ACCUMULATE THOSE SMALL ADVANTAGES. Women's Hoops finds a report from Dayton on Florida State's game day preparations.

The NCAA isn't very subtle about how it treats basketball royalty and its No. 1 seeds. UConn is housed in the preferred hotel that sits conveniently next to the University of Dayton campus. The arena is about a dozen Maya Moore fast breaks from the hotel, no more than a three-minute charter bus ride from door to door.

Meanwhile, Sue Semrau's Seminoles are assigned to a hotel 8.2 miles away. It's easy to find: Just head south on I-75 to Miamisburg, take a left at Exit 44, drive past the gas stations, take a right near the Arthur Murray Dance Studio, go past the Chuck E. Cheese's and the Blue Byrd Tattoo and Body Piercing on the left, aim the rental car toward the Montgomery County Water Tower and you're there.

Hanging above the modest lobby is a blue NCAA tournament banner. Someone from the Florida State traveling party has placed an FSU decal on an aquarium near the front desk. That's about it for March Madness ambiance.

Semrau doesn't care. When she took the FSU job in 1997, the Seminoles were 0-for-ACC the previous season. They were the gimme on everyone's schedule. Now they're the co-champions of the league for a second straight year and have advanced to the program's first Elite Eight.

As a reward, the Seminoles get to play UConn, the USSR of women's college basketball.

The game plan? Develop Knights before Bishops, castle, double the Rooks, checkmate!

I'm serious.

The game plan is surprisingly uncomplicated. Instead, it emphasizes the most basic of philosophies: Impose your will on the opponent.

Yes, but to quote Kotov, how often does the novice player get a strong position against a grandmaster but the grandmaster goes on to win? More frequently, the novice player gets nervous and fails to establish a strong position.

"Boy, they make you play ugly," FSU coach Sue Semrau said, shaking her head. "We missed a ton of shots but that's because they did such a great job in every area."

I watched that game, and a number of those shots were hurried semi-open shots before the rest of the team could get in position. When Connecticut loses, it's likely to be a team that works patiently for its shot and makes its opponent play defense for the duration of the shot clock. But it might also be because Mr Auriemma walks away from the game ... in an interview with ESPN tonight he might have been blowing smoke about getting bored if the streak is still going in December, or he might be giving further voice to his frustration with money-losing athletic directors not engaging in another resource-draining positional arms race.