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It seems fitting that the most successful college basketball coach since John Wooden is named Summit, because that's exactly where she's taken the women's program at the University of Tennessee. In Raise the Roof, she recounts the Lady Vols' astonishing 1997-98 campaign. The team went 39-0, won its third straight NCAA crown and sixth overall under her direction, and, most importantly to Summitt, "played as if they had no internal or physical boundaries." If the team's unprecedented success is the engine that runs Summitt's story, the fuel that powers it goes a good deal deeper than what happened on the court.
"With this team," she admits, "I was different." From two-time All-American forward Chamique Holdsclaw to the four freshmen from broken homes on whose talents the future rested, Summitt realized early that she had to approach them differently than she had any collection of Lady Vols before, and she did; she cared about them differently, yelled at them differently, and reveled with them differently, ultimately tapping into her own emotions in ways she never had before. She, and they, sought to set new standards for themselves, and for their sport. The record shows they did; Summitt details how and why. "Throughout the season," she writes, "I had the curious sensation of something rising." In the end, she rises to the occasion by identifying and preserving that "something." --Jeff Silverman
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