Women's basketball, like any sport, is misleading.

The NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament is in full swing right now and through ESPN and espn2, the sport is attempting to build on a fan base that seems to grow every year.

Games, pregame shows, and promotional advertisements scatter the cable dial.

Here in "Hoops Valley," the Lady Lions trounced a South Carolina team that some thought would dominate Penn State on the glass and thus on the scoreboard.

That game was televised on espn2 and showed an excited crowd and an exciting player and coach in Kelly Mazzante and Rene Portland.

A television spot one would have viewed while taking in the Lions' game shows black and white pictures of well-known basketball figures, such as players from the University of Connecticut and their famed coach, Geno Auriemma.

UConn is that phenom that comes along so often, the one with accomplishments that have never been seen and may never be duplicated.

Seventy wins in succession, check.

Four of the top six players selected in the WNBA draft last year, double check.

Consecutive national championships, waiting to possibly be checked.

Auriemma is the national figurehead of women's basketball, just like Portland is the local leader at University Park. Both are working on immortality.

Maybe not forgotten but certainly overshadowed in this season of women's hoops is someone already on that mantel of everlasting greatness. Portland and even Auriemma are in the foreground of this woman, someone who is the Sears Tower to Auriemma and Portland's Empire State Building.

She is a woman who has led teams to at least the Sweet 16 every one of the 22 years a women's tournament has existed.

A woman whose grace and strength shows not only what women's basketball can be, but what great collegiate athletics is supposed to represent.

That woman has 197 more wins than Portland and three more championships than the anointed Huskies head man.

That woman, who will be waiting like a trapdoor spider for the Lions in Knoxville, Tenn., this weekend for the Sweet 16, is Pat Summitt.

It's a little more than ironic that Portland will be playing a woman whose last name, without the last "t", means pinnacle.

It is Summitt who has six of what Portland desperately wants to capture -- national championships.

That success comes from more than just a desire to compile wins and awards.

"Teaching is my passion," Summitt said.

"There are a lot of people that coach the game. I think I really like teaching skills and fundamentals and teaching collectively what brings together a team."

She has taught well. Summitt has coached 11 Olympians (more than any other coach), 16 Kodak All-Americans and 55 All-SEC performers.

And like all people who have immense success, Summitt has continued coaching despite the strain and the imploring of family for her to stop.

"1984, we played Southern California for the national championship," Summitt said.

"The summer after that I coached the Olympic team and my father Richard Head tried to convince me to try to get out of coaching because of the stress. I had pretty much convinced myself that if we win the championship, which at that time we hadn't, and we won a gold medal, I'd consider it. I appreciate Southern Cal not allowing us to do that."

She didn't quit and in the following years continued to shoot the bar of achievement to a level that anyone not named Auriemma has hardly a chance of reaching.

No surprise should come if the No. 1-seeded Volunteers defeat the Lady Lions Saturday, especially with the game in Knoxville.

However, remember who the clear leader of women's basketball is when Summitt is taking down the nets in celebration of her team's trip to Atlanta.