By Mel Greenberg

TRENTON, N.J. - In recent times the Guru has always said going into the NCAA women's tournament that the competition will be reflective of the season. When things didn't stabilize at the end of January in terms of traditional powers regaining the high ground, a hodge podge of results loomed ahead for the Big Dance.

 Teams such as Rutgers, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Texas and LSU were going to be seeded somewhere in the middle of the pack, while others such as Florida State, were going to gain higher placement with stronger data out of the RPI components.

Stanford heads into Monday night's title game without having to play either Tennessee or Duke, which got removed early in the tournament preventing a rematch with either of the teams who beat the Cardinal during the season.

If such a thing as a pure 1-8 re-seed among the Elite Eight were allowed with time alotted to get the teams to the appropriate destinations for the matchups here is what  the next round might look like under the Guru's rankings:

Trenton: No. 1 Connecticut vs. No. 8 Purdue; Raleigh: No. 2 Maryland vs. No. 7 Arizona State; Oklahoma City: No. 3 Oklahoma vs. No. 6 Iowa State (although perhaps to avoid a Big 12 pre-Final Four collision the Sun Devils and Hawkeyes could be swapped): Berkley: No. 4 Stanford vs. No. 5 Louisville.

                             Almost Off The Hook

     When California held the eight-point lead over Connecticut, the Guru began to think about the administrative faux pas that put the Bears in the East instead of the West because of the situation in which Cal had successfully bid to host a regional and then were unable to secure another venue to avoid being penalized for use of its natural building.

    Hence, the reality of a perfect world mean that coach Joanne Boyle's team should not have been here  with Connecticut. The issue never came up during the press conferences here in advance of the semifinal in the Sovereign Bank Arena and many reporters were actually unaware of the site situation.

 Had the Huskies been unable to pull out of their temporary dive, the Guru thought whoever the culprit or culprits were involving Cal's msfortues, may suddenly be acclaimed as adminstrators of the year.

    As for the question on which team might have been here instead, one couldn't say for sure who would have emerged but Iowa State seems like the No. 4 seed that would have been in the Trenton regional. And that placement might have enabled Virginia to have a better shot to advance as the No. 5 seed.

                                    Educating the Horde

              The Trenton organizing committee held a reception Saturday for the media after the press conferences. As Mika Ryan, the head of the group, wen t around introducing herself,  the Guru noted to the UConn reporters how a budding romance many years ago played a role in their being able to be on the scene.

               Ryan, you see, was the first assistant coach to Virginia's Debbie Ryan and she ultimately met Debbie's brother Pat. The affair resulted in marriage causing Mika to give up the Cavaliers stint to be with Pat. The ensuing vacancy resulted in the hire of one Geno Auriemma to replace Mika, enabling him to gain enough experience to be hired by the Huskies years later and the rest is history.

                                    The Say Hayes Kid

               Freshman Tiffany Hayes' 28 points were the most ever for a member of that class at UConn in NCAA tournament play. That's quite remarkable when one recalls former Huskies newcomers in the tournament such as Kara Wolters, Rebecca Lobo, Jennifer Rizzotti, Sue Bird, and Diana Taurasi.

               On Sunday when it came to getting Hayes' response to her outstanding effort, her answer made the Guru think, "I knew Diana Taurasi and Tiffany is no Diana Taurasi."

            When asked about her 5-of-6 three-point shooting effort that helped get Connecticut out of trouble, Hayes curtly responded to her thinking of her role in the outcome, "I guess it kind of developed. (Cal) decided to leave me wide open and I just stepped up and knocked down the big shots."

            When asked further on what it meant to keep her team alive, Hayes smiled, "It means a lot. I'm glad that I can be able to step up and help the team the way that I did tonight."

                Maya Moore gushed much more about Hayes' effort.

        "Tiffany came in from day one just tryiing to do what she can," said Moore, the leading candidate for national player honors. "She's a scorer and that's what she does. Also, if you can get through the Big East you feel really confident going into the postseason that you can get through a lot of other teams."

                  History's Course

       When Joanne Boyle decided to leave her comfortable next as a Duke assistant to former Blue Devils coach Gail Goestenkors she first was a finalist in 2001 for the vacancy at St. Joseph's that went to former Hawks star Cindy Griffin.

     Weeks later Boyle landed the job at Richmond where she elevated the Spiders into an Atlantic Ten contender before moving on to Cal.

      Incidentally, another finalist that year was Kevin McGuff, who had been an assistant to Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame which had just won an NCAA title. Larter on, when former Hawks coach Jim Foster left Vanderbilt for Ohio State, the Commodores hired Melanie Balcomb who had led Xavier to an upset of Tennessee in a regional semifinal. McGuff then was picked to fill the ensuing vacancy with the Musketeers.

                  Connecticut's D

   All year long opposing coaches asked to comment on what Connecticut does best responded with praise for the Huskies' defense.

      On Sunday, Cal's Boyle echoed their remarks in describing the 12-2 rally at the end of the first half and the eventual lopsided run the rest of the way that kept Connecticut from a stunning upset.

     "The reason why Connecticut is so good is that if you make one mistake, they will capitalize on it," Boyle said.

     "In the second half we were trying to catch up, but we were just out of sorts. We have told Tasha (Natasha Vital) in the game, `Don't even go for rebounds, when the shot goes up you're going to find Renee (Montgomery) and you're just going to be on Renee.' She started getting excited and going in for rebounds and then they had transition and we kind of lost our minds a little bit with the game plan. By the time we got to a timeout to stop it, we were already down 14 points. We broke down a little bit there and gave them some easy baskets. Geno's a great coach and they just thrive off of that. Tiffany's become an X-factor for them."

                 Rutgers' Demise

        What a string of Mondays in life may turn out for Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer.

        A week ago she had the exhilaration of the Scarlet Knights' dazzling upset of Auburn at home in a second round game in Piscataway, N.J.

       Today she and her team head home from Oklahoma City in the wake of Sunday's tough loss to Purdue in the region semifinals.

      A week from now, Stringer could potentially have departed attending the Women's Final Four to be in Detroit, the site of the men's event where the next class of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame will be introduced.

      The deadline was Friday for ballots to select inductees for September ceremonies in Springfield, Mass.

     But at the moment she is still dealing for an untimely defeat after it appeared Rutgers had finally solved the puzzle on how to be as great as teams of the two previous seasons, including two years ago when the Scarlet Knights advanced to the NCAA title game.

     Knowing that the newspapers of  Rutgers beat writers would not have print space for Stringer's total responses to questions in Sunday's postgame press conference, here is some of what she had to say, courtesy of the NCAAsports.com site.

    "Obviously I haven't been too impressed with our freshmen in terms of them handling this kind of a situation. I heard someone make a statement that Tennessee had all of these freshmen, and we had all these freshmen, and we were able to get something done.

"But I think you would be fooled into thinking that because our freshmen did not play a significant role in any of the game, any significant amount of time.
 

"We've seen bits and pieces, but as an example, the Tennessee freshmen played far more games and logged more minutes. However, the biggest issue with our freshmen is for them to buy into and understand that there is a way to win the game."
 

 Q. Coach, your team seemed to do better when they were able to run the ball, drive and penetrate. Very often they seemed tentative, willing to stay out, settle for a half-court game, pass the ball around and take those outside shots. Was that part of the game plan or --

COACH STRINGER: "No, no, no, no, that's right. That's why you don't see any tears in my eyes, I'm upset, more than hurt, I'm disappointed because we knew what we had to do and we went out there and got foolish.

"Trust me when I tell you that, why would we stand out there and try to execute when we're dealing with people that are giants, basically. Our advantage was to get the ball off, pass the ball, like we did before, make the pass, all of the sudden we got real -- all of the sudden we were going to stand out there and try to execute and see what's going on and if there was -- several times we took 4-point shots! You know?

"But I'm not too surprised, I'm upset, because didn't we know? Didn't we lose like that doing the same thing? So there is a lot of things about us that, as I share with the team, it is at the end as it was at the beginning, the first day, the exact same things. It's behaviors, and I'm thinking, why are we here. So, no, ma'am, absolutely not.

"You should have asked the question to (her players), what were you supposed to do? And they would tell you, it was supposed to be drives. When we started doing that, we would stop the clock -- they couldn't stop us on the drives but we couldn't figure that out until late, and we wouldn't handle it."

-- Mel