By Mary Foster
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS - Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma admits he used to be a superstitious guy. Lucky charms, rituals, he did it all.

No more. Now, Auriemma believes in fate.

"My coaches think I'm crazy," Auriemma said. "But I tell them it's already been decided, we just don't know the outcome yet."

Auriemma said it's a mystical thing. He puts his team through its paces, drills them and draws up his plan. Then, he leaves it to fate.

Auriemma's wife does an astrological chart on the team, but he doesn't pay attention.

"She works it out and tells me where Saturn is and what's lined up," Auriemma said. "I just go, 'Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.' All I want to know is if Diana (Taurasi) is coming off the screen or not."

Connecticut players said, for the most part, they weren't superstitious. But as a whole, the team is.

"I seem to think I don't have any, but everybody keeps telling me I do," Taurasi said. "Our team has a lot of superstitions - where we sit on the bus, where we sit on the plane, where we sit for pregame lunch."

Tennessee, however, is undecided if luck can be influenced.

Vols forward Shyra Ely doesn't think she's superstitious, but she forgot the ankle bracelet she normally wears and didn't have time to make a pregame call to a friend before the Tennessee-LSU semifinal. In that game, she shot 1-for-11.

"I'll have the call made and the bracelet on Tuesday night," she said.

Teammate Ashley Robinson shrugged off the idea.

"Every time I get a superstition, I'll forget it and we play good," Robinson said. "I forgot my lucky blue headband against LSU and we won."

The Vols figure coach Pat Summitt has them covered when it comes to lucky charms.

"If she sees a heads-up penny, she'll go to the end of the earth to get it," Ely said.

Summitt found a heads-up penny in the Tennessee locker room before the Vols' 52-50 victory over LSU on Sunday.

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BIG EASY BASKETBALL: The NCAA championship will be decided in New Orleans for the second time Tuesday night. The city also hosted the tournament finals in 1991, but women's basketball was showcased in the Big Easy much earlier than that.

In 1895, Clara Gregory Baer, a physical culture educator at Sophie Newcomb College, wrote a book of rules for the women's game.

Her team staged a demonstration game March 13 of that year. It was the first publicly played basketball game in the south by men or women. An all-female audience of 560 turned out to watch.

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SAY WHAT: "Bourbon Street is just not my thing ... during the day." Connecticut guard Diana Taurasi.