Pat Summitt stands alone at the top of NCAA basketball after getting win no. 880 in the Lady Vols' 75-54 win over Purdue in the second round of the NCAA tournament on March 22nd, 2005. Summitt improved to 880-171, passing Dean Smith who was 879-254 when he retired in 1997 after 36 years with the North Carolina Tar Heels. After the game, NCAA officials presented Summitt with the game ball and a plaque, and the university announced the court at Thompson-Boling Arena will be named "The Summitt."

The 52-year-old Summitt waved to the crowd and hugged family members, who came down to the court to celebrate with her. The team posed for the picture above with the players holding up newspaper pages with a huge 880 in orange on the front.


Summitt overtook Texas' Jody Conradt as the winningest women's college coach early in the 2002-03 season.
She holds nearly every NCAA tournament record for a women's coach including most NCAA titles (six), Final Four appearances (15), Final Four wins (17), tournament appearances (24), tournament games (104) and tournament wins (87).

And many of her tournament runs have started in Knoxville, where the Lady Vols are 46-0 in NCAA games.
An amazing chunk of Summitt's wins have come against ranked teams. In her 1,051 games, 494 of those were against ranked opponents and she won 353 of them. She has never lost to an unranked team in Thompson-Boling Arena, which opened in 1987.

Summitt took over the women's program at Tennessee in 1974 at age 22 when there were no scholarships and she had to wash the uniforms and drive the team van. The Lady Vols nickname didn't even exist. A mere 53 fans watched Summitt win her first game, a 69-32 victory over Middle Tennessee on Jan. 10, 1975. Lady Vols fans are likely to see many more wins as Summitt's record could stretch well past 1,000 before she retires.