The women’s game shines in Basketball: A Love Story

How can you talk hoops with either Pat Summitt or Geno Auriemma? Better yet, how can you talk women’s hoops without mentioning their epic rivalry? You can’t, and Klores didn’t even think of trying.

The short “Pat vs. Geno” is set to air a few days after a nine-minute piece on Summitt entitled “The First Lady”.  Two years after Rush took over at Immaculata, the future Hall of Famer Pat Summitt was offered a few hundred dollars monthly to coach at The University of Tennessee, where she remained for the next 38 years.

Klores did not speak to Summitt for his film, but just about everyone interviewed for the women’s basketball shorts mentioned the legendary coach. “I was given the opportunity to interview Pat Summitt … but I passed because I felt like her memory was really going. I didn’t want [it] to feel like [I was] exploiting her in any way shape or form,” Klores said. Summitt was diagnosed early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease in 2011.

Despite not speaking with her, Klores is confident he honored her legacy. The only thing he questioned in our conversation was the use of a particular song to close out the “Pat vs. Geno”.

Twenty minutes into the short on the rise and eventual fall of the greatest rivalry in college basketball, we hear a bluesy duet by Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris. We see a shot of Summitt and Auriemma with genuine smiles (All the roadrunning), and a montage of half court embraces (All the roadrunning).

Former Tennessee Volunteer Kara Lawson reflects on the quick, abrupt exit of Summitt from the game, Klores cuts to Summitt shaking hands as she walks down the tunnel (The show’s packing up, I sit and watch the carnival leaving town), on her way to speak to a teary-eyed locker room full of the last players she would ever coach (But this is my piper, this is my drum. So you never will hear me complain). 

Klores ends the short with a shot of Auriemma at Summitt’s memorial service while her son Tyler talks about not simply remembering his mother’s legacy (All the roadrunning), but living it.

“That was a duet between Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris that I couldn’t get out of my mind. I could not get it out of my mind and I always thought, if I make that scene right and then I don’t make it too sentimental and that song will work. I worry a little it’s a little too sentimental but, you know what? I went with it anyway.”

It works.