Summitt to try again tonight for win 1000

Goodness but these women's hoops coaches are supportive of one another. Yesterday Pat Summitt got a text message from Georgia Coach Andy Landers, tonight's opponent for the Vols, saying "if you don't win tomorrow, I'm gonna be PO'd."

The Bulldogs have a four-game winning streak going right now, so don't look for them to just give up the win for Summitt's sake. But it was a nice gesture on Landers' part.

The funniest part of this piece, on knoxnews.com, was how well the Lady Vols took to their duties Tuesday, the day after the loss to Oklahoma and season-ending injury for Vicki Baugh.

Rather than practice Tuesday, Summitt had the players prepare the scouting report for tonight's game. Her thinking was, "You do it and maybe you'll respect it more and buy into it more."

"I was surprisingly more into it than I thought I'd be,'' sophomore guard Angie Bjorklund said. "I was like 'Man, I could do this for a living possibly.' Maybe I should think about coaching."

It's worth noting that Bjorklund also enjoying doing team laundry, which was punishment for a 74-58 loss at Vanderbilt last month. Still, Bjorklund noted that freshmen Alyssia Brewer and Alicia Manning took the report to the Thornton Center and, in Bjorklund's words, "made it look pretty on the computer."

"They made it look exactly like our scouting reports look," Bjorklund said, "which is a set format. They're real detailed."

I think it's genius of Summitt to forget practice the day after a horrible night like that, yet still keep them focused.

Link: http://www.govolsxtra.com/news/2009/feb/04/summitt-gets-message-from-landers-georgia/

Tonight's game will be broadcast nationally, and will be on ESPN360, which means I'll be getting the heck out of here the minute school is over and rushing home.

ESPN has it's own Pat Summitt page, too: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncw/feature/index?page=patsummitt_1000

Finally, I'm happy to report that just as Candace Parker is cool with the boys, so is Pat Summitt.

A few of the football boys asked me Sunday if "this would be the night" for Summitt. The day after that, they consoled me. Yesterday they started asking me if I was excited about tonight's game, and this morning David again asked me if tonight was it. The respect they have for Summitt is obvious. David said "Pat Summitt is hard!" which is a great thing in teenspeak.

Good sign, good sign.