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Friday, December 22, 2000
Gators don't want to be bait this March




Years from now at some Florida women's basketball reunion, they're probably not going to be breaking out the tape of the 2000 NCAA Tournament selection show.

"Hey, guys, look! There's us when we realize there are only 16 spots left! ... Wow! Here's us looking about ready to throw up ... Oh, there's Coach Ross with the granite face, wondering how she got 'Sue Gunter-ed' while Piddily U. got in ... Yippee! There's us with that 'We're goin' to the NIT!' look of frozen horror. Please, turn it off ..."

You might think perhaps Florida coach Carol Ross wishes she hadn't agreed to have ESPN there live in Gainesville to show what she hoped would be joy and relief, not abject disappointment. When the bracket of 64 was announced last March with Florida not making the cut, it was difficult to watch. The same thing had happened to Gunter and LSU in 1996 on ESPN.

But Ross said she doesn't regret that her team's heartbreak moment was on live TV.

"I knew we were a bubble team, and I prepared myself for the worst," Ross said. "I didn't want to show a lack of class if we were to be disappointed. But at the same time, it's hard to be disappointed publicly.

"But I also think that maybe it did work for us. I really think maybe it helped us."

As they say, even an ill wind can blow some good. After this happened to LSU, Gunter and her team came out fired up the next season and made the NCAA field.

Ross looks for a similar flame from her bunch this year. So far, it's been burning as if Ross has discovered a lot of that fuel our new Prez and Veep want to go find in "protected" areas.

(Wildlife and nature's beauty are probably overrated anyway. As Texans know, there's nothing like the enchanting glow of a refinery's lights to brighten the coastline. Come on -- you knew a story about Florida would have some political commentary, didn't you?)

At any rate, Florida is 9-0 going into Friday's game at Colorado, its last contest before the holiday break. Admittedly, Florida hasn't had the world's most difficult nonconference schedule, but it has beaten Penn State and could face Rutgers next week in the State Farm Classic in Gainesville.

And then there's the Southeastern Conference schedule.

Now, everyone who follows women's basketball knows the deal here. The SEC has earned its reputation as -- to put it in soccer terms -- the "league of death."

The SEC's record in the NCAA Tournament -- there's been at least one SEC team in the Final Four every year except 1992 -- is indisputable. The breakdown in the Elite Eight last season: SEC (three teams), Big East (two), Big 12, Big Ten and Sun Belt (one each).

The thing is, the national media often find themselves in the position of feeling like the PR mouthpiece for the SEC. Is it possible to secure a comfortable middle ground here -- to give the SEC the praise it warrants without feeling like you're insulting the other leagues?

And, on the flip side, give credit to the other leagues without taking baseless shots at the SEC?

I'll try. I do think the NCAA selection committee, even though it claims not to pay any attention to conference affiliation, must take into account the difficulty of playing the SEC's schedule.

At the same time, it isn't automatic that the SEC is always on some kind of higher plane of existence than the other power leagues. However, I don't blame the SEC coaches and players one bit for trying to maintain that idea.

Florida guard Brandi McCain, a native of Texas, rather innocently sent this dagger out to her home state.

"I looked at Texas and Texas Tech, and they're really good programs," she said. "But I knew I wanted to play in the SEC. If one of those teams had been in the SEC, I probably would have gone there."

Sorry, Brandi, but the SEC is not the NFC East, which includes a Texas team and even an Arizona team (the former ST. LOUIS Cardinals, a hopeless franchise but huge part of my childhood taken away, not that I'll hold a grudge until I croak ...)

Anyway, this is part of how the SEC wins some recruiting wars and stakes its claim on NCAA Tournament bids. Every SEC coach has perfected that little patronizing chuckle when you ask about league play.

Well, you know, this is just what we have to deal with. We're facing 10 All-Americans every night in the SEC. It's something you sort of have to go through to understand ...

The SEC coaches who made the NCAA field last season all took up the "Florida was robbed" mantra -- knowing, of course, that they could be in similar shoes in the future.

And, let's face it, Florida probably was better than half the teams in the NCAA Tournament last season. But unless the bids are completely restructured and the "little" conference champions left out (it won't happen short of a major Division I shakeup spurred by football and men's hoops), there's going to be a least one team like Florida every year.

It's kind of like "The Lottery," except nowhere near that depraved and creepy and nobody dies. OK, it's not really that much like it.

But Ross knows the score. After all, her entire collegiate basketball experience is in this league: as a player at Mississippi, an assistant at Auburn and head coach at Florida.

She realizes that the SEC's schedule sometimes giveth ... and sometimes taketh away. Florida got an NCAA bid in 1999 after going 6-8 in the SEC. But you had a feeling that 6-8 in the SEC wasn't going to work with the committee two years in a row for Florida, and it didn't.

All this makes it a little harder for SEC coaches to schedule nonconference games with an eye toward two major factors:

  • Will this get my team enough victories before the SEC battles?

  • Will this get my team ready for the SEC battles?

    "I'd personally rather have my team be thrown in the fire, try to throw everything at them so by January we have some idea of what reality is," Ross said. "I know last year, though, that probably my scheduling is what kept us out of the tournament. But the year before, it's what kept us in."

    Ross wants to make sure there's no bubble factor this season. As does McCain.

    She's yet another two-time ACL survivor. She tore the blasted ligament in her left knee during a summer all-star camp while she was still in high school. Then she had a superb freshman season at Florida, starting every game and making first-team all-SEC.

    Then the summer of 1999, she tore the ACL in her right knee while playing for the United States in the World University Games. Still, she played 15 games last season, despite rehabbing from the knee injury and breaking the fibula in her left leg late last December.

    Somehow, despite all that's happened to this kid's legs, she is still one of the fastest players in the country.

    "She's a special person who has been blessed with great athletic ability and the work ethic and IQ to push her game to a greater height," Ross said. "What she's meant to this team is evident by the start we've had and how we struggled last year without her.

    "She can dominate on both ends with her quickness. I feel like I need to find a better word, though, because she's quicker than quick."

    She's also smaller than small: 5 feet, 3 inches. It isn't easy these days to be that small in high-level Division I ball, especially not with the increasing number of big guards.

    But that's where McCain uses both her quickness and something else that's inside her to make up for lack of height. Of course, she lists "Rudy" as her favorite movie. But it's not all that corny, really.

    Asked if she cries when she watches it, McCain laughs.

    "Nah," she said. "I just get motivated. I liked Rudy because he was small, like me, and he didn't give up.

    "You look at me, I'm not your typical basketball player. I want to motivate young kids, let them know you don't have to be the tallest, you have to find other ways to help."

    Florida has more than this Mighty Mite, though. It also has senior Tombi (pronounced TOOM-bee) Bell, who's taken the point guard role as McCain has settled in at shooting guard. They're Florida's top two scorers, combining to average more than 37 points so far.

    "Tombi and Brandi both were recruited as point guards, and it kind of evolved that Tombi took control of that role," Ross said. "I think Brandi felt comfortable with that, though."

    Inside, there's budding star Vanessa Hayden, a 6-4 center from Orlando whom Ross chuckled, "has been in the Gator filing cabinet for about 10 years."

    "We certainly make a commitment to keeping the best players in Florida," Ross said. "She's got endless potential, a post player who loves being a post player -- almost a throwback. She loves it in there. She can take it and dish it out."

    Junior forward Naomi Mobley, junior guard Monique Cardenas and senior center Tamara Stocks all have had some big contributions thus far for Florida, too.

    Ross wasn't thrilled with her team's 79-30 victory against Chicago State on Wednesday -- "We were extremely sloppy" -- but knows if everyone can stay healthy, Florida has a good opportunity to avoid any crushing moments come Selection Sunday.

    Sure, Florida made the most of the consolation-prize NIT last season, advancing to the final, where it lost 75-74 to Wisconsin. However, that provided all the more NCAA Tournament motivation for this season.

    "Any time you get disappointed, you can lay down and cry or find a way to make sure it doesn't happen again," Ross said. "We want to be sure that when they're passing out invitations this year, we invite ourselves."

    Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached via e-mail at mvoepel@kcstar.com.
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