An Intense, Driven Teacher: Summitt calls out plays against Rutgers. AP Photo/Mark Humphrey

The Best Coach In the Game
Tennessee's Pat Summitt, with five national championships in the bag and looking for more, remains the greatest teacher of basketball currently coaching.

If you play basketball for Pat Summitt, you pierce no body part but your ear lobes. You sit in the first three rows in class and if you skip a class, you will sit on the bench. You dress properly and address people as M'am and Sir. After every game, you have exactly 24 hours to celebrate a win or recover from a loss, then it's time to prepare for the next encounter. By season's end, you will have spent much more time on the former than the latter. Cr itics call Summitt's tough, regimented program the "Cookie Factory." But more aptly, it should be called the "Championship Factory."

If you're a young woman who can go to the hoop, the earth's gravitational pull is not the center of the globe but Knoxville, Tennessee. That is home to the University of Tennessee's women's basketball team, the Lady Volunteers. But all these top athlete s don't show up in Knoxville for the nightlife: They show up for Summitt, the head coach of the intimidating Lady Vols.

With a victory over Louisiana Tech Sunday, Summitt, 45, has steered her team to an unprecedented third consecutive national championship. The squad, which has no senior starters, inc ludes a stunningly talented trio of freshmen and is led by 3-time All-American Chamique Holdsclaw, a deceptively quick junior.

In her 23 seasons at UT, Summitt has never had a losing season and the lanky Tennessee native is so exceptional that even the male-dominated basketball establishment is starting to compare her to men. Or more accurately, THE man: John Wooden, the legendary 'Wizard of Westwood' who coached UCLA to 10 NCAA titles in th e 1960s and 70s. Summitt, with many years of coaching still in front of her and five national championships already to her credit, could well pass Wooden's NCAA title record. Although she has been repeatedly offered jobs coaching men, she always turns th em down. "First, my commitment is to young women," says Summitt. "I also don't think coaching men is a step up."

Summitt's devotion to the women's game (continued)