 "Photo: William Schneekloth/Targum Associate Photography Editor")
C. Vivian Stringer has been playing the guessing game for weeks.
On any given night, she has had no way of knowing which of her teams will show up - the one that actually managed to beat Connecticut twice in 20 days last month, or the one that looked like its players were seeing each other for the first time in the West Virginia debacle.
And then last night, completely without warning, Stringer's third-seeded Scarlet Knights gave their coach the gift of her 750th win complete with a big red bow, piecing together probably their best all-around performance of the season and certainly the most entertaining to watch, as they danced around the court with Harlem Globetrotters swagger.
They used the breakout night to collect the 82-48 win over TCU in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in the moonlight game Tuesday night, and ended up looking the way they haven't quite looked since the peak of last season's Elite Eight run.
It was the look everyone has been waiting for, bringing us to the current conundrum:
Are they here to stay?
I'll make one assertion and stand by it - if the Knights play next Sunday in Cleveland like they did Tuesday night, they can beat Tennessee.
Then, who knows what can happen against North Carolina - scary as they are - because with the "55" press worked to perfection, all it takes is a few stops, a few points off turnovers and suddenly they're off on one of their big runs.
But Rutgers will first have the tall task of stopping the Lady Vols. They couldn't do it last year because they got manhandled in the post, and players they needed to step up just didn't step up.
The Sweet 16 contest will put C.P. against C.P. - Pondexter against Parker - groomed veteran against unseasoned rookie, two of the nation's best at their respective positions. Tennessee also has Alexis Hornbuckle back after the starting point guard was presumed lost for the year when she broke her wrist in mid-February.
On the Scarlet side, the Knights got big boosts from Essence Carson's newly-recovered baseline jumper and Michelle Campbell's post play against TCU - things they had been missing in the preceding weeks.
And obviously the backcourt tandem of Pondexter and Matee Ajavon was as strong as ever and will need to continue to be so.
The match-up of the Cleveland region's two and three seeds is one Pondexter said was under the watch of the basketball gods who "wanted it that way" - the Knights' perfect opportunity to seek revenge after falling to the Lady Vols in the Elite Eight last year in Philadelphia.
In the meantime, Stringer quipped over the fact the NCAA Tournament committee conveniently finds ways to pit her against her longtime friend Pat Summitt no matter what school she's at, as the coaches with the first and third most wins ever in the women's game are now planning to go out for a coffee date when they get to Ohio.
As for the rest of the remaining field, 14 of the teams heading into the Sweet 16 are top-four seeds, with the exception of Boston College and Utah which picked up the upsets. The BC win was especially notable because it knocked top-seed Ohio State out (sorry to all those Buckeye fans out there), but besides that the rest of the field seems about right at this point.
Three Big East teams - Rutgers, UConn and DePaul - are left standing, and the ESPN experts still have UNC as the favorite.
Stringer said this group isn't a team to which you have to preach about "Moses walking up to the mountaintop" or "walking on water," but instead, "just tell them what they need to do."
I think it's safe to say that what they need to do then is clear.
Turn in a night like Tuesday's big win, and Rutgers might have itself a chance to play spoiler to everyone's UNC prediction in the Elite Eight, plodding its way along a road to the Final Four we all know isn't exactly paved with gold.
But similarly, turn in another performance like the Big East Tournament capper or even the Dartmouth scare, and the Knights can perhaps plan on a trip to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame next Tuesday night instead of a date with the Tar Heels.
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