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Tennessee Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt and UConn Huskies coach Geno Auriemma helped create the biggest rivalry in women's college basketball and could be on a collision course to face each other in the NCAA women's tournament.

Geno Auriemma. Rebecca Lobo. They made good TV, and now it was the advent of Lobo's senior year. Carol Stiff, an ESPN executive in charge of women's college hoops programming, approached Summitt about a nationally televised game between the two schools. It would take place in Storrs, Conn., on Martin Luther King Day.

Summitt's response? "If it's for the good of the game, we'll do it."

To Summitt's credit, she accepted the challenge. She did not insist that the game be played in Knoxville, and her team made the arduous January journey to Storrs just one day after playing on the road at Auburn.

On Jan. 16, 1995, the Huskies won 77-64 before a frenzied Gampel Pavilion audience. A rivalry was born. Two and a half months later, in Minneapolis, Connecticut came from behind to defeat Tennessee in the national championship game, 70-66. It culminated a 35-0 season and it was the Huskies' first national championship. That UConn defeated the Lady Vols seemed like it might be a passing of the torch, though it was not. Summitt's team won the following three national championships.

All the while, ESPN, the two programs and women's college athletics in general benefited. Here was the first meaningful rivalry in women's team sports that sustained national interest. And, as it developed, battle lines were drawn.

Many of the old guard of women's college basketball, women who had been involved with the sport since its pre-NCAA days, since the days when doughnut sales paid for uniforms, resented Geno the interloper. Though Geno himself had started from the ground floor in Storrs -- his assistant, Chris Dailey, used to give her P.E. students credit if they'd just attend games -- when he arrived in 1987, it was what he represented that they resented. The male intrusion into the women's game.

These women had nurtured and sustained the sport back when nobody cared. Now this, this ... MAN had intruded. What was worse, he failed to show the proper respect. He beat Tennessee on the court and he browbeat Summitt in print. He was funny, but he was insolent. Worse, in the zero-sum game of women's coaching opportunities, Auriemma would only inspire more men to coach women. As athletic directors began to see the potential for women's college hoops as a revenue sport, salaries would improve, and male coaches would infiltrate that market.

All of which has come to pass.

Meanwhile, Tennessee and Connecticut continued to make fantastic theater. In 2000, they met in the national championship game in Philadelphia. Not only was Philly virtually Geno's hometown (he grew up in nearby Norristown), but the city's two renowned cheesesteak eateries, located across the street from one another, are named "Pat's" and "Geno's." You cannot make this stuff up.

Auriemma being Auriemma, he could not resist the one-liner. "Pat's is old, beat-up and dilapidated," he told the media. "Geno's is bigger. I noticed that when I was over there. Not that it means anything, don't get me wrong."

Connecticut won the national championship, 71-52. Not that it meant anything.

By then, the rivalry and hostility was downright tasty. In late December of 2000, more than 18,000 fans braved a blizzard to see No. 2 Tennessee face No. 1 Connecticut. The Huskies won thanks to a late 3-pointer by freshman Diana Taurasi that was taken from somehere south of Glastonbury. Five weeks later, the Lady Vols avenged the loss with a breathless 92-88 victory in Knoxville.

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