Catch a Star

by Tamika Catchings

  She had attended the Stanford game and was evaluating our strengths and weaknesses as a team. When she and Pat connected after the game, she said, “Holy smokes, Pat.” It was her way of saying that the talent we had was unbelievable.

  Pat replied, “I know.”

  “There’s only one team capable of beating Tennessee,” Billie said.

  “Who?”

  “Tennessee.”2

  After the gauntlet of games that ran through the Thanksgiving holidays and into December, we had a week off.

  On short breaks throughout college, I sometimes went to visit Dad in Chicago. Chicago was a nine-hour drive away—not a short trip, by any means, but closer than Duncanville, Texas. On longer holidays, I’d fly home to Texas, but often Chicago was the best option for the amount of time I had.

  At that time my dad was the color analyst for the Chicago Bulls on WMAQ radio. It was a good time for him to do that—the Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan, were in the midst of accomplishing their second “three-peat,” having won the championship the previous two years and three championships in a row a few years before that. They’d go on to win it all that season—a remarkable six championships in eight years.

  Of course, often Tauja would drive north from Champaign, Illinois, and we’d have time together. So during those years I had lots of reasons to go to Chicago.

  Chamique tells the story of a time when we were both in Chicago on break. For some reason, I needed to drive down to Champaign to pick up a car from Tauja, then drive back to Knoxville. So the story goes, I called Chamique to ask her to drive with me. She agreed.

  Because of the schedule, we had to drive back to Tennessee overnight. As Chamique tells it, she was at the wheel in the middle of the night. I was asleep. And at some point, she dozed off, the car drifting over toward the guard rail. The loud sound of the rumble strips jerked her awake, and she regained control of the car and brought us to a stop. We switched places and continued the trip home safely, aware that we had narrowly escaped becoming a tragic headline.

  The only problem is, I don’t remember any of that. Not saying that it didn’t happen—it was vivid in Chamique’s recollection, so it obviously did. But I think I must have been so exhausted from the trip to Chicago that I zoned out.

  At times like that, it’s good to know God is in control. It does make you think, though—how many dangers and accidents do we narrowly escape and never know it?

  Tauja had been pursuing a basketball career of her own at the University of Illinois. Up next for Tennessee was the SEC/Big-Ten Challenge, which pitted us against the Fighting Illini.

  The media pitched it as a battle between the Catchings Sisters. I never wanted that—my dream long ago was that the two of us would play together, not against each other. But here we were. I asked Coach Summitt to please not assign me to guard Tauja. Pat agreed but said, “You know at some point you may have to.”

  To make the event even more nerve-racking, both our parents were there in attendance. They didn’t sit together, but they were both there. The media, of course, couldn’t wait to get interviews with Dad talking about his daughters.

  Somewhat lost in the media hype around the Catchings Sisters was the fact that Illinois was a strong team. They were nationally ranked fifth. We were sitting atop the rankings at number one, but this would be our toughest game since Louisiana Tech.

  Illinois played a swarming, scrappy defense. The refs helped by calling a tight game. We hurt ourselves by taking bad shots, everything thudding off the back of the rim. We got into foul trouble early, and turned it over too many times. Chamique picked up two fouls within the first five minutes.

  And, with a minute left in the first half, we were down 41 to 19.

  Yes, it was that bad.

  You face a psychological hurdle when your opponent doubles your score. You realize you have to play twice as good as them in the second half. You realize how unlikely it is that they will suddenly get that bad and you will suddenly get that good.

  We expected to get a classic tirade from Pat at halftime, but I think she figured we’d gotten beaten badly enough already. She was instead calm and soft-spoken. She simply said we’d had bad luck in some of our shots not falling, and that the one thing we could/should do better was rebounding. That was it. She was unusually restrained.

  We learned later that Pat had some pretty serious thoughts at halftime, thinking this would be our first loss and that the important thing at that point wasn’t actually losing, but how we would handle the loss in the aftermath of the game. She would never give up, of course, but she was already coaching for the next game and the rest of the season.

  One of our coaches, Al Brown, pulled me aside before we went out for the second half. He said, “The game is going to come to you. Just relax.”

  We came out in the second half playing tenacious defense. We still weren’t scoring well, but by keeping the Illini from scoring and forcing them to turn over the ball, we stayed in the game. When Chamique eventually punched in two jumpers, the score was a more manageable 41 to 28.

  But while we were playing Illinois even in the second half, we were still not outscoring them. Their lead remained at fourteen or sixteen points for the first six minutes.

  Time was running out.

  Kellie fed me the ball on the perimeter and I sank a three-pointer. We forced a turnover and Semeka got fouled, swishing two free throws. Another Illini turnover, and Kellie sized up a three and drilled it. Our smothering D forced yet another turnover.

  In three minutes we’d cut their lead to five. In ten minutes, we’d forced ten turnovers.

  At one point with about ten minutes left, Tauja was fed the ball on the open floor and went in for the fast break; I fouled her, keeping her from scoring. That was one of just a few times in the game when we found ourselves one-on-one with each other. Just like old times.

  With nine minutes left, I was fouled and managed to make both free throws. With that we took the lead.

  We never looked back. We continued our full-court press, and continued scoring off their turnovers.

  Down by twenty-two in the first half, incredibly we won the game by ten points.

  Later, my dad found both Tauja and me in the hallway outside the locker room. He told each of us we’d played great. We made it through the matchup of the Catchings Sisters. For Mom and Dad, it was a relief. I think it was for Tauja and me too.

  So Tennessee made it past a swarming, smart Illinois team. Maybe more important, we’d overcome our biggest opponent in that first half.

  Ourselves.

  Pat Summitt now says of that game, that comeback, that it was then she realized she’d never coached a team “so combustible.” She certainly knew there was a lot of basketball ahead, a lot of challenges for us to face, and so many things that could go wrong. But she’d coached for twenty-four years and was starting to see the real potential of the special group of players she had. She knew what she had in us was rare and special. Her question at that point was whether we’d play to our potential. So far, when we did, we were astonishing. And when we didn’t, we were ordinary, and maybe worse.3

  Me, I was just enjoying playing basketball and being in college with my friends. I’d had a lot of success on the teams I’d played for in high school, and I expected to win in college as well. Not that a loss would have thrown me into depression, but I was playing with the best and for the best, and it was an invigorating time for me to play at such a high level.

  Dorm life was fun. When the team wasn’t traveling, we were in classes, studying hard. Pat insisted on high academic performance from all of us. So we worked hard that way too.

  When we had a chance to blow off some steam, the Fab 4 would get together in the dorm and sing karaoke or just hang. Seeing some of my teammates turn on a popular song and let it all out singing and dancing to it was hilarious. Of all people, Chamique was one of the best. I still remember her version of “Ball and Chain”: “Sitting at the window, honey
, looking out at the rain. . . .” She absolutely nailed Janis Joplin. It was just so Mique—over the top. We’d laugh and laugh.

  The week before Christmas found us in Anchorage, Alaska, for the Northern Lights Invitational. It was cold compared to Knoxville, but we got to go sledding, which was a treat.

  We’d face three opponents in three days. Again, this was Pat’s designed schedule, to test our stamina now in preparation for the tournament later. We defeated Akron, Texas A&M, and Wisconsin in quick succession. Wisconsin was nationally ranked, but it didn’t seem to show—we beat them by twenty-one points.

  This was the time that our shooting caught fire. All three of us Meeks were named to the All-Tournament team.

  After the first half of the regular season, at the Christmas break, we were 13–0. We were regularly beating teams by twenty points, sometimes thirty.

  And, to the dismay of opponents, our play was getting better. We were still learning how to play together.

  Back in 1995, Pat Summitt and the coach of the University of Connecticut, Geno Auriemma, had this crazy idea to schedule games against each other. UConn was a top women’s basketball program, winning it all that year. What’s more, the two coaches were larger-than-life personalities, each of them legends already, shrewd and smart—and depending on which college you were talking to, the other one nothing less than ruthless. Games played against each other took on the drama and theater of gladiator fights.

  We faced UConn, ranked number three, on January 3, 1998.

  UConn had the edge in the head-to-head—4–3 since 1995. We were on a tear. They wanted nothing more than to derail our march to the tournament and create the first blemish on our perfect season.

  Thompson-Boling Arena was filled to the brim, a record crowd not just for Tennessee but for all of women’s college basketball. They had to turn away some eight hundred people at the doors because it was already standing room only. The arena was loud and electric, a frenzied mass of fans eager to watch the battle of the coaches—Pat versus Geno.

  Just two minutes into the game, Nykesha Sales took the ball at the top of the key. Chamique was right there and blanketed Nykesha with tight defense. A minute later Nykesha took a wild shot from well beyond the perimeter, an air ball that went out of bounds. It would be a long game, of course, but we all felt better seeing Mique contain Nykesha right off the bat.

  I knew I needed to do more than my usual part. With Mique expending so much energy on defense, she might not have so much in the tank for offense. Our plan was to use her as a decoy on offense. In the first sequence of plays, we ran the triple post,4 with Chamique sliding down toward the basket. UConn players would sag down toward her, leaving me open on the outside.

  I came out hot. I was able to score seven points in the first two minutes. We were up 10–0 after the first three minutes of the game.

  But we knew they’d roar back, and they did. In another four minutes they cut our lead to one. We padded that by the end of the first quarter, when we were up by six.

  That was another unique aspect of that particular game. It was played in quarters. Usually college basketball was played in two 20-minute halves. The pros play four 10-minute quarters. This game was a four-quarter experiment. (I’m not sure the experiment made much difference to anyone.)

  We made it a fast-break game, with what was becoming our patented swarming defense and racing offense. We led by as many as seventeen in the first half.

  Mique held Nykesha Sales to six points.

  The second half played according to the same script, although UConn came out in a frenzied push. Halfway through the third quarter, they cut our lead to just one point. But once again we took hold of the game, rebuilt the lead, and then ran away with the game.

  The great rivalry game ended with us on top—a score of 84–69.

  Later, Semeka Randall would get caught in a controversy. She was asked by a reporter if the crowd had been a factor in the game. She said, “Yeah, I think Connecticut just about ran off the floor, they were so scared.”

  Well, that didn’t go over well with the state of Connecticut. Her quote was taken out of context, but UConn coach Geno Auriemma would take offense and say some negative things of his own back at Semeka and us. It would be in another game in another year that we would play UConn on their home court, and Semeka would get booed loudly. As a result, she earned the nickname “Boo.” Ever after, she wore that nickname proudly.

  The controversy only fueled a great rivalry that would last for the next ten years. It also revved up new interest in women’s college basketball. The women’s game was gaining fans and helping fuel the new WNBA professional league spawned by the NBA.

  That Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma were crazy, all right. Crazy like foxes.

  In February, we faced a stretch of five games in ten days. Old Dominion was first up on the fourth, then Mississippi State, Memphis, and Auburn in quick succession. None of them were close games, though Old Dominion was ranked third in the nation at the time of that game. Winning big or not, we still played the minutes. Four of the five games were on the road, which always takes more out of you.

  Our last game would be against an SEC foe and our archrival in the state of Tennessee, the Vanderbilt Lady Commodores. And we were exhausted.

  This was another one of the scheduling gauntlets Pat Summitt intentionally created for her teams. She addressed this in the locker room before the Vandy game. “I’m to blame for this schedule,” she told us all. “I did it by design. So why would I do that?”

  I spoke up. “To see if we can handle it.”

  “Correct,” she said.

  Even so, I wondered if, at certain points of this season as our record continued to build, Pat was starting to regret her scheduling strategy, realizing that we were now making history and seeing that ominous fifth game in ten days looming as a trap game for a team of exhausted college players.

  But that last game of those ten days wasn’t a trap game. We’d already played Vandy once, and won, but they were nationally ranked and always a threat. We knew it wasn’t an automatic. We wouldn’t get trapped because we were taking the game for granted as a win, but we could lose outright. They were very good.

  Sure enough, we came out flat. We were, for one of very few times that season, actually slow. Vandy jumped out to a 16–7 lead. We gave up more turnovers (8) than we scored points. It was pretty ugly.

  Pat called a time-out. She knew our performance was due to fatigue—and she was tired too—but she made it clear we had to take care of the ball. She got us focused not on the whole game or on the score, but on each possession of the ball. If we focused on making each possession count, we’d be okay.

  In the last ten minutes before halftime, we came out on fire. Pat had the three of us Meeks in the game at that point, and we began to score, almost at will. We went on a 17–0 run over the next six minutes, leading at halftime by nine.

  Pat challenged us not to ease up, not to let Vandy back into the game. And we complied, keeping them quiet in the second half and scoring nearly twice as many points as we had in the first half. We won 91–60, a score that doesn’t reflect how tough the game really was for us.

  Later, Pat would write about that game. It was then she began consciously to allow a dangerous thought, one she’d banned from her mind much of the season. Maybe, just maybe, this team might go undefeated.5

  The Vandy win gave us a record of 29–0. We had one more regular season game, and then the SEC tournament before the national tournament.

  We faced LSU in the last game of the season. Our only concern was our own health. Everyone was banged up. To make things worse, I went hard to the basket in practice, banged heads with one of our practice guys, and broke my nose. Assistant Coach Holly Warlick was the first to come to my side and apparently was almost unable to look at me because my face was such a mess. There was blood everywhere, I was in great pain, and someone said it looked like my nose had moved some inches along my face and repositi
oned itself under my eye.

  It would require minor surgery and a doctor would have to pop my nose back into place. But after some swelling went down, it wasn’t so bad.

  Really, it wasn’t.

  I remember two things about the LSU game.

  One. We were at home, which was a good thing, because we needed the energy of the crowd. They were so proud of us, a team on the verge of history. With a win that night, we’d finish the regular season 30–0.

  Two. It was a game when the Fab 4—the freshmen—lit up the court. Coach Summitt left the four of us on the court for more minutes than usual, and we freshmen—just the freshmen—wound up scoring some sixty-five points among us.

  We won going away, but I was especially happy because my roommate Ace, who had struggled all season, had a strong game. Not only had she had the foot injury at the start of the season, one which became a nagging injury for a long time, but Pat had been especially tough on her along the way. Coach challenged Ace hard and often, and while I think some of that might have been needed, it was still hard on Ace. Sometimes too hard. But now Ace was coming into her own.

  Maybe just at the right time.

  Perhaps had we not been so tired at that point, it might have gone to our heads. The media were starting to write about us. The articles started to ask if we were the best team of all time.

  I don’t know if that was sinking in for anybody on the team. For one thing, there was a lot of basketball left. For another thing, Pat wouldn’t let it, even though she knew she was at the helm of something special.

  As for me, I didn’t know if we were the best of all time. It didn’t matter.

  I just loved playing the game.

  10

  Champions

  “Tamika, I want you to know and believe that no one in America can stop you . . .”

  Pat Summitt