NEW ORLEANS -- Pam Borton could see it in their faces, she
could sense it in how they talked.
Her predecessor as women's basketball coach at Minnesota had
bolted after nine months on the job, leaving behind players who
felt they had been abandoned -- jilted just as they were starting to
win.
So Borton went to work building trust and out of that, just two
years later, has come the most successful season in school history
and a Final Four date Sunday night against Connecticut (9 p.m. ET, ESPN).
How's that for working fast?
"Right when she got hired, she came out and had dinner with all
of us and just got to know us as people before we were really
basketball players,'' senior guard Lindsay Whalen said. "That's
something that really caught a lot of our eyes and a lot of our
attention.''
Borton believed that was critical.
She had been an assistant at Boston College for five years when
she was hired to replace Brenda Oldfield in May 2002. Oldfield was
chosen as the national coach of the year after engineering a major
turnaround with the Gophers but then left for a better paying job
at Maryland, a school with more tradition in women's basketball.
For the Gophers, it wasn't so much that Oldfield was gone, but
how they had learned of her imminent departure.
"I don't think a lot of us were happy how it happened, the way
we just found out over the TV while we were watching the Maryland
(men's) national championship game,'' junior center Janel
McCarville said. "I think that's the thing that really
disappointed a lot of us ... that we didn't find out from her right
away.''
Now here was Borton, the team's third coach in as many years.
"I just felt like it was my job for them to get to know me as a
person, let them know that I care about them and I was going to be
around,'' Borton said. "Sometimes it's not just about what they do
on the floor. You've got to show them what you're going to do for
them off the floor as well. And that was the most important thing
that I did.''
Whatever she did, it worked.
The Gophers went 25-6 last season and reached the round of 16 in
the NCAA Tournament for the first time. This season, the ride has
been even better: a 25-8 record, adoring fans who have followed the
team every step of the way -- including the 11-year-old boy who held
up a sign asking Whalen to marry him -- and now (gulp) a chance to
win the national championship.
"I think she just had to reassure us that everything was going
to be fine and we were going to work hard as a team and just get
better no matter who the coach was,'' Whalen said.
Just don't get the idea that this is some giddy,
happy-to-be-here bunch. Oh, they're happy, all right. No one in the
NCAA Tournament has played with more sheer joy and exuberance than
the Gophers, who came out of the Mideast Regional as the No. 7 seed
and knocked off second-seeded Kansas State, third-seeded Boston
College and top-seeded Duke along they way.
But they have one thing in mind: winning.
"I think we want to play like the underdog, because the
underdog is always scrappy and is always fighting for everything
they can get,'' said Whalen, who returned for the NCAA Tournament
after missing seven games with a broken right hand.
"But definitely we have the confidence we can win and we have
that swagger and confidence to us. We're ready to play and we're
ready to play anyone.''
The thing is, they're not playing just anyone.
Connecticut (29-4) is the first school to make five straight
Final Four appearances and is trying to become the second to win
three consecutive titles. Tennessee, which plays LSU in the other
semifinal on Sunday (7 p.m. ET, ESPN), won three in a row from 1996-98.
The Huskies are the epitome of confidence and swagger, and
rightly so. They have All-American Diana Taurasi to bail them out
of tight situations, plus a strong supporting cast with Barbara
Turner, Ann Strother, Jessica Moore and Maria Conlon. All were key
figures in UConn's title run last year.
UConn has been through all of this. Minnesota hasn't
"I don't know if it's an advantage,'' Taurasi said. "But I
would rather have that experience than not have it.''
Still, the Huskies know what they're up against. Whalen is a
fierce competitor who'll drive to the basket one time and pull up
for a 3-pointer the next. McCarville has been unstoppable during
the tournament, averaging 19.8 points and 17 rebounds, and
sophomore Shannon Bolden has become a defensive stopper.
"They're the best seventh seed in the history of college
basketball because Lindsay Whalen got hurt and they lost a couple
of games,'' UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "Had she been healthy,
they might have been a No. 1 or No. 2 seed."