What happened to the Lady Vols?

Not that long ago, the Tennessee lady hoopsters had something very close to a dynasty going on. In coach Pat Summitt's heyday, the Lady Vols reaching the Final Four was almost a given. Indeed, they won eight national championships. Very impressive stuff.

As we know, Coach Pat had to recently step aside due to early onset Alzheimer's symptoms at the relatively young age of 59.

As we also know, the Vols were only a #2 seed in their own region this year and would be eliminated in an Elite 8 game by #1 Maryland.

Forget winning another national championship. The hard truth is -- the LVers haven't even made it to the Final Four since 2008. Seven years. So what happened to the once proud program that they keep coming up short? A couple things.

One has to remember that ladies' college basketball wasn't even taken semi-seriously until the early 80s. It's still not, compared to their male counterparts. Be it filling arenas, TV broadcasts, or all-around press coverage -- it's not even a close call.

But it was even worse, almost nonexistent, until Pat Summitt came along. Though she was barely older than the players she was coaching when she got her start, a lion's share of the credit for transforming women's collegiate basketball into the entity it is today should rightly be given to Coach Pat.

Yes, in the beginnings there was very little serious competition. Way back in the day, little schools like Louisiana Tech and Old Dominion were amongst the best of the bunch. That's because most larger universities saw pouring resources into ladies' basketball as a complete waste of time and money. Despite the landmark Title IX legislation which forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, one has to remember that bill was signed into law way back in 1972 by President Nixon. Sure, the girls have long had equal rights and access to any and all collegiate athletics. But why bother? Nobody was interested in lady hoops anyway.

Yet Summitt saw things differently. She was able to routinely recruit the best high school players and started winning everything in sight. Finally, other schools started sitting up and paying attention. Maybe this lady hoop thing has possibilities.

To their credit, Stanford has been there since the start and remains a perennial top contender to this day. Others came fully on board as the years passed. The competition for recruiting prep stars was on. Summitt no longer enjoyed a blue chip monopoly, though her teams remained very good.

Notre Dame has become an annual force to be reckoned with, and other schools have had their time in the limelight. Baylor won a championship. The Aggies of Texas A&M came out of nowhere to win another a few years ago. South Carolina was the pre-season #1 this year and the Terps from Maryland are certainly no slouches. Duke and North Carolina are, well, Duke and North Carolina. Big time basketball schools, including the ladies. There are others on the cusp and likely still others will emerge in future years -- a very good thing.

Again, the Lady Vols remain a top contender. But the seed of their downfall from "elite" status was planted some 20 years ago. That's when a guy named Luigi Auriemma took over the reins at a relatively small school named the University of Connecticut. How Geno was able to pull it off is a very good question. But he improbably put together a basketball program that quickly became the proverbial elephant in the room, and UConn is going as strong as ever. He's already got nine national championships under his belt, is highly favored to win yet another one this year, and success breeds more success. The super blue-chippers that would have once flocked to Coach Pat now have other options to choose from, and UConn is a prime destination for the best of the best.

Sure, Summitt once accused Auriemma of "cheating" and, while never substantiated, it always smacked a bit of "sour grapes". In other words, Pat's teams had been relegated to also-ran status on the national stage by that pesky mini Italian stallion -- and she didn't like it one bit.

So in the end, what happened to the Lady Vols? They're still really good and likely will continue to be so. But at the elite level -- basically two things.

Other schools devoting resources to hiring very good coaches and competing for the prep talent pool, and the ongoing juggernaut in Storrs.

Idle thought: Current Lady Vols coach Holly Warlick spent TWENTY NINE years as an assistant under Summitt before finally getting the head job? Wow, that has to be the longest apprenticeship in the history of sports.