Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 16, 1994 TAG: 9403160065
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Tech will be trying to beat Auburn. That's not the same as trying to be Auburn. In the past 13 seasons, the Lady Tigers have reached 11 NCAAs, including three Final Four runner-up finishes. Auburn (19-9) was serious about women's hoops long before Tech (24-5).
What the Hokies started to write last year with 20 wins and have punctuated this season with their first Metro Conference title and first NCAA bid is that it's possible to play your way to success if you're willing to pay your way to success.
There are 292 schools playing Division I women's basketball, and many of those really aren't too serious about it.
"A coaching friend in California called me the other day," said Tech's Carol Alfano, a sideline survivor if there ever was one. "She said that what's been done at Virginia Tech shows other schools that if they start putting money into it, they can build a program. She said we are a role model."
Alfano said what Tech has tried to do - and apparently accomplished - is to be competitive in its conference and its state. "We haven't said we're going to go crazy spending," Alfano said. "We're not saying we're going to go out and beat [top-ranked] Tennessee now."
Virginia, with its sustained success and national recruiting, remains in another league, too. However, programs at James Madison, Old Dominion and Richmond were doing things the Hokies couldn't do, or didn't try. That's no longer the case.
If Tech's tale isn't quite rags-to-riches, it's at least rags-to-respectability.
"It shows what you can do when you have some patience and work together," Tech athletic director Dave Braine said. "Carol was frustrated. It was a case of being fair to her."
Alfano had been the perennial .500 coach in more ways than one. Heading into this 16th season as Tech's head coach, her record was 211-209. She got there through a bunch of winters like 12-15, 14-14, 15-14, 13-15, 16-12. "Never really bad, never really good," she said.
Since 1989, Alfano was given the OK to hire two full-time assistant coaches and a part-timer. Alfano's salary has more than doubled, to $55,000. Tech increased its scholarship commitment to the maximum 15. The recruiting budget got a 30 percent boost, to $26,000.
All Alfano had to do was succeed. That sounds like a big gulp, and when Braine delivered the money, it came with an ultimatum. "He said, `We're going to give you the money, and now we want to see some progress,' " Alfano said. "What Dave did was what they wouldn't do before, when we had a women's program basically because they were forced to have a program."
After a 10-18 year in 1991-92, Alfano knew the Hokies had to play better than .500 last season. She knew the program, with solid assistant coaches Bonnie Henrickson and Beth Dunkenberger, had recruited better than in the past. If Tech didn't win, Alfano said she wouldn't have to be fired.
"If we're still .500 in two years, I'm going to run out of time with myself," she said 24 months ago. "If I'm not the one to do the job, I'll be the one who walks away. They won't have to give me the ax."
Instead, they gave her a new four-year contract. Her Hokies are 44-13 the past two seasons. Surviving is one kind of pressure. Succeeding is another. Next season comes great expectations, when the Hokies return this team minus starting guard Sue Logsdon, and has top-10 residents UVa, Tennessee and ACC champion North Carolina visiting Blacksburg.
Tonight's game is the first NCAA Tournament contest at Cassell Coliseum since 1966 and '67, when the new arena was the site for first-round doubleheaders in the men's tournament. That was 10 years before the Hokies played a women's basketball game.
"In some ways, it seems like we've crawled here," Alfano said. "In other ways, it seems like it's happened so fast."
What's most significant is that it has happened, period.
by CNB