John Adams: Pat Summitt's support team includes competition

SEC commissioner Mike Slive on Pat Summitt

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — One SEC basketball coach after another was pictured bigger than life on the wall-size screen during the conference's media day Thursday. The Pat Summitt photos were just what you would have expected.

The facial shot depicted the Tennessee coach in mid-scream. The full-length picture showed her with arms folded, staring straight ahead with enough intensity to penetrate an X-ray vest.

The photos were revealing, yet unnecessary. Her presence was unmistakable even before she and associate head coach Holly Warlick took their turn on the dais in the midst of a media thicket bigger than the one that sprouted around Kentucky coach John Calipari.

Summitt has won eight national championships, but her story is bigger than that now. She's not just the winningest coach in women's basketball. She's the coach who plans to keep winning while battling an awful disease, early onset dementia.

Media day was a reminder that she's not fighting the disease alone.

Warlick was there on the dais, and assistant coach Mickie DeMoss made the trip to Birmingham as well.

Warlick's presence was noteworthy, not because Summitt was incapable of maneuvering through a media gathering on her own. The Lady Vols want to make sure everyone understands what a team effort this will be. The coach always has relied on her assistants. She will rely on them more now.

Listening to Summitt and Warlick was akin to watching an experienced pair of guards working in tandem. Summitt would answer a question; then,

her former player and longtime friend would chime in so unobtrusively, a stranger might have wondered if this was a rehearsed routine.

It wasn't rehearsed. But it was 922 victories in the making. Warlick has shared in that many of Summitt's 1,071 victories.

Together, they dodged no questions — from Summitt's cooking to her coping. The coach isn't thinking about retiring. She's thinking about "cutting down nets."

She has good days and bad days, but on this day, she said, "I'm doing great."

The job that has been her passion for 37 years has become part of her treatment, just like the medication she takes and the puzzles she plays.

"I want to go to work," she said. "That keeps me going."

The sport and the team are her incentives. But you can only wonder how hard it must be, even as she makes it sound so manageable. It's not only the early onset dementia. She also has rheumatoid arthritis.

"Listen, I can't even imagine," Ole Miss coach Renee Ladner said. "Most of us are dealing with menopause and we're struggling. It's amazing.

"For her to take this on is just one more trait of a Pat Summitt career. I think she will fight it as hard as she can for as long as she can."

Again, she's not fighting alone. Her support system extends from her family, team and fans to the competition.

Georgia coach Andy Landers was Summitt's rival before women's basketball knew who Geno Auriemma was. If not for her and the Lady Vols, Landers would have led the conference's flagship program.

While no one might consider Summitt and Landers as buddy-buddy, he called her Wednesday night.

"I just said, 'Is there anything I can say for you that you're not comfortable saying?' " he said. "If I could be helpful, I wanted to help.

"I didn't know if she was tired of being asked about (the disease). If she wanted that said, I was going to say it.

"But she said, 'Talk about it. I'm good with it.' "

Landers always has been on the other side. So many of the current SEC coaches have been on both sides.

LSU coach Nikki Caldwell won national championships with Summitt as a player and assistant coach.

She says she would never make a career decision without consulting her former coach.

Kentucky coach Matthew Mitchell worked Summitt's summer camps before landing a job on her staff as a graduate assistant.

"I was a high school coach with no good players," he said. "I could be of no benefit to her. But she would spend time with me.

"We're all better off because Pat Summitt decided to coach women's basketball."

Summitt had a direct impact on the career of Vanderbilt coach Melanie Balcomb. But it was unintentional.

The Lady Vols were charging through March, seemingly on their way to another Final Four when Balcomb's Xavier (Ohio) team upset them in the Sweet 16 of the 2001 NCAA regional in Birmingham. The postgame became a story, too.

"Everybody questioned after the game what she said to me, because she was very intense," Balcomb said. "She was pointing and holding my hand. And I was just looking up at her, thinking, 'Wow, she's tall.'

"Everybody thought the worst. When I got to the Final Four, I was bombarded with questions: 'What did Pat say to you?'

"She was telling me nothing but compliments. She was just very intense, like she always is."

Ladner has never beaten Summitt but she has heard similar compliments after her team came close to the Lady Vols. And when she didn't come close, Summitt offered strategic tips.

"I always felt that she was for me — except when we play Tennessee," Ladner said. "I think she feels that way about all of us."

The feeling is mutual.

"I'm in her corner," Ladner said.

So is the entire conference.

John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or adamsj@knoxnews.com. Follow him at http://twitter.com/johnadamskns.