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NCAA Women's Tournament Capsules: Aggies, Irish face off for national championship
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The coaches might not be household names. The players aren't well known — yet.
The national championship game between Notre Dame and Texas A&M on Tuesday night is a rare showdown in women's basketball, the first time since 2005 that neither Tennessee nor Connecticut has been involved.
No Stanford, either, and no Baylor. No Maya Moore. No Geno Auriemma.
It's all good. Just ask Gary Blair, Texas A&M's entertaining and outspoken coach.
"It's good for story lines," Blair said. "Instead of having Brittney Griner or Maya Moore and Geno, but what's wrong with good old Muffet (McGraw) and Gary and teams that play tremendous team basketball that do not rely on just one player?"
The two schools better known for their play on the gridiron will take the grandest stage in women's basketball in one of the biggest surprises in NCAA tournament history. Even though both are No. 2 seeds, they got here the hard way.
The Irish (31-7) snapped an 0-20 skid against Tennessee in the tournament and then upset Moore and the two-time defending champion Huskies after going 0-3 against their top-seeded Big East rival this year and 0-9 before that. Texas A&M (32-5) advanced by beating Griner and her Baylor teammates after three losses this season, and then upended another top seed in Stanford in the semifinals.
The result is a title game without a top seed for just the second time, and the first since No. 3 seed North Carolina beat No. 4 Louisiana Tech in 1994.
"Somebody said only one person predicted that it was going to be an A&M-Notre Dame matchup out of all the millions of people who do a bracket," Texas A&M guard Sydney Colson said. "I think the fact there have been these upsets is really helping out with women's basketball. I think it will get some of those top-name girls to branch out to other schools and realize it's not just UConn and Stanford and Tennessee that can win national championships."
Notre Dame's sensational sophomore guard Skylar Diggins was one of those girls. She grew up in South Bend and was a die-hard Irish fan who cheered them on as they won their only national championship in 2001.
"I was there, hands on the TV," said Diggins, who was 10 at the time. "If they lost I'd have been crushed."
Diggins led the Irish to back-to-back victories over Tennessee and Connecticut — the first time a team has ever beaten those two juggernauts in the same NCAA tournament. Amazingly, it's only happened eight times during the same regular season, according to STATS LLC.
"It's awesome," Diggins said. "This team is very proud of itself and we're not done yet."
There are a lot of similarities between that last title run and this one. Notre Dame also beat UConn in the Final Four after losing to the Huskies in the Big East tournament championship game. The Irish's starting point guard, Niele Ivey, was a third team All-America like Diggins was this season.
"I'm enjoying the circle. We had our championship reunion in the fall and the team came in," said McGraw, the Fighting Irish coach. "They presented a ball to this team and said, you know, 'We've won our championship, now it's your turn.'"
Standing in the way is Texas A&M, the national championship newcomer that bullied its way through the tournament behind a relentless defense that didn't allow more than 50 points until Stanford scored 62 on Sunday night.
Offensively, the Aggies rely on Danielle Adams, who became the first All-America in school history. And their defense is fueled by the harassing guards — Colson and the other Sydney, Sydney Carter.
"A lot of people, I don't want to say they fear our defense, but I think they really respect what we do on the defensive end," Carter said. "And we take so much pride on the defensive end and making people feel uncomfortable and making them do things that they don't want to do."
Colson said she expected a physical game against Notre Dame.
"I think they're just as physical as we are," she said. "And I think it's just going to be an all-out battle."
Colson and Carter will need to contain Diggins to have a chance. With 28 points in the seven-point win over Connecticut, Diggins has become an overnight national sensation. She gained nearly 20,000 new Twitter followers after the victory UConn, helped by a tweet shoutout from rapper Lil Wayne, who has 1.6 million followers.
"It's crazy," she said. "I have a lot of young girls following me and asking how I handle different situations. I have to understand that I'm a mentor and a role model and act as such."
With all the top seeds gone, Texas A&M and Notre Dame both have a chance to seize the moment.
"I think a lot of people were happy to see a different face in the final game," McGraw said. "I think it's great what Connecticut's done for the Big East and for women's basketball, and I think it's also great to have some new teams come in and maybe appeal to a lot more people."
Texas A&M's rise a long one before title game
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Kelly Krauskopf still remembers those tough old days at Texas A&M.
Back then, the women's basketball coach was buying paint for the players to renovate their own locker room. The team's preseason trip was to J.C. Penny's for discounted travel bags, and when things got cold during the winter, players simply put on extra clothing in the unheated practice gym.
Three decades later, the Aggies are drawing more than 6,100 fans to games and the program that Krauskopf called one of the nation's worst has become one of the nation's best.
"Bob Gates said when he hired me that he wanted us to have the best sports program in the country," athletic director Bill Byrne said, referring to the former university president who is now the U.S. defense secretary. "We work to do that every day."
Mission accomplished.
The Aggies women's basketball team will play for its first national title Tuesday night against Notre Dame. The softball, women's swimming and diving teams and track and field teams are already national powerhouses. The women's soccer team finished the season ranked in the top 10 and the equestrian team is ranked No. 1.
It hasn't been easy changing attitudes at a university that began as an all-male military school. Some alumni opposed the decision to begin admitting women in 1963, and school administrators didn't always see the advantage of funding men's and women's sports equally when Title IX passed in 1972.
The ramifications were felt by female athletes, such as Krauskopf, for decades.
The earliest players dressed in the men's locker rooms, and some contended they were harassed on campus.
Forward Danielle Adams, the first All-American in school history, is still amazed by what she hears.
"We wore the same uniforms every year and we used duct tape on our travel bags," said Krauskopf, a 1983 A&M graduate and now general manager of the WNBA's Indiana Fever.
Krauskopf knew it wasn't this way everywhere.
After graduating from high school in 1979, Krauskopf enrolled at Stephen F. Austin, a small school in Nacogdoches, Texas, with a reputation as one of women's basketball premier schools.
The next year, she transferred to A&M and found a program in tatters. Female players drew the short stick on practice facilities and times. They crammed 13 players into a minivan to travel to games and fans didn't even need tickets to attend games.
The lack of funding and support was reflected on game day.
"What was different? About 9,000 people in the stands," Krauskopf said. "At Stephen F. Austin, we'd come out every night to about 8,000 people. When I transferred, I went from 8,000 to about 50."
By the mid-1980s, things were starting to change.
Then-coach Lynn Hickey, who also served the women's athletic director, finally had enough money to hire Krauskopf as an assistant athletic director.
And when a school rep from rival Texas called looking for tickets to the game in College Station in 1986, Krauskopf bought a roll of admission tickets that looked like they came from the county fair. She charged the Longhorns $5 apiece.
It was the first time the school had ever sold tickets to a women's game.
"When I was there, I thought Notre Dame was ahead of Texas A&M in women's athletics," former Notre Dame football coach Bob Davie said. He spent nine years at Texas A&M as an assistant and said the battle of the sexes was over by the time he got to College Station in 1985.
"A&M was just starting to build its facilities and I felt there was a little more emphasis on women's sports at Notre Dame," Davie added. "The emphasis on women's athletics just wasn't as prevalent then as it is now."
The women's basketball program was also moving forward.
By 1994, it had earned its first NCAA tournament bid and immediately reached the regional semifinals, but the program's reputation remained the same — until coach Gary Blair arrived in 2003.
The man with the sharp tongue, quick wit and deep Southern drawl found himself at home recruiting Texas' best players, and teaming up with others in the athletic department to sell the school.
Blair and then men's coach Billy Gillispie helped raise $24 million in private funds to build a new practice facility and it made a difference in the results, too.
A&M has now made a school record six straight NCAA appearances, and nothing can compare to this season.
The Aggies have won a school record 32 games, finally got past league rival Baylor to reach their first Final Four and are now on the cusp of winning a national title that has made alums like Krauskopf proud of what their program has become.
"When I was a student-athlete there, we would get old Aggies to come up and say 'I really like watching your team, and I was one of those people who was against this women's thing,'" Krauskopf said. "Now when I look back on that, it does hit me. It's like 'Wow, we're really breaking new ground, especially at a school that was all military and all male."
School President Bowen Loftin said the women's program was among the worst before Blair arrived.
"Now we're one of the best," Loftin said. "Football brings in the most money and men's basketball brings in the second most, but we've been able to spread the money across the programs. We've come a long ways."
-- Michael Marot
Notebook: Weight loss helps Texas A&M star
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Texas A&M's Danielle Adams is not the person she was two years ago, much to her delight. For starters, there's not as much of her.
Adams tipped the scales at 280 pounds when she transferred to A&M from a Missouri junior college in 2009. She has since slimmed down to around 230 and as the weight fell off, her production and efficiency shot up.
She can play longer and harder, and that's critical at A&M, especially the playing harder part. Coach Gary Blair's defense-first system relies on players going all out from beginning to end.
"It's helped me tremendously," said Adams, who this season became a first-team All-American, the first in Aggies' history. "Since day one, Jen Jones, our strength and conditioning coach, has been working with me. I've been making better choices on my food selections and my teammates have been there to push me every day in practice."
Adams' increased stamina is reflected in her numbers. Last season, when she was the Big 12's Newcomer of the Year, she averaged 23.4 minutes a game. This season, that number has jumped to 30.4. She played the full 40 minutes in a victory at Iowa State and has logged at least 35 minutes in 12 other games.
"I feel real good right now," Adams said. "I'm probably in the best shape I've ever been in. I'm proud of it and want to keep working at it and just keep getting my weight down if I can."
Adams put in 32 minutes in A&M's 63-62 victory over Stanford in Sunday night's national semifinals and the Aggies will need her on the floor as much as possible when they face Notre Dame in the championship game Tuesday night.
Fatigue? Adams doesn't even want to think about that word, though it's a concern for everyone, from the shortest, slimmest guard to the tallest, bulkiest post player.
It will be the 38th game this season for A&M and the 39th for Notre Dame and comes at the end of a grueling stretch of tournament games, each one carrying higher stakes than the one before. The grind can challenge even the best-conditioned players.
"I'm going to rely on my adrenaline to take me through this game," A&M guard Sydney Carter said. "There's so much on the line with this last game. It's going to be my last game with our seniors. I definitely want to go out with a bang and finish it all.
"I think that with so much being on the line, I don't think tired is going to be an issue."
It won't be an issue for Notre Dame's Devereaux Peters, either. At least, she hopes it won't.
"It's either you win or you go home, so you can't really think about that too much," Peters said. "It's if you want to play or you don't. If you're tired and you don't want to be there, it's a whole different story. We all want to be here. We're all excited for it."
SOCIAL MEDIA STAR: Notre Dame's Skylar Diggins has become an overnight Twitter sensation. She's been tweeting all season and had a steady stream of followers before the Irish's NCAA run.
But making the Final Four has brought her a new legion of fans. The sophomore guard gained some 20,000 followers Sunday night after she led the Irish to a 72-63 victory over Connecticut and a trip to the championship game.
Diggins was actually a trending topic on Twitter on Sunday. It definitely helped that rapper Lil Wayne tweeted about her and the Irish to his 1.6 million followers.
"He tweeted me and I was like, wow. He didn't just say Skylar Diggins, he said the Fighting Irish and that's huge," she said.
Diggins is careful about her own tweets.
"I wouldn't say anything that my mother wouldn't be proud of," Diggins said. "She stalks me, never mentions it, but she's on there. Even if she wasn't, you know that you're representing the University of Notre Dame and it's so much bigger then myself and what I represent."
SCHAEFER FOR THE DEFENSE: Texas A&M coach Gary Blair has borrowed a page from the football coaching handbook: He has his own defensive coordinator.
Assistant coach Vic Schaefer has worked 14 seasons with Blair at Arkansas and A&M, and has great freedom in developing the Aggies' defensive schemes and drills. He's known as the team's secretary of defense, not to be confused with Robert Gates, the former A&M president who is President Obama's secretary of defense.
"I just think he understands," Schaefer said of Blair. "I look at all the film on our opponents. He just looks at our film and worries about our team. He knows I have a great understanding with what's going on with the other coaches."
Guard Sydney Colson said Schaefer sets the tone for the Aggies' aggressiveness on the defensive end with his intensity in practice — and endless drills.
"Since the beginning of the season, we always start out with this certain drill in the defensive portion of practice that we all dread," Colson said. "It's the most tiring thing and then you've still got to do like 50 minutes of defense after it.
"But going through all those drills that we hate doing has really prepared us for where we're at right now."
The most dreaded is the zigzag drill. In that drill, a defender must hound a dribbler up the court and try to constantly force her to change direction.
"Our post players, they hate it," Colson said. "They never want to be the first in line. It's three minutes on the clock when we start this drill, so they never want to be first. They want to go last because they're like, 'When will I ever do this?'"
Well, 6-foot-1 forward Adaora Elonu did it late in the Stanford game, forcing 6-3 Mikaela Ruef to change directions several times as she tried to bring the ball up the court.
"Adaora has not been our best in practice at doing that and we carp on her every day," Schaefer said. "When our kids over there are seeing Adaora Elonu turn the ball three or four or five times in the backcourt, they're fired up. That's part of what gets us going and gets them excited in that situation."
MELLOW MUFFET: Notre Dame's veteran players have seen a mellowing in coach Muffet McGraw. Oh, she's still intense and she'll get on them when they need prodding. But McGraw herself concedes she's lightened up and is more patient with this team, which has reached the national championship game despite losing four starters from last season.
"We talk to a couple of the players here from years ago and they're like, 'She's so much easier on y'all than she was on us,'" guard Skylar Diggins said. "And I'm like, 'Well, yeah.'
"But she's had a lot of patience with us. Obviously we're a young team and I think with her being patient with us and talking to us like she does ... we're just able to put together an awesome year."
McGraw said she's more relaxed because the team has made her that way. She doesn't need to come up with many pep talks because senior Becca Bruszewski sees to that.
"I never have to worry about if we're gong to show up," McGraw said. "And I think that really makes it more fun. I've really enjoyed coaching this team. I've enjoyed this journey we've been on."
DOS SKYLARS: Before she enrolled Texas A&M, Skylar Collins knew no one else with the same first name.
"I felt kind of special," she said.
Then, during a team dinner before a game against Texas Tech, the television was tuned to ESPN and the announcer mentioned Skylar Diggins.
"I turned around and was like, 'Who called my name?'" Collins said. "That was the first I ever heard about her because this was when she was being recruited. I didn't know anybody else even had that name. I think it's kind of cool."
Collins has said she'd like to meet the Notre Dame star and it could happen Tuesday night, though hardly in a friendly setting. Collins, a reserve guard, usually goes in to play defense, so there's a chance she'd guard Diggins. She won't be going out there just to shake her hand.
"I would definitely be out there trying to win," Collins said. "Maybe after the game, when it's all said and done, it would be nice to meet her."
FRIENDS FACE OFF: The best individual matchup in Tuesday night's game could be the Aggies' quick, feisty guard Sydney Carter against the Irish's smooth and dangerous Skylar Diggins.
They'll hardly be strangers. They roomed together at USA Basketball Trials, became close friends and, you guessed it, follow each other on Twitter.
"She is awesome on and off the court," Diggins said. "It is going to be fun playing against her. It's fun playing against people that you know because you know they are going to challenge you."
Diggins presents an even greater challenge for most opponents because she's left-handed and there are few left-handers playing point guard. But one is Baylor freshman Odyssey Sims, a player the Aggies faced four times this season.
"That may help us out a little bit because guarding a left-handed guard is unorthodox in our game," Aggies guard Sydney Colson said.
SHE'S TOUGH: Notre Dame's Brittany Mallory thrives on sticking her nose wherever the basketball might be and she's got the bruises and scratches to prove it.
Mallory is toughness personified for the Irish and that's saying something on a team that has a player nicknamed Nasty (Natalie Novosel) and another called Bruiser (Becca Bruszewski).
If you see a Notre Dame player sprawled on the floor, chances are it's Mallory.
"Coach always said I had a hard nose for the ball," Mallory said. "I just go in and I get hit probably five times every game. Sometimes I fall to the ground, sometimes I don't. I've just got to keep fighting. I'm not going to sit out in a lot of things."
Mallory developed that toughness as a youngster. She and her brother, Bobby, who's 3 years older, used to go 1-on-1 at a hoop on the cul-de-sac where the family lives in Baltimore.
"This one specific time, I remember I was about to win," she said. "I beat him on the dribble and he just pushed me and my face hit the metal bar. So I ran inside and said, 'Daddy, he pushed me!' And he goes, 'Well, you can either cry about it or play through it.' That was my dad's saying.
"I was like, fine. I wiped my face and I threw the ball back to my brother and said, 'Let's finish this game.'"
Mallory also played lacrosse in high school and that's no game for the timid.
"Getting hit with a metal pole in your hand, that doesn't feel too good," she said. "Lacrosse definitely is a physical sport."
Basketball is, too, at least the way Mallory and her teammates play it.
"Throughout the season, you don't realize after a game where you got hit or scratched until the next day and you wake up and there's marks all down your arms," she said. "Nail marks. You know girls. We have nails. It's not like we're purposely trying to scratch each other. You wake up and just have lines all over you.
"It's almost like a reward. It shows how much you battled and how intense you were during the game."
BITTERSWEET DAY: One of the greatest honors of Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer's career came after one of her more disappointing days.
VanDerveer was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame on Monday as part of the group that included Chris Mullin, Dennis Rodman, Artis Gilmore, Tex Winter and Teresa Edwards. VanDerveer coached Edwards on the 1996 U.S. Olympic team.
The announcement was made just 14 hours after her team lost to Texas A&M 63-62 at the Final Four, denying the Cardinal a trip to the championship game.
"It's the ultimate compliment to a coach or basketball player," VanDerveer said. "I'm humbled and honored. You should be really excited about it, but I wish it hadn't come on this day. I'm not feeling great about myself or how we played. I keep going back and thinking about all the things I could have done or should have done."
A&M scored the winning basket with just 3.3 seconds left.
ONE MOORE NOTE: With her 36 points in Connecticut's loss to Notre Dame on Sunday night, Maya Moore just missed becoming the career scoring leader in NCAA tournament play.
Moore scored 476 points in 22 tournament games with the Huskies. Former Tennessee star Chamique Holdsclaw is the leader with 479.
In an interesting twist, Moore's next official game could come in the same place she played her last collegiate game, Conseco Fieldhouse. Moore is expected to go to the Minnesota Lynx as the first pick in next Monday's WNBA draft. The Lynx open their season against the Indiana Fever at Conseco Fieldhouse.
Other College Women's Basketball News
Top-seeded Stanford falls short at Final Four
STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Stanford is thrilled to be a Final Four regular again. Yet that hardly makes it any easier for the Cardinal players or their coach to keep coming home without a trophy.
Tara VanDerveer's team is 0-for-4 in chances at the championship in four straight trips to women's basketball's biggest stage, still left looking for the school's first national title since 1992.
This time, the top-seeded Cardinal are coming back to campus a couple of days earlier than expected after falling 63-62 to Texas A&M in the national semifinals Sunday night in Indianapolis. Stanford again heads into the offseason disappointed and left to wonder why things didn't work out with another deep and talented team.
There were so many other milestones to cherish this season — and now there's the one that didn't happen.
VanDerveer, named Monday to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, became the fifth Division I coach to join the 800 wins club on Dec. 22. Eight days later, Stanford stunned then-No. 1 Connecticut to snap the two-time defending champion Huskies' record 90-game winning streak.
Seniors Kayla Pedersen and Jeanette Pohlen capped a perfect run at Maples Pavilion for their four-year careers with a second-round NCAA victory against St. John's, extending the program's school-record winning streak to 63 games. They were part of the first class at Stanford to ever go unbeaten at home.
Stanford (33-3) took a 27-game winning streak into the game with the second-seeded Aggies.
"It's hard. I mean, it's an awful feeling," Pedersen said. "But ... the hardest part isn't losing the game, it's just leaving these girls. And I just thank God for every opportunity I've had with these girls over the last weekend, four years, and it's been wonderful. So, I mean, I'm happy to be with them right now and I'm happy to lose with this team, if we did have to lose."
A year ago, it was Pedersen who said she didn't want to have to say she was part of four consecutive Final Four teams that never took the next step. Stanford led UConn by eight points at halftime of the 2010 NCAA title game only to lose 53-47. In 2008, the Cardinal ended a 10-year Final Four drought and rode Candice Wiggins to the title game before falling to Tennessee.
VanDerveer, who shared AP Coach of the Year honors this season with UConn's Geno Auriemma and Katie Meier of Miami, said losing the title last year fueled her to be a better coach, to work even harder.
The Hall of Fame award Monday was thrilling but came on a "tough" morning. VanDerveer spent countless hours preparing for Texas A&M after it shocked top-seeded Baylor in the regional finals. The Aggies' aggressive, in-your-face pressure defense made it tough for Stanford to find its usual offensive rhythm.
The Cardinal committed an uncharacteristic 22 turnovers, seven of those by point guard and Pac-10 Player of the Year Pohlen.
"We watched a lot of video. And we saw that their offense was their defense. They get a lot of steals. They get a lot of turnovers. And they produce by turning the ball over," said junior forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike, who provided the highlight with 31 points on 10-for-15 shooting to go with seven rebounds. "We tried our best to really kind of find our way around it. It became a little bit more disruptive at the end, and I definitely give them kudos for that defense. It was really hard to get open. And we really tried our best."
Now, it will be up to Ogwumike and star younger sister, Chiney — the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year — to lead Stanford into another season with high expectations of returning to the Final Four and winning it all.
Yet VanDerveer knows how hard this latest near-miss will be for her seniors and everybody else to deal with in the coming days.
"I'm really proud of our team, with what we've gone through and all the growth this team has had," VanDerveer said. "It's not about me. It's about them. I can have another chance, but I feel bad for Kayla and Jeanette. They wanted this. They worked hard. They dedicated themselves and committed themselves to this team and this program. And I can't say enough positive things about them and what they've brought to Stanford and how proud I am of them."
-- Janie McCauley
Caldwell: LSU's tradition, commitment won her over
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Nikki Caldwell looked momentarily confused when asked about the challenge of "trying" to take down her old coach and mentor, Pat Summitt, and the esteemed Tennessee Lady Vols.
"Did you say, 'TRY to take them down?'" Caldwell interrupted, a smile emerging as a handful of boosters laughed and applauded.
Her players, also in attendance, took note.
"I like the confidence," forward LaSondra Barrett said. "Talking to her today was really great. I'm just eager to hear a lot more of her philosophy and for her to help us grow as players."
Caldwell, who on Saturday agreed to take over for Hall of Fame coach Van Chancellor at LSU, was formally introduced as the Lady Tigers' new coach on Monday. She said it was difficult to leave her first head coaching job at UCLA, where she coached three seasons. But the pull of being closer to family in her native Tennessee, as well as the tradition of women's basketball at LSU, made the opportunity to lead the Lady Tigers too good to pass up.
"LSU has been committed to women's basketball when it wasn't popular," noted Caldwell, who won national titles as a player and as an assistant coach at Tennessee.
She said one of her first thoughts, when she learned she was a candidate for the job, was of the late coach Sue Gunter. It was Gunter who made LSU into a formidable rival to the Tennessee teams for which Caldwell played in the early 1990s.
"I was just moved because she has meant so much to a lot of us ... and our choices to go into college coaching because of what she's done for women's basketball," Caldwell said. "I can't tell you enough how honored I am to be a part of such a great legacy."
Caldwell also will be well-compensated. Her five-year contract includes an annual salary of around $700,000 — about the same as the LSU football team's offensive and defensive coordinators are paid. If she hits a variety of performance bonuses, it could climb closer to $900,000.
"That's the market value for a good coach at LSU," athletic director Joe Alleva said. "You get what you pay for."
Alleva called Caldwell's hiring a "bright new day" for LSU women's basketball, lightheartedly adding that the purple blazer he wore to her introduction is something he would only break out on a "special occasion."
LSU's steak of 12 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances ended this season, after which Chancellor stepped down and into a role as an adviser to Alleva.
In Caldwell, the Lady Tigers not only have a proven winner, but a charismatic young coach whose reputation for camera presence, fashion sense, an affinity for high-heel shoes and Harley Davidson motorcycles precedes her. Because the news of her hiring over the weekend sparked calls from fans interested in when 2011-12 season tickets go on sale, the athletic department decided to start selling them on Monday — far earlier than usual.
While she made no effort to hide her enduring affection for Summitt and the Lady Vols, she also spoke of her eagerness to go up against Summitt during games and in recruiting.
"First off, you have to have a mental attitude where you're ready to stand toe-to-toe," Caldwell said. "Competing for a recruit or competing for a game — it's no different. It starts with your attitude."
Caldwell, 38, said Summitt was among the first to call her with congratulations over the weekend and she compared her old coach to a "proud mom."
That's how Summitt sounded when she released a statement on Caldwell's hiring.
"I am absolutely thrilled for Nikki," Summitt said. "It's UCLA's loss and LSU's fantastic gain to get a brilliant, rising coach of Nikki Caldwell's caliber. ... The Southeastern Conference will become much stronger with Nikki joining the league."
Under Caldwell, UCLA went 72-26, reaching the NCAA Tournament twice. Caldwell was named Pac-10 Coach of the Year in 2010, when the Bruins reached the second round of the NCAA tournament and finished 25-9.
Caldwell expects success to come quickly for an LSU team that showed her how good they can be in person, when they beat the Bruins on the road, 55-53, last December after arriving later than anticipated to the arena because of Los Angeles traffic.
"I'm excited, the fact that I get to work with unbelievable young ladies," Caldwell said. "I remember when they came to Westwood and I remember when they beat (UCLA) in Westwood. So that tenacity, that type of passion, that type of will, we're just going to dial that up another notch and keep this thing rolling."
-- Brett Martel
New Mexico women's basketball head coach retires
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Don Flanagan, the most successful coach in the history of the New Mexico women's basketball program, announced his retirement Monday.
Flanagan will leave the Lobos having claimed every school coaching record. Over 16 seasons, he compiled a 340-168 record, his teams made NCAA tournament appearances eight times and the Lobos won a handful of Mountain West Conference championships.
"I was fortunate for the last 16 years to coach so many outstanding student athletes," he said in a statement released by the university. "I appreciate their contribution and all of the fans' support that we received. To represent the university and the state of New Mexico was a great pleasure."
Flanagan did not immediately return a phone message left by The Associated Press seeking comment.
The university said a national search for Flanagan's successor would begin immediately. Associate head coach Yvonne Sanchez will take over as interim coach.
The 67-year-old Flanagan had one year left on a four-year contract extension. The Albuquerque Journal reported Monday that Flanagan made the decision to retire after five freshman players informed him of their intentions to quit the team during a meeting last week.
Flanagan told the newspaper he was gearing up for next season but that changed when players started leaving. He said it wasn't fair to the program for him to stay and recruit multiple players with just one year left on his contract.
Flanagan is synonymous with Lobo women's basketball, New Mexico athletic director Paul Krebs said.
"Don turned this program around, and not only made the Lobos contenders, but he impacted the lives of so many young women," Krebs said. "What he was able to do with his team on the court and in the classroom from the championships to the academic awards is to be commended."
The university scheduled a news conference Tuesday afternoon to discuss Flanagan's retirement.
Flanagan was hired to take over the women's program in April 1995 after having a successful coaching career at Albuquerque's Eldorado High School. At the time, the Lobos had a record of 14-96 for the four previous seasons. In his first season at New Mexico, he went 14-15 and took the team to the Western Athletic Conference tournament. The Lobos went on to win 14 straight games the next season.
During the past decade, the Lobos won 20 games nine consecutive times and five MWC Tournament titles. Flanagan was also honored with a pair of coach of the year awards during the same period.
In the classroom, Flanagan's players averaged a 3.22 grade point average and more than 100 of them earned academic all-conference awards.
The Lobos finished this season 13-18, missing any postseason play. The young team lost guards Sara Halasz and Nikki Nelson just prior to the season because of knee injuries, but despite growing pains from a host of position switches, the Lobos managed to upset Wyoming to get into the MWC semifinals.
-- Susan Montoya Bryan
