MEMPHIS — Pat Summitt greeted Memphis-area University of Tennessee fans and alums with a fatigued smile.

"I’m tired," she said, "but it’s a good tired."

The best kind of tired.

Less than a week ago, Summitt’s Lady Vols were in Cleveland, Ohio, beating Rutgers, 59-46, in the NCAA women’s basketball championship game for Summitt’s seventh national title. On Monday, Summitt, Vols’ football coach Phillip Fulmer and men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl were in Memphis all day for various Big Orange Caravan activities.

Now that Summitt has had a bit of time to catch her breath after winning her first national championship since 1998, she admits there’s a greater appreciation now than ever before about winning it all.

"When we won six (national titles) in the ’80s and ’90s," Summitt said, "I probably didn’t realize how great that was, nor did I fully understand what the future of women’s basketball would hold in terms of parity, getting back to the championship game and winning it."

During the Lady Vols’ eight-year national championship drought, they went to five Final Fours and lost three times in the national championship game to Connecticut. At the same time, the women’s game became bigger than just the Lady Vols and Connecticut. The game that Summitt has promoted throughout her 33-year Tennessee coaching career evolved into a monster with first-time national champions such as Purdue, Notre Dame, Baylor and Maryland.

Summitt, to her credit, raised her game. Her recruiting the last several years enabled her to put together a team so talented that it was able to survive when its superstar, Candace Parker, got in foul trouble.

That was never more evident than in the Lady Vols’ 56-50 semifinal win over North Carolina.

Parker got in early foul trouble and had to sit. Tennessee fell behind by 12 points, but the Lady Vols didn’t fall completely apart. They held together long enough for Parker to finally get back in the game and make several game-deciding plays down the stretch in a 20-2 scoring run.

"Our team stepped it up when Candace got in foul trouble against North Carolina, but they stepped it up all year long when Candace was double-teamed," said Summit, who returns four starters next year from this season’s 34-3 team, with graduating senior Sidney Spencer the lone exception. "She’d play all year long out of a double team, and our players respected the fact that Candace was unselfish and did what it took to win.

"It wasn’t like it was the Candace Parker show. We knew other players would have to be there, and they were certainly there when we needed them the most."

While the Lady Vols won the national championship with defense — they limited North Carolina to 35.1 shooting from the field in the semis, then Rutgers to 40.8 percent in the finals — it was lack of defense that kept Pearl’s men’s team from advancing past the Sweet 16.

After Tennessee blew a 20-point first-half lead to Ohio State, eventually losing, 85-84, to the top-seeded Buckeyes in the South Regional semifinals, Pearl watched game tape.

"Normally, I don’t watch tape on the last game of the year," Pearl said. "There have still been games in my career in which I never watched tape of the last game of the season.

"But this time, I watched the game on the plane on the way home to Knoxville. I had to see what we needed to go back and immediately start working on defensively not to let that ever happen again. We took some possessions off defensively and had weak closeouts (on shooters). We left the door open for Ohio State, and they knocked it down.

"Those are the kind of losses that stay with you forever. They don’t go away. They are part of your makeup, but you keep them in perspective."

So what could have been a magical year for Pearl’s team turned into an abrupt ending and a 24-11 record. For the last four weeks since the end of the season, the returning Vols have been working on defense.

As Pearl heads into his third season in Knoxville, he’s adding more athletes to deepen his bench and enable his team to play his running and pressing style without wearing down. He said he’ll take the Vols overseas in August to Prague and Austria so they can begin learning to play without graduating senior Dane Bradshaw.

"We’ll miss Dane tremendously," Pearl said. "He had the best assist-turnover ratio. He could break the defense down. He made everybody better. He was the glue. We can replace him physically, but not spiritually."

"We’re going overseas because we’ve got to learn to play better without him."

While Summitt and Pearl were busy chasing national titles, Fulmer, coming off a 9-4 record in ’06 and an Outback Bowl 20-10 loss to Penn State, conducted spring football practice in relative anonymity.

He began spring drills on Feb. 22, his earliest start ever. His rationale was that he knew he was going to conduct physical practices, so if anybody got seriously hurt, they would have more time to recover before the ’07 season opener at California on Sept. 1.

Little did Fulmer know that starting quarterback Erik Ainge would suffer torn knee cartilage and undergo surgery. Ainge is expected to be fully recovered by May. Third-team quarterback Nick Stephens, who participated in spring practice, will undergo shoulder surgery next week.

Even though the Vols exited the spring with some question marks, such as finding a new group of receivers to replace the NFL-bound Robert Meachem, Jayson Swain and Bret Smith, Fulmer feels good about his team in several areas.

"Our running backs (Arian Foster, Montario Hardesty, LaMarcus Coker) had a fantastic spring, they are SEC-ready," Fulmer said. "We’re trying to move Coker around to see how he can best impact a game, such as having him and one of the other two backs in the game. It’s just about putting your best players on the field at the same time."