This weekend LaToya Thomas will once again make a journey that has become all too familiar. For four teams, this weekend will mark the accomplishments of a great season, but for Thomas, her last trip as a collegian to the prestigious Final Four in Atlanta, Ga., will not be one for celebration.
While she is in Atlanta there is a very good possibility that Thomas will receive more hardware for her performances on the hardwood. But, for the third time in her four-year career, she will make the trip without her Lady Bulldog teammates, and that leaves one goal unfilled.
“The Final Four is a great experience, and everyone should get the chance to go,” Thomas explained before the start of her senior season in Maroon and White. “I have had the chance to go, but this year I want to take the rest of my team.”
That dream ended last Monday in front of a partisan Lobo crowd in Albuquerque, N.M., when the third-seeded Lady Bulldogs came up short against the sixth-seeded Lobos.
Because of the seeding process of the 2003 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, MSU was sent to hostile ground as a higher seed. This season the NCAA predetermined 16 regional sites throughout the country prior to the season.
But despite playing in front of 16,000 Lobo fans in The Pit, the Lady Bulldogs will not blame anyone but themselves.
“We just did not come out with the intensity that we needed to start the game with,” first team All-SEC guard Tan White said. “The crowd may have helped them some, but if we had started the game the way we finished it, it might have been different.”
From one point of view in Starkville, the biggest difference in the game was the attitude of the three people officiating the game. The two women and one man wearing black and white seemed to be intimidated by the howling Lady Lobo crowd.
“I am not going to blame that game on the officials,” MSU forward Rebecca Kates said. “They are not the reason we lost that game. But, I can see how 16,000 people yelling at you and booing everything you do would get intimidating.”
While MSU would not have been allowed to host a regional this year because of an NCAA rule forbidding Mississippi and South Carolina from hosting predetermined regionals because of the each state’s flag, the idea of being rewarded for a good season has gone out the window.
It seems that the driving factor in the Women’s Tournament this season is money, but changes could be in the near future.
“Right now the NCAA is trying to get some attention to the women’s game,” MSU head coach Sharon Fanning said. “I think eventually the tournament will be played on neutral sites, because that is the best way to do it.”
The one person feeling the biggest slight from the NCAA this season because of media and fan attention is Thomas. One national player of the year award, the Naismith Award, already slipped past Thomas to a player from a more recognized team. Despite not getting the media attention, Thomas has gained loads of respect from those who have watched her and those who know her best.
“I have to guard Toya (Thomas) every day in practice, and she scores on me every time,” Kates said. “I have guarded some of the best, Chantelle Anderson from Vanderbilt and Jocelyn Penn from South Carolina, but no one is as good as Toya.”
Maybe in her last trip to the Final Four money won’t be the driving factor, and Thomas will get what she rightly deserves.