Does Rutgers have one more surprise up its sleeve?

The Scarlet Knights’ improbable run toward a national title continued Sunday night when they held Louisiana State’s formidable 6-foot-6-inch pivotwoman Sylvia Fowles to a mere five points on 2–10 shooting en route to a 59–35 win. Fowles, big and gracefully athletic, seemed like just the type of player that the Scarlet Knights’ celebrated defense was unable to stop.

Sunday night changed that perception.

Yet, Sunday changed a lot of perceptions. The University of North Carolina Tar Heels, the most supremely confident and cavalier team of the Final Four, choked away a 12-point lead against Tennessee in the final eight minutes of 56–50 Lady Vol victory. The Tar Heels, a team that had averaged 85.5 points a game during the regular season, seemed in high gear, on a 17–2 run, when suddenly they forgot how to run their offense. Making the meltdown even more inexplicable is that the Tar Heels are helmed by one of the best point guards in the game, Ivory Latta.

Yet improbable is the word that best describes this entire tournament, which has been full of surprises and Cinderellas, and the title will be decided tonight when Rutgers, a no. 4 seed (and theoretically the 16th best team in the tournament), stands a reasonable chance to beat third-ranked Tennessee, a team that has dominated the sport since its inception (the Lady Vols have made every single Sweet 16 in NCAA history).

The matchup is a classic in several ways. The coaches are legendary but contrasting. Rutgers’s C. Vivian Stringer has taken three different schools, Cheney State, Iowa, and Rutgers, to the Final Four without a win. Tennessee’s Pat Summitt has won six titles and is the public face for the sport. Until Sunday night’s win, Rutgers was a team known for a defense that could suffocate a backcourt but often struggled to score. Tennessee has a potent offense and is known for its frontcourt defense.

During Sunday night’s first half, Rutgers rained eight 3-pointers in 10 shots from behind the arc in the first half on LSU. Although it’s unreasonable to expect the same marksmanship tonight, the Scarlet Knight backcourt, especially Matee Ajavon, Essence Carson, and Epiphanny Prince, will have to shoot well from outside to keep the game from coming down to the Lady Vol bigs against the Rutgers inside game. Rutgers has an All-American in the making with sophomore center Kia Vaughn, but Tennessee has a legend in the making in their frontcourt star Candace Parker. Parker, the winner of the Wade trophy for the MVP of women’s NCAA hoops, is the dominant player in the game today. She drew fully one-third of the fouls committed against the Lady Vols this season. Sunday night she fouled out two-thirds of the UNC front line. At 6-foot-4 with the ability to dunk and play the point, Parker has brought an unprecedented level of power and agility to the game.

In Tennessee’s three losses this season, the opponents ceded Parker her points and made sure that her supporting cast didn’t beat them. Rutgers’s suffocating defense, which held LSU to a remarkably low 26.4% shooting on Sunday night, should be up to that task; UNC, a far less stout defense held Tennessee to 27% shooting.

Rutgers allowed 70 points a game during the first six weeks of the season but allowed 44.6 a game in the tournament. Rutgers has the emotional edge of having lost twice to Tennessee in each of the last tournaments, and Parker called the UNC game the real national title game.

If the Scarlet Knight backcourt can hit a reasonable percentage of their outside shots, there should be a celebration in New Jersey this week.

Tonight’s title game winds up another season of growth for NCAA women’s college basketball. At the current pace, it will soon join football and men’s basketball as the third moneymaking sport under the NCAA umbrella. ESPN is clearly on the bandwagon, having bumped the opening night of the baseball season to the deuce in favor of the women’s national semifinal game, and we’re about to see an off-season full of schools betting on the rapid growth of the sport. There are several high-profile vacancies, notably at LSU, Penn State, and the University of Texas, where the new hires will command somewhere in the high six figures. In addition, several schools that have yet to make much of a splash in the sport, such as the University of Florida and the University of Michigan, have been rumored to be interested in poaching a well-known coach to give their programs instant credibility.

The primary reason for the sport’s growth beyond its usual cadre of women’s sports fans is that at the highest level it is good fundamental basketball (the first half of Sunday night’s UNC-Tennessee game was an exception). A friend of mine who coaches boys’ basketball has his players watch women’s NCAA games to appreciate the fundamentals of the game. However, the NCAA needs to surround the game better. Too many regionals were held in places without a passion for the game. One set of first- and second-round games were held in Los Angeles, involving teams from Texas and Washington, D.C. Small wonder they drew poorly. Also, ticket prices are rising perilously close to triple digits which will continue to exclude the curious fan and result in scads of empty seats. Also, most important, the game is too often officiated with an inconsistency that borders on capricious. Football tackles are allowed one minute then touch fouls are called the next.

With a tournament full of jawdropping surprises, the players have lifted NCAA women’s basketball to a new level. Now, during the off-season, the NCAA will need to catch up.

mjohnson@nysun.com