SPRINGFIELD, Mo.  The University of Illinois women''s basketball schedule for the week got a little bit tougher Wednesday night.

   With top-ranked Tennessee and No. 18 Stanford looming, the fifth-ranked Illini stumbled at Southwest Missouri State, dropping a 77-62 decision before a crowd of more than 8,200.

   SPRINGFIELD, Mo.  With a Final Four-type weekend looming, the University of Illinois women''s basketball team might be tempted to look beyond tonight''s preliminary-rounder.

   Bad idea, warns its coach.

CHAMPAIGN – Theresa Grentz always had a nagging suspicion her University of Illinois center could play like this.

"She's been harping on me the whole time I've known her to go to the basket and to take it hard," Alicia Sheeler said Sunday. "And that's just what I did tonight."

   CHAMPAIGN  Senior Krista Reinking became the 12th member of the 1,000-point club in Illini women''s basketball history Sunday.

CHAMPAIGN – It was considered one of the top recruiting classes of 1996 in women's college basketball.

It would join a team coming off a losing season. A team in need of an across-the-board infusion of talent.

CHAMPAIGN  Katie Coleman cringes when she hears the words. And she''s been hearing them a lot since her freshman year at the University of Illinois.

"Here they call me a three-point specialist, which I don''t like at all," the sophomore guard said. "I just don''t like to be categorized as one-dimensional."

   CHAMPAIGN  After Illinois lost its season opener to then-No. 3 Old Dominion, guard Ashley Berggren spoke of how tired she was getting at seeing yet another big game slip away.

Tennessee, Old Dominion, Connecticut and Louisiana Tech remained the top four teams in The Associated Press women's basketball poll Monday, with Tennessee once more a unanimous No. 1.