Raise the Roof by Pat Summitt

Author:Pat Summitt [Summitt, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-81446-3
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2012-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

BUOYED BY THE CROWD and the rock concert atmosphere, the Lady Vols came out flying.

Our performance seemed heightened. Was it my imagination, or did we elevate more than usual, and did our shots ripple through the net with unusual crispness? We scored the first ten points of the game unanswered, and built a seventeen-point lead.

Of all people, Kyra Elzy was the one who fired the run for us. She shook off her fright to score nine points in the first half. At halftime, we went in the locker room leading 42–28.

I was pleased. We almost never dominated Connecticut this way. What’s more, our challenge to Chamique had worked: she was putting the manacles on Sales and had held her to just six points.

But I also knew it couldn’t last. I had too much respect for Geno and the Huskies to believe that we would get out of this game so easily. We were in for at least one big scare.

“It’s a forty-minute game,” I told the team. “Believe me, they will make a run.”

I was right. In the second half, UConn turned it up, and we suddenly lost our heat. In one cold five-minute stretch, we scored just two points.

Connecticut cut the lead to one, 49–48, with 12:34 left in the game.

We were containing Sales and Sauer, but we hadn’t reckoned on a surprising new source of points, the Russian Abrosimova. She was banking in shots from everywhere.

During a time-out, I tried to calm down the Lady Vols. The noise was deafening. “Come in close,” I shouted over the din. “We quit playing defense,” I yelled. “We’re taking good shots, but they aren’t falling. So you’ve got to make it up on the defensive end. Turn up the intensity, and turn it up now.”

We pressed.

Instantly, Semeka Randall forced a turnover. She slapped the ball away, retrieved it, and flipped it to Kellie Jolly. Kellie had struggled offensively all night—she was zero for five from three point range, her shots bouncing harmlessly off the rim. But Kellie paused again at the three point line, and dipped the toe of her sneaker out.

And drained the three pointer.

Next, Holdsclaw threw in a couple of her patented double clutch lay-ins. With barely a rustle, like a twist of silk, she put the ball in the net. Suddenly, we had an eight point lead again.

Randall kept up the pressure. She whirled, she jitterbugged, she drove—and scored sixteen points in the final ten minutes.

We won going away, 84–69.

For the night, Holdsclaw had six steals, and held Sales to twelve points.

In the aftermath of the game, as usual, everyone would talk about the Meeks and our offense. But in the locker room, we knew better. It wasn’t our offense that won the game. It was our defense, and Kellie Jolly. As a team, we forced twenty-seven turnovers from Connecticut, fifteen of them on steals. Meanwhile, Kellie, who went all but unnoticed, had zero turnovers. It was one of those itemized details in a box score that few would understand the critical impact of—but to me, it was the difference in the game.

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