STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More Women's Basketball

• McMahan told to make knee top priority
• McMahan has arthroscopic knee surgery
• Fleser: Figuring a different outlook for Lady Vols

Share and Enjoy [?]

Get Reprints

Want to use this article? Click here for options!

Either Tennessee or LSU will score enough points to win its national semifinal showdown in the Women's Final Four.

Still, neither women's basketball team figures to give the scoreboard much of a workout in trying to reach Tuesday's national championship game and face the winner of the other semifinal between Connecticut and Stanford.

The Lady Vols and Lady Tigers will be more about prevention beginning at 9:30 p.m. Sunday (TV: ESPN) at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, Fla.

LSU (31-5) is leading the tournament field in scoring defense, allowing 45.8 points per game on average. Oklahoma State did the most damage and the Cowgirls managed just 52 points in a Sweet 16 game. Opponents are shooting 31.4 percent from the floor and 24.2 percent from 3-point range.

In reaching the Final Four for a Division I record-tying fifth consecutive time, the Lady Tigers held North Carolina to a season-low point total in winning 56-50 in the Mideast Regional final in New Orleans. The Tar Heels entered the tournament as the nation's top-scoring team and still finished with a school-record 86.3 points-per-game average.

No matter, they put nary a dent in LSU's defense, failing to have at least two double-figure scorers for the first time in 49 games.

"It was not the normal game for us and LSU probably had a lot to do with that,'' North Carolina coach Sylvia Hatchell said.

It was the Lady Tigers' kind of game, no matter what anyone thought of it. Senior guard Erica White went into a defensive stance afterward when asked whether the victory was "ugly" in nature.

"When you're in a defensive slugfest, it's not going to be pretty,'' she said. "I kept thinking to myself that it doesn't have to be pretty. The most important thing is to win and defend. I told my teammates to keep getting stops."

Tennessee (34-2) is familiar with winning in this manner. The Lady Vols produced a comparable defensive performance against North Carolina in last season's national semifinals in Cleveland, winning by the same 56-50 score. They won the national championship despite setting Final Four records for fewest field goals (37) and lowest field-goal percentage (30.6 percent).

The Lady Vols likely will favor a similar game plan for this excursion. There's no telling what they'll get scoringwise from All-American Candace Parker, who twice suffered a dislocated left shoulder Tuesday in a 53-45 Midwest Regional final victory over Texas A&M in Oklahoma City. While Tennessee is the only team in the past nine games to top 60 points against LSU, Parker had 28 of them in a 61-55 victory in the SEC tournament championship game March 9 in Nashville.

With Parker in and out of Tuesday's game, the Lady Vols brushed up on their defense in a big way, holding the Aggies to six second-half field goals. They accomplished the lockdown with only nine combined playing minutes during the half from backup forwards Alex Fuller and Vicki Baugh.

"We put our heads together as a coaching staff and decided that we would extend our defense a little bit more and try and take a little more time off the clock,'' UT coach Pat Summitt said, "more of a delay-and-disrupt type of pressure in the three-quarter. Because I was thinking, I'm not sure we can open up man-to-man and go at 'em the way we want to. We need a different presence on the inside."

The Aggies, who had fueled their tournament run with stifling defense, gave credit to UT's effort.

"In the second half, they were switching from man to zone and doing a tremendous job of keeping us away from the 3-point line and keeping us away from the perimeter," A&M point guard A'Qounesia Franklin said.

The Lady Vols likely will need a different plan against LSU and 6-foot-6 center Sylvia Fowles. This much remains constant: the defense can't rest.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.