MINNEAPOLIS -- Cory Montgomery is from Minnesota, and she does recall the excitement over Lindsay Whalen and the Go-Go Gophers of 2004. But not nearly as well as her Nebraska teammate and basketball junkie Kelsey Griffin does.

"I remember watching that team and thinking, 'I want to go play for Minnesota!'" said Griffin, who -- being from Alaska -- is part of the small percentage of the United States population that would not find Minneapolis especially cold.

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AP Photo/Hannah FoslienKelsey Griffin had 22 points and 9 rebounds as Nebraska advanced to play UCLA.

Griffin ended up south of the Land of 10,000 Lakes, at Nebraska, but she did get a chance to play Sunday in the home of the Gophers, Williams Arena. She and the top-seeded Huskers made sure No. 16 seed Northern Iowa didn't get any big ideas from its men's team's victory over No. 1 Kansas, or from the upsets from the women's side, either.

Nebraska won 83-44 behind Griffin's 22 points and nine rebounds, and you might say the Huskers this whole season have been bringing back memories of the 2004 Gophers.

"You could just tell the chemistry they had on the court, the love for the game and for each other they had," Griffin said of watching Minnesota on television back when she was a 16-year-old. "The passion behind it was so fun and contagious.

"To be mentioned as similar to a team like that is flattering. Because I feel like we have that chemistry and that excitement. I'm glad if that's being seen by others."

Nebraska coach Connie Yori said she didn't sleep especially well Saturday night, worrying about the Panthers, who had pulled a couple of upsets in the Missouri Valley tourney to get their automatic bid. One upset came against Yori's alma mater, Creighton, where she coached for 10 seasons before coming to Nebraska.

UNI beat Creighton in the MVC final, and Nebraska had defeated Creighton in December by just 13 points. So maybe Yori -- whose Huskers lost their first game of the season in the Big 12 tourney semifinals to Texas A&M -- had good reason to toss and turn before facing the Panthers.

But the way the Huskers played in their NCAA opener should have ensured that Yori slept pretty well Sunday night before preparing to face UCLA in the second round. Dominique Kelley had 11 points and Lindsey Moore 10; the Huskers made 10 of 20 3-point shots and 20 assists to 11 turnovers.

And for Griffin, it was especially neat to play in the gym they call "The Barn," with its raised floor and intimate atmosphere. despite having a capacity of more than 14,600. First opened in 1927 -- it has been renovated and updated a few times since -- Williams is a quirky arena with nooks and crannies and its own unique character.

"I love the old places, the historic gyms," Griffin said. "Places that you see or hear about growing up, and you never really think that you'll play there."

So Williams fit Griffin, and Griffin fit Williams. In fact, the Huskers as a team fit here, because they would be appreciated by Minnesotans as being much like that 2004 Gophers team.

Led by stars Whalen and Janelle McCarville and a group of role players who all did exactly what was needed, those Gophers captivated the state -- much as the Huskers are doing in their state now -- on their run to the Final Four.

One way, though, they are not alike is seeding. The Gophers were a No. 7 seed in 2004, not because the team really was deserving of that seed, but because the NCAA committee was in a bind over what to do with them. With Whalen, they probably were a No. 2, and no lower than a No. 3. But she suffered a wrist injury in February, and at the time it was feared it had ended her college career.

But -- like a certain 2010 Huskers standout -- she was tough as nails. And she healed faster than expected. The committee seeded the Gophers as if they were without Whalen, but she was back for the NCAA opener, meaning the No. 1 (Duke), No. 2 (Kansas State ) and No. 3 (Boston College) seeds in Minnesota's region were in big trouble. The Gophers beat all of them before finally being stopped by Diana Taurasi and UConn in the Final Four.

Kansas State coach Deb Patterson, who had her best team in 2004, saw the Wildcats taken apart by Minnesota here in Williams Arena. Asked earlier this season about the similarities between Minnesota and Nebraska, Patterson said there were many.

"I think that would be an excellent analogy," she said. "The toughness, the cohesiveness. Each possession, up and down the floor, the matchups are extremely similar. Nebraska has an All-America-caliber player in Kelsey Griffin as their leader; and Minnesota had that in Whalen, who just did everything for them.

"[The Huskers] have a great emotional support in their community right now; there is a wave of momentum. And they have a grittiness that matches that Minnesota team. They're a blue-collar team."

To read the complete column, click here.

In the wake of Texas' NCAA first-round upset loss -- on its home court in Austin -- to San Diego State on Sunday, let's take a look back at three years ago.

In 2007, Duke lost a very painful game to Rutgers in the NCAA Sweet 16. Lindsey Harding at the foul line … well, we probably don't need to rehash the gory details.

After that game, Blue Devils coach Gail Goestenkors began in earnest the process of deciding whether to take Texas' big-bucks offer to replace Jody Conradt.

There were pros and cons. The good reasons Goestenkors had to move to Texas were numerous, and we're not just talking about the $1 million salary. The high school girls' hoops talent pool in the Lone Star State is deep … although to navigate it, you have to be able to swim with sharks. (And by that do I mean recruiting in Texas is not exactly for the faint of heart? That's exactly what I mean.)

The Texas athletic department and its other coaches really seemed to "want" Goestenkors, while Duke's athletic department sent, at best, mixed messages about how much it wanted her to stay.

Plus, Goestenkors had been through a lot of "close but not quite" at Duke, making four trips to the Final Four without winning a title. She felt she was carrying some ghosts with her every postseason, and thought a fresh start in a new conference might be exactly what she needed at that point in her career.

The reasons against going to Texas? Goestenkors had built Duke into the power it was, and she was synonymous with the Blue Devils' women's program after 15 years. And the type of person/coach she is -- high standards, highly motivated, overachieving -- fit perfectly with the typical Duke student-athlete.

And by leaving Duke -- where she knew the good and the bad so well -- she was taking a risk going to a situation she really didn't know nearly as well.

Furthermore, this whole deal is still rare in women's basketball coaching: A school with money identifying the best coach it thinks could possibly be persuaded to come, and then tossing all the cash needed to make that person an offer she or he couldn't refuse.

Texas thought it was buying instant success, because frankly, that's how the thinking usually goes in Austin. If you write a big enough check, you always get what you want when you want it. That's not meant as an insult; just an observation of how business is done there.

Problem is, "buying" success in athletics -- pro or college -- is hardly the quid pro quo certainty that high-dollar schools or organizations want it to be.

Even if you spend a lot of money, that doesn't mean you've just purchased a magic wand. And in a highly competitive Big 12 conference, Texas has had to face this fact in far more than just women's basketball.

But since this was such a high-profile hire, there was instantly -- and understandably -- a lot of pressure on Goestenkors from Day 1. In her first season, the Horns went 22-13 overall, 7-9 in the Big 12 and lost in the NCAA tournament's second round to UConn.

Last year, they were 21-12, 8-8 and lost in the NCAA's first round to Mississippi State. This year, 22-10, 10-6 -- and now the first-round loss to the Aztecs. How will Texas' athletic brass react to this? Will they urge Goestenkors to make staff changes? How much more might they get involved in the day-to-day of what she does?

Now, if you're a coach at most programs and you make the NCAA tournament in your first three seasons on the job and improve your conference record each of those years, you're probably not worrying about your administration at all. But if you're at Texas, which expects a lot more, you do have worries.

Does anyone really think Goestenkors is somehow not as good a coach anymore? I don't think that for a minute. But I do think that Texas paid big money for something that perhaps no one could have given the school as quickly as it wanted it, which was instantly.

Look at the program that won the Big 12 this year: Nebraska. This was coach Connie Yori's eighth season in Lincoln, and during her stay there, the Huskers have made the NCAA field three times. Is her salary the same as Goestenkors' is? Nope. Does Texas have a bigger recruiting base? Sure. But the Huskers' situation still illustrates how long it can take and how many things have to go right to be really successful, no matter what you're being paid for it.

CINCINNATI -- Coach Karen Kemp has accumulated a lot of wins in 16 years on the sideline at East Tennessee State, including three straight trips to the NCAA tournament and three consecutive conference titles in the Atlantic Sun.

She might never gain more fans or offer a better testament of character than she did with a loss Sunday.

After her team came up just short of pulling off a stunner courtesy of a magical shooting performance in No. 3 seed Xavier's thrilling 94-82 escape -- a game in which the margin was a single digit inside of three minutes to play -- Kemp made it clear to those assembled to write about the plucky underdog that she and her team hadn't been playing for an adjective. This wasn't about a moral victory.

But minutes after the final buzzer, as she traded the hum of an arena for the solemn silence of a locker room, she offered this counsel to her team.

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AP Photo/Al BehrmanTarita Gordon scored 30 points on 11-for-18 shooting -- but it was a losing effort for the Lady Bucs.

"You know what I did today?" Kemp said. "I pulled a chair up, I sat down and I said, 'Obviously we're all disappointed because we didn't win the game. But I'm proud, and you have everything in the world to be proud of. So it was all a positive in there, because I don't think we have anything to be ashamed of. So keep your head up. We've got tears because we lost, but it should not be because you're disappointed with your performance on the court.' Because I asked them to leave it all on the court, and I believe they left it all on the court."

The box score doesn't show all they left on that court, but at least in the cases of Tarita Gordon and Siarre Evans it offers a fair glimpse. Gordon finished with a game-high 30 points on 11-of-18 shooting, including 5 of 8 from the 3-point line. Playing what turned out to be her final college game, Evans added 20 points, including 4 of 8 shots from behind the arc. All told, the Lady Bucs hit 15 3-pointers, one shy of the NCAA tournament record set against them by Iowa State last season, turning a seemingly ho-hum first-round game into a can-you-top-this game of H-O-R-S-E played out over a full court.

Kemp said as soon as she saw the bracket, knowing Xavier's size inside, she started preaching the importance of hitting open shots to a team that shot the 3-pointer well but not particularly prolifically in the regular season and conference tournament. For their part, the Musketeers had another reaction when they saw the bracket.

"You had a team that's won three championships," Xavier assistant coach Mike Neighbors said. "They know how to win. They do it with offense. When we saw the draw, we were like, 'Whoa, that's a 14 seed?' I thought they were way better than a 14 seed."

To that point, Xavier might not have played defense as well as coach Kevin McGuff's team can in its best moments, but it hardly turned in a no-show. It took brilliant performances from Ta'Shia Phillips (23 points, 21 rebounds, five blocks) and Amber Harris (31 points, eight rebounds, three steals) to put away the challengers.

The smile that never left Kemp's face in her public moments after the game was a poor mask for the pained tenor of her voice. But perhaps both were entirely accurate reflections of the mixed emotions that come in playing the supporting role in a classic March drama. After all, despite winning the conference regular-season title, East Tennessee State only reached the NCAA tournament with its own last-second win in the conference tournament final against an upstart North Florida. The month giveth and it taketh away.

This one hurt a lot, especially in ending careers for seniors Evans and TaRonda Wiles. But for at least 37 minutes, it was a heck of a ride.

"It was fun watching us shoot those 3s because we had not shot the ball like that all year," Kemp said of the first half. "So that was fun, and if I could have been a fan in the stands, I would have really been having fun. So that first half was, but that's what we kept telling the team: 'We've got to have fun. We go out there, play hard and have fun.' And they were, and at times [so were the coaches] … the second half, it got to a point where it got a little tense on the side. But it was still fun because I think we put a scare in them, and that's always fun when you're playing a team that's No. 5 in the country. We're a 14 seed and I'm sure most people were expecting a blowout, so that makes it fun."

East Tennessee State didn't want a moral victory, but it earned an honorable loss.