TAT: Remembering the 1999 WNIT Champions

This article originally appeared on October 30, 2013 on The Arkansas Traveler website, uatrav.com.

Coming off their first Final Four trip in program history in 1998, the Lady‘Backs, as they were known until 2008, expected to make another deep run in the 1999 NCAA Tournament.

However, this is not how it played out for the Hogs 15 years ago.

They entered the 1998-99 season ranked No. 18 in the preseason polls and knocked off No. 19 Stanford in their first game. Despite losing to No. 3 UConn by 36 points the following day, they won their next five games and rose as high as No. 13 in the polls.

After back-to-back road losses to Memphis and No. 22 George Washington, they dropped out of the rankings all together and started the season-long struggle to remain over .500.

Wendi Willits Wells, a sophomore guard on the ’98-’99 team and current head girls’ basketball coach at Shawnee High School in Oklahoma, remembered how challenging the Southeastern Conference was that season.

“Each year is never going to be the same as the year before,” Wells said. “You don’t really know what’s going to happen from game to game because the SEC was so deep.”

In SEC play, the Razorbacks had a record of 5-9 to finish 11th out of 12 teams in the conference, but their overall record of 15-14 was good enough to earn them a spot in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament.

While it was not the NCAA Tournament berth they had hoped for, Sytia Messer, a senior guard on the ’98-’99 team and current assistant coach at Baylor, said the team was excited to be selected for the WNIT.

“We were the type of team to perform our best no matter what,” Messer said. “We were honored to have a shot at the WNIT.”

Wells’ mindset was similar, as she remembered telling her teammates, “Let’s go win this thing.”

Making the task more difficult for Arkansas was the fact that they’d be without Karyn Karlin, who tore her ACL after only 18 games. Karlin led the team with 16 points per game and 6.3 rebounds per game.

“We felt bad for Karyn because she helped carry us throughout the year,” Messer said. “She was a tremendous part of the team and we wanted to play for her.”

In the first round of the WNIT, Arkansas defeated Northwestern State 78-60 at Bud Walton Arena to set up a second round matchup with Oklahoma.

Although the Arkansas’ average home attendance was over 4,000, only 890 fans came to the Oklahoma game because of a large snowstorm.

“We actually expected not to play the game,” Wells said. “There was so much snow. We got to the game and the only people in the stands were ushers and a few fans. The band wasn’t even there.”

Even with the low attendance, Arkansas found a way to beat the Sooners 97-93 in overtime.

Back-to-back wins over Rice and Drake clinched a spot in the WNIT Championship game for the Hogs.

The championship game against Wisconsin was on a Tuesday night. On Monday, Messer’s mother suffered a heart attack. Messer did not play in the game Tuesday, as she went to Little Rock to be with her mother, who passed away that day.

Wells said that she remembered Messer’s mother being at the game just a few days before and it was hard to believe what had happened.

“You grow so close to your teammates in college that you’re basically sisters,” Wells said. “To see one of them go through the loss of a mom, everyone was up that night and reevaluating everything.”

Without Messer, who averaged 12.2 points per game and was the team’s third-leading scorer, the Hogs played with “a lot of emotion,” Wells said.

“We wanted to win it for Sytia. She had been there with us all along and we knew how much she wanted to be there,” Wells said. “We really wanted to come up with the win for her.”

Playing with this emotion and in front of a record-setting 14,161 fans at Bud Walton Arena, Arkansas stormed to a 10-point halftime lead and increased their lead to 14 points in the second half before Wisconsin made a run.

The Badgers cut the deficit to one point with 7:44 left in the game and only trailed by three when head coach Gary Blair called Wells’ number.

“Coach Blair was the master of offensive plays,” Wells said. “He called my play and I was able to knock down the three. (The ball) bounced around a few times, but when it went in, the place went crazy and Wisconsin couldn’t dig out of the hole.”

The final score was 76-64, as Wells and Kamara Stancle, who started in Messer’s place, each scored a team-high 15 points.

Even though she didn’t play in the championship game, Messer was named to the all-tournament team.

“That meant a lot,” Messer said. “I’ve always been proud to be a part of the Lady’Back family and I was proud to be able to go out with a championship.”