Women's Hoops Guru

By Mel Greenberg

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - If the guru's aging memory is correct, Monday night's Tennessee-Rutgers game here in the land of the color orange is the replacement a certain local coach referenced when being questioned several months ago about her cancelling the annual you-know-what encounter.

As it evolves, quite much is on the line, other than the NCAA championship, which is what was at stake when the Vols beat the Scarlet Knights in their last meeting in Cleveland in April.

A loss by Rutgers, for now, changes little in the scheme of things as to where coach C. Vivian Stringer's bunch would stand in the long-range picture. At worst, the Scarlet Knights' RPI components probably get a little stronger.

A win, however, in the immediate short range will shove Rutgers further into the limelight the Scarlet Knights have experienced in the last week since upsetting Connecticut at home to bring down the only remaining Division I unbeaten women's team.

Besides the value of a major upset here, Rutgers would make history by becoming the first women's team to beat No.1s back-to-back in successive games since the Associated Press poll was launched in November, 1976.

Few teams have even been in the situation of having the shot, the most recent being Maryland in its NCAA championship season in 2006.

The effect of Rutgers toppling UConn is that Tennessee will undoutedly become the new No. 1 early Monday afternoon, hours before Rutgers once again meets Pat Summitt's charges in a chess match of Hall of Fame coaches.

When the poll is released, It will be interesting to see how far Rutgers moves up the list.

The Guru's top five went like this -- and remember Rutgers was higher on his vote last week than where the team landed after the loss at West Virginia.

Tennessee was made No,1 in a non-brainer.

North Carolina was moved up to No. 2. The thinking is the Tar Heels are really hot right now and it wouldn't be fair to drop them behind other people.

Then, in a mixed sense, it was Rutgers third, Connecticut fourth, and Maryland fifth.

The ingredients in this was a reward for the win for the Scarlet Knights and the head-to-head factor with the Huskies. The Rutgers jump pushed Maryland back to fifth, but, again, Rutgers also has a win over the Terrapins, who are still solid but performed a little less stellar in the last week, depending on how wants to grade the comeback.

The other issue at-stake, some of this based on the way the special NCAA panel produced the mock women's bracket, is Rutgers, with a win, could challenge for the second No. 1 seed, which would mean being sent to New Orleans in a regional finals advancement.

Last Friday, the mock committee made Rutgers the third No. 1, which, by the geographical computer assigment, placed the Knights in Oklahoma City.

A few weeks ago, as long as Connecticut was unbeaten, the Huskies were projecting as the overall No. 1 seed. But the loss to Rutgers and a potential Scarlet Knights upset Monday night drops coach Geno Auriemma's squad to the third No. 1.

That's also part of a negative effect on UConn with no Tennessee game in the body of work.

When the Vols lost to Stanford, they had the negative effect.

A Tennessee win just moves the Vols closer to the overall No. 1 seed in terms of clinching it.

But LSU will play a role in all this with a game against Tennessee later this week, a visit from Connecticut later this month, and the SEC tournament.

Rutgers, of course, has one more UConn game, and another potential go-round in the Big East tournament.

Oh, just for the record because it's been out there for hours: Tennessee's Candace Parker, who suffered a bruised knee Thursday night, has been declared good-to-go as have all of Tennessee's injured players.

Mock Committee React

And so the question has quickly come from the home base up north, what does Temple's loss to Xavier, Saturday, do to the Owls' NCAA chances, given the way the mock group gently squeezed Temple into the field during the exercise.

For now, the way the Guru sees it, the setback simply reduces Temple's margin-of-error.

Remember, the A-10 in our simulation had three teams in the field, but the automatic qualifier -- Charlotte -- was inserted as such by the NCAA as a way to simulate the bumps and curves the real committee hits during its deliberations.

The result in the mock exercise, off the data and the upset, was that Xavier was one of the just-miss teams left out of the field.

If Temple were to run the table and get to the Atlantic Ten title game at St. Joseph's in Philadelphia, the Owls could still be an at-large invite as long as George Washington and Xavier are the only two other teams in the hunt.

Memory Lane

Unlike his last trip here for a certain, ahem, event in early June, the Guru arrived Saturday with an entourage of "none."

On Sunday, next door to the hotel at the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, Tennessee's Summitt and Rutgers' Stringer participated in an autograph signing, which was probably much less expensive for the Hall then the signings the two coaches with a combined 1,600 or more wins engaged in their most recent contracts with their schlastic institutions.

The Guru, greeted Stringer, with the phrase, "It's about time you got here. We've been waiting for seven months for you to arrive so we can start the ceremony."

For those of you who weren't following the coverage of the Guru's induction, Stringer was to be his escort down the grand staircase at the Tennessee Theatre to begin the night's festivities.

However, the airline-scheduling disaster up North caused by bad weather stranded Stringer, and the Guru quickly went to Atlantic Ten commissioner Linda Bruno as a replacement.

Upon hearing the Guru's remark on Sunday, Stringer simply smiled and said, ``Waiting? I hope you know how much money it cost for me to go nowhere."

The Rutgers team took a tour of the Hall, which also has a plaque for past inductee Marianne Stanley, a Scarlet Knights assistant coach, besides one for the Guru and Strnger.

And a note to the blogging team who was on the scene here in June: The Guru attempted to go to Litton's, the famed burger place of which action shots exist on this blog.

However, all the detours involving I-40 are now sending vehicles in different directions from last June making almost impossible to get out of the neighborhood. And when the Guru got there, he learned it was closed on Sunday.

However, we made it to Calhoun's Sunday night where a little gathering including WBHOF executives Karen Tucker and Dana Hart. A contingent of the Rutgers support staff got their Calhoun's initiation, including Dustin and Stacey, while the Guru also picked up colleague Aditi Kinkhabwala from the airport to speed her arrival to the night's sociality. Paul Franklin is here, also, but was still writing.

And now it's time for the Guru to stop writing since he is the most knowledgeable person of this area from up North here for the game and may have to play tour guide prior to the tipoff.

-- Mel