Jody Conradt

Freshmen Greg Oden of Ohio State and Kevin Durant of Texas are among the five finalists for the John R. Wooden Award, presented to college basketball's outstanding player. Others invited for the April 7 presentation at the Los Angeles Athletic Club are North Carolina sophomore Tyler Hansbrough, Texas A&M senior Acie Law and Wisconsin senior Alando Tucker.

Texas' Jody Conradt became only the second women's coach to win 800 games, reaching that milestone Wednesday night at Austin, Texas, when the No. 17 Longhorns defeated No. 7 Texas Tech, 69-58. The Longhorns (12-4, 5-0 in the Big 12) ended a 15-game winning streak by the Red Raiders (15-2, 4-1). Conradt joined Tennessee's Pat Summitt (802) as the only women's coaches in the 800-victory club. Summitt got in Jan. 14 with a victory over DePaul.

Annette Smith has a great disguise going. When the center for the University of Texas women's basketball team lumbers down court with her left knee heavily wrapped, taped and braced, she looks like a mummy coming unraveled. She's 5-feet 11-inches and plows through other players like an aircraft carrier--full steam ahead. But she is quick, she can jump and she can score. This, nearly two years after her knee was left for dead on the floor of Texas' Frank Erwin Center.

Tennessee earned this Final Four trip the old-fashioned way-- with defense. The Lady Vols disrupted Vanderbilt's normally efficient offense for much of the game and beat the top-seeded Commodores, 68-63, in the Midwest Regional final Monday night, sending Tennessee to the Final Four for the 13th time. "I thought through the course of the game we really guarded people," Tennessee Coach Pat Summitt said. "We just tried to take them somewhat out of their rhythm."

When the NCAA's West Regional bracket was revealed two weeks ago, it appeared there were too many good teams for the bracket to follow a logical progression toward the Final Four. But in the end the West shook out just as the Midwest, Mideast and East, with the top two seeded women's basketball teams in each regional playing for the right to go to Atlanta this weekend.

Texas Coach Jody Conradt was only half-kidding Saturday when she opened her media session with, "It's the Final Four, isn't it?" Conradt knows the Final Four begins next week. Right now her team is among the quartet cloistered at Stanford in the NCAA West Regional, considered the most difficult regional in the women's tournament. Any one of the teams here -- Louisiana State, Louisiana Tech, Texas or Minnesota -- can leave with that precious ticket to Atlanta.

Texas Coach Jody Conradt had a simple plan for containing Duke All-American Alana Beard on Sunday in the Women's Tip-Off Classic at West Lafayette, Ind. "You can't shut her down, you can't even slow her down a lot of the times, but you can force her to take harder shots, which is what we were trying to do," Conradt said. The No. 2-ranked Longhorns succeeded where most teams have failed. Beard, who made only four of 17 shots, scored 12 points and No. 2 Duke lost, 85-77.

Texas Coach Jody Conradt called it a "respect game," and she got just that after a 70-60 victory over No. 2-ranked Tennessee Sunday at Knoxville, Tenn. "I think we just played one of the best teams in the country," Pat Summitt said after a game in which Conradt tied the Tennessee coach for most coaching victories in women's basketball with 828. The No. 5 Longhorns (11-1) struggled to a two-point lead at halftime but never relinquished that advantage in the second half. Shyra Ely was limited to 10 points on five-for-16 shooting for Tennessee (7-1)

. -- Pat Summitt now has 1,000 victories, an unprecedented height even she finds dizzying. "It's a hard number to even comprehend," the Tennessee coach said. Summitt became the first Division I basketball coach -- men's or women's -- to win 1,000 games Thursday night as her 12th-ranked Lady Vols beat Georgia, 73-43. It was their second chance in four days at giving their coach her latest and one of her greatest milestones.

Tiger Woods of Cypress, the two-time defending champion, was tied for second after the first round of the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship in Portland, Ore. Woods shot one-under-par 69 on the 6,465-yard Waverley Country Club Course to gain a four-way tie, three shots behind Rob McMillan of Winnipeg, Canada. After today's second round of stroke play the field will be cut to 64 players for the match-play portion.