Controversy follows ref

Official worked disputed game

TAMPA, FLA. -- NCAA officials revived the women's basketball season's biggest controversy by using an official at the Final Four who was involved in the disputed end to February's game between Rutgers and Tennessee.

The Lady Vols escaped that one with a 59-58 win when the clock momentarily stopped with 0.2 seconds left and a foul allowed Tennessee's Nicky Anosike to hit the winning free throws.

Replays showed it took an extra 1.3 seconds for the clock to expire, allowing the foul to be called before the final buzzer. But officials apparently never reviewed what happened to the clock.

Tina Napier was on that crew and also officiated Sunday night's national semifinal, in which Stanford beat Connecticut.

"The officials that were involved in that basketball game continued to call both Big East and SEC games throughout the regular season and throughout their conference championship season before [they] ... were moved forward by various conference commissions for consideration for championship play," said Judy Southard, chairwoman of the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee.

Neither Southard nor Sue Donohoe, the NCAA's vice president for Division I women's basketball, could explain why a replay wasn't used to correct February's error.

"Our most important role in this, and what should be our primary role, is to take a situation that we certainly know was unfortunate and turn it into a teaching tool," Donohoe said.

The names of the officials chosen for tonight's championship game will not be released until an hour before game time.

"I would tell you that we consider Tina Napier, along with all the individuals who came into our championship, to be outstanding officials," Southard said.

TIME OUT: A game clock above one of the baskets malfunctioned during both national semifinals Sunday, but officials decided to keep it running with the wrong time on it rather than shut it off.

Sue Donohoe, the NCAA's vice president for Division I women's basketball, said they had the option of shutting down the clock and replacing it with two temporary clocks on the floor. But that would have meant losing the 30-second shot clock on the same basket.

"The coaches said, 'We'd rather maintain and have the opportunity to have the 30-second clock up there,' understanding that the timing may be off," she said. "They always knew, throughout the game, that they should refer to the one clock that we knew was in good functional order."

Donohoe said the problem was a short in the clock.

CARDINAL REACHES SUMMITT: Stanford star Candice Wiggins has a history with Tennessee coach Pat Summitt. As a girl in Southern California, Wiggins followed the Lady Vols as closely as she could from the West Coast and attended Summitt's camp the summer after seventh grade.

"Pat Summitt -- oh, my gosh," Wiggins recalled Monday of her reaction to the Hall of Fame coach. "Fast forward seven or eight years, and we're playing them. ... I don't know if Coach Summitt would remember me. I won some award for the little kids division. I was this little string-bean small girl. I got to go up and shake Coach Summitt's hand. Everyone was asking, 'Oh, my gosh, you got to shake Pat Summitt's hand. Did she give you the stare?' "

RATINGS BOOST: It may not have been the prettiest game to watch, but the Tennessee-LSU game matched the third-highest ratings ever for an NCAA Women's Tournament game with a 2.5 share. It matched the thrilling 2006 title game that featured Duke and Maryland. Only the 2004 championship game between UConn and Tennessee (4.2) and the semifinal matchup between the Huskies and Minnesota (3.4) drew better numbers. The overnight average for the two semifinal games was 2.2, up 22 percent from last year.