LEARNING TO WIN. Tennessee's Pat Summitt coaches her thousandth win, with a young team.

These baby Lady Vols (17-5, 6-2 Southeastern Conference), with seven freshmen on the roster, are nothing like the squads that brought Summitt her seventh and eighth national championships in the previous two seasons. This is an inexperienced group that had Summitt joking about whether they would even be up to the task of winning the 17 games she needed to reach 1,000 this season.

Afterwards, she received numerous honors, including the first star in a Knoxville Walk of Fame. (I agree with the concept, although the best one I've seen is in Vienna.)

Next up, the Runs-from-Huskies paid a visit to Madison, where the hosts ended a run of frustration.

The Badgers, who won the Big Ten title and tournament last season but came into Thursday's game having lost six straight -- most recently a loss at Northwestern on Saturday.

It was the Badgers' worst losing streak since the 1997-98 season, when they lost eight in a row.

But it's not like Wisconsin has been blown out in the majority of its losses. The Badgers held the lead in the final 3 minutes of regulation in five of their last seven losses going into Thursday, but were unable to close out a win.

(Go figure. The last Wisconsin win at home was a blowout of Northwestern, and Northwestern won the return match in Evanston on the weekend.)

There were no posts yesterday, because the Real Huskies used up my energy.

Down 43-27 with 18:27 left to play, Akron (8-13, 3-5) went on a 14-2 run, to cut the deficit to four with 13:10 left in the contest. With NIU up 49-45 with 11:41 left, The Huskies rattled off an 8-2 run of its own to push the lead to 10 with, 57-47, with 7:30 left to play, but the Zips refused to go away.

I stand by a previous statement.

It's good value for the money, if a bit stressful to watch on occasion