It's funny how a tournament championship will bring new fans out of the woodwork, and the recent success of the Tech women's basketball team in the Atlantic 10 championship tournament did exactly that. Me included.

To win the title, the Hokies had to win 4 games in 6 days, with the last three games on the road against good competition. After dumping Fordham easily at Cassell Coliseum in the first round, the ladies traveled to St. Joe's and avenged an earlier loss on the Hawks' home floor. Then it was off to the Atlantic 10 final four at the Mullins Center in Massachusetts, where the Hokies defeated perennial power GW in the semifinals and then dispatched of UMass in an overtime thriller for the title.

In their last three games, the Tech women, who finished tied for second in the A-10 West, beat the #2 East team (St. Joe's), the #1 West team (GW), and the #1 East team (UMass). That's comparable to the men's team knocking off, say, UMass, Xavier, and Temple in consecutive games.  Not bad.

I was able to see the second half of the semifinal and the final, and I was impressed. The women are quicker than I thought, they're competitive, and, in a phrase that is universally trumpeted with respect to women's basketball, they are "more fundamentally sound" than the men's teams tend to be. People say that all the time because it's true. In the games that I saw, I watched women playing the game more crisply and cleanly than I've seen men play it all year (of course, I've been watching a men's team that went 10-17…).

Take Tech's semifinal 73-72 win over GW. As reported earlier, the Hokies made 34 of 39 free throws, including their first seventeen in a row. And they won by one point. If they turn in a respectable 70% performance from the line, then they only go 27-39, and they lose the game by six points. If they shoot a miserable 56%, like the UMass men's team did against Tech in the first round, the lady Hokies would have only made 22 free throws and would have lost by a whopping 11 points.

What's my point? There's nothing more thrilling than watching a team execute well, play hard, and overcome tremendous odds to win an unexpected championship, and that's exactly what these Hokies did.

It helps that they're 8 or 9 players deep, including freshman phenom Tere Williams and point guard Lisa Witherspoon, who became the first Tech PG to have over 200 assists in one season. It helps that Michelle Houseright, Jake's sister-in-law, saved her best basketball for the end of the season.

It also helps that after being gone for two years, former assistant coach Bonnie Henrickson returned to Tech as the head coach. Several women's basketball insiders have told me recently that in the last few years she was here (1993-1994 and 1994-1995), Henrickson was "pretty much coaching the team," not former head coach Carol Alfano. I don't know, but I think the team's performance this year speaks for itself on that point.

Unfortunately, the Hokie women won't be hosting an NCAA tournament game, like they did several years back. From what I understand, in the 64-team tournament, the top 16 teams in the country (seeds 1-4 in each region) host four-team "sub-regionals." It's highly, highly unlikely that the Hokies will be seeded in the top four of a region, so they'll have to travel for the first and second rounds.

The women's tournament selection show is Sunday, so look for it in your TV listings. I've got to tell you, with the way the football team struggled down the stretch, and with the season the men's basketball team had, the championship that the women's team brought home is a breath of fresh air.

Bill Roth made an interesting point on the radio the other night. He said that Virginia Tech was picked to dominate the spring semester sports in the Atlantic 10 by winning 6 of 8 championships - no surprise, since we're the southern-most team in the conference, and I would guess that we are much larger and have better resources for spring sports than the other schools in the A-10 (especially that killer indoor track!).

However, one sport that we were not supposed to win a championship in was women's basketball. So, if the other six sports hold up their end of the deal, Tech will win an impressive 7 of the 8 spring sports.

And no, don't ask me to name the sports. That's what the message board is for - so you guys can do it.  Hint, hint.

Thursday afternoon, Mike Burnop called in for a segment on Sportstalk With John Hale, the radio sports call-in show on Christiansburg's 710 AM. John and Mike talked for a while about Tech basketball, and how badly the Hokies had been beaten by UMass. After just a few minutes of that, the talk turned to football, and in particular, Tech's upcoming spring practice.

During the conversation, Burnop dropped a bit of a bomb concerning Tech quarterback Al Clark. He said that Al's recovery from his post-Gator Bowl knee surgery isn't progressing very well, and Al's knee is still so bad off that he probably will not participate in spring practice and the Spring Game on April 18th. In fact, it remains to be seen how fully Al can heal from the injury overall, not just whether he can give it a go this spring.

Suddenly, with Nick Sorensen shifted to safety and Al's status in question, the focus turns to last year's third string quarterback, Dave Meyer … and who else? UNLV transfer Mike Kocicka will be a redshirt senior in 1998, and if he's still with the team, he'll probably get a lot of snaps this spring. Tech also has walk-on Denny Randolph in the fold.

Next fall, of course, a bevy of freshman come in: Travis Turner, Grant Noel, and Michael Vick. But quarterback is almost an impossible assignment for a true freshman, so don't look for any of them to be much help in the fall. Vick has already said publicly that he wants to redshirt his first year, so he won't compete for the job. As Tech's anointed "quarterback of the future" (I'm sure Noel and Turner will have plenty to say about that), Michael will spend next year watching and waiting.

While the Hokies are set at the quarterback position in the distant future, they'll have to scramble this spring to find a couple of good ones to participate in drills and the Spring Game. And if Al's knee doesn't heal, the situation won't be very different this fall.

Of course, none of this speculation is meant to send the message that Al's a goner - far from it. There's plenty of time between now and next fall for Clark to heal. But I was surprised by the news when Burnop said it, because it was the first I'd heard that Al was having difficulty healing, so I wanted to pass it on. With spring practice getting ready to start soon, this news wouldn't have stayed under wraps much longer, anyway.

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