LSU will be running on Parker?”
The veteran coach was succinct and to the point: “We’re not mentioning that, that’s not the way I coach. I don’t want to win a championship by hurting an athlete. I’d rather lose. I don’t believe in that. That’s not our coaching style. That’s not the way LSU will ever play. We’ll play a good hard game and we’ll play it to the end.”
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As the hour practice ended, Roy King got the Tiger band to play again the second line music that has become the favorite of Tiger teams involved in the basketball Final Four and a couple of the Lady Tigers broke into some dance steps as they left to the court much to the delight of the LSU fans in the building.
For four teams, the coaches and support staff of the respective schools will now put their teams under the same routine that have brought them to this spot. Four becomes two by the end of Sunday night and LSU looks for their chance to shine on the Final Four stage.