D6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, APRIL 1 , 2022
the ball, it would have been a fast-break
free-for-all. But it became a matter of
possession and shot-selection.”Texas, which led 37-34 at halftime, got
in foul trouble in the second half, and
Rutgers pulled off an 83-77 upset that
ended the Longhorns’ 32-game winning
streak. The AIAW, which unsuccessfully
sued the NCAA for using its wealth to
drive it out of business, folded three
months later.Hauglum: “We were used to winning;
we never went into a game thinking that
we weren’t going to win. So there was a
sadness, a disappointment and kind of a
shock. I was disappointed in my play. It
was okay, but it wasn’t great, and I felt that
I let my teammates down and let Coach
Conradt down.”
G rentz: “We win the trophy, and we’re
on the floor, and the [Rutgers athletic
director] comes down on the floor and
congratulates me. He says to me, ‘I guess
this means you’ll want rings?’ ‘That would
be correct,’ I said.
“But Rutgers didn’t take us out to cel-
ebrate or anything. So, Karl and I, we were
just married, took them to a restaurant.
They were tired, but I told them, ‘You can
have whatever you want.’ It took Karl and
I two credit cards to pay the bill, but we
paid it.
“And we had rings made and a ring
ceremony. We got to ring the bell at Old
Queens [an honor Rutgers accords unde-
feated or champion teams]. And Rutgers
did give us sweaters. I still have the
sweater that says ‘Champions’ on it.”
SEE NCAA ON D7Chapter 1
‘I guess this means you’ll want rings?’
The lure of NCAA TV exposure and
travel subsidies left just three ranked
teams sticking with the AIAW and win-
nowed its 1982 tournament field to 16. As
a result, NBC canceled plans to air the
championship game between Rutgers
and fifth-ranked Texas at the Palestra in
Philadelphia. A crowd of 1,789 attended,
and Rutgers’s student radio station
W RSU-FM provided the only live ac-
count.
Although Texas was favored, Rutgers
had t he e dge i n size a nd experience, l ed by
senior forward June Olkowski and t wins
Mary and Patty Coyle, who handled the
backcourt. All three starred in Philadel-
phia’s girls’ Catholic League and were
childhood fans of Rutgers Coach Theresa
Grentz when she led Immaculata’s
Mighty Macs to three AIAW champion-
ships from 1972 to 1974.
Theresa Grentz, Rutgers coach from
1976 to 1995: “The Palestra is a very, very
special place in Philadelphia because the
Big Five — Saint Joe’s, Villanova, Temple,
La Salle and Penn — played there and the
girls’ Catholic League championship was
played there. It was like a gladiator pit.”
Mary Coyle Klinger, Rutgers point
guard: “We grew up in Philadelphia, so
NCAA FROM D1 the Palestra for us was like how people in
New York think of the Garden: It was the
mecca of basketball.”
Grentz: “I wasn’t at the time much
older than [my players] were. Many of
them saw me play at Immaculata when
they were growing up. I recruited them
out of the Catholic League to come to
Rutgers. There were quite a few Philadel-
phia connections. It’s almost as if we kept
running up and down the [New Jersey]
Turnpike....
“We were at the shoot-around the day
before when Jody [Conradt] and her team
came in, and they had the most magnifi-
cent burnt orange warmups. I thought:
‘My God! I’ve got to get my kids out of here!’
I didn’t want them to see the Texas players.
They were the full package!”
K linger: “Texas comes walking in in
their beautiful warmups and matching
shoes, and they all looked very intimidat-
ing. But Patty and I were kind of laughing
about it because we just had on our
pinnies and shirts and red shorts. When
we played, I was just glad to have a pair of
sneakers that didn’t have any holes in
’em.”
Jody Conradt, Texas coach from
1976 to 2007: “I didn’t know a great deal
about Rutgers, but I did know about June
Olkowski and the twins. They had a
reputation in the Philadelphia area for
being super competitive, super talented,
and there was no back-down in either of
them. Trust me: I saw double trouble in
those twins through the whole game....
“We had to rely on quickness and
defense. We wanted to extend the court
— playing the whole 94 feet in defensive
pressure — and score in transition. We
were good at that, but I don’t think our
experience matched that of Rutgers.”
K linger: “It was said that the Texas
backcourt was going to dominate my
twin and I. I didn’t understand that.
Growing up in the city and the people
that we had to compete against day in
and day out, I thought, ‘They’re not going
to dominate us.’...
“Us being from Philly, our whole fam-
ily was at the game except my father. He
was too nervous and couldn’t go. It was
funny because he had given us so much of
our confidence. His big thing was, ‘Daz-
zle them with footwork, and everything
will take care of itself.’ But it’s the biggest
game of our careers, and he’s not there.
So one of my sisters, every couple min-
utes, she’d run out to the pay phone and
call and give him an update.”
Sherryl Hauglum, Texas forward:
“Rutgers made two no-look, behind-the-
head passes during that game. The tim-
ing on their offensive plays was impecca-
ble. They had obviously played together
for a very long time to be able to read
each other so well. You could tell they had
great chemistry.”
Grentz: “The reason we were so suc-
cessful is that Mary Coyle and Patty Coyle
handled the ball. Texas put as much
pressure on their ballhandling skill as
Texas could. Had they been able to stripForty years ago, four teams and two title games
LOUISIANA TECHClockwise from top: Louisiana
Tech won the inaugural NCAA
women’s tournament a year
after it claimed the AIAW title.C. Vivian Stringer coached
Cheyney State to the first
NCAA championship game.The Lady Techsters were the
first women’s team to cut down
the nets after an NCAA
basketball championship.Leon Barmore and Sonja Hogg
teamed up to make Louisiana
Tech the dominant program of
the early 1980s.RUTGERSLOUISIANA TECHNCAA