By Jenni Carlson
Staff Writer

NORMAN -- LaNeishea Caufield will attend classes. Caton Hill will relax at her apartment. Jamie Talbert and Rosalind Ross, Sunny Hardeman and the rest of the Oklahoma women's basketball team will have a normal Friday in Norman.

They could have had a not-so- normal but oh-so-wonderful day in St. Louis, where the Women's Final Four tips off tonight at the Savvis Center.

The Sooners could have been there.

No, they should have been there. They should be playing in the national semifinals.

Theirs was an opportunity lost. Squandered. Wasted.

And the Sooners know it.

"Things," Hardeman said, "were just setting up perfectly for us."

It started early Saturday afternoon. Hundreds of miles from Spokane, Wash., where OU was preparing for its Sweet 16 game against Washington, Tennessee was playing Xavier in a Mideast Region semifinal. The Volunteers were top seeded and favored against the lowly Musketeers.

Xavier, however, won.

The significance?

The Mideast winner plays the West winner in the Final Four. If the Sooners won the West, they wouldn't have to play a top seed.

Avoiding one top seed is good.

Avoiding two is too good to be true.

But that was the road placed before the Sooners a few hours later when Southwest Missouri State defeated top-seeded Duke in the West Region semifinal. An OU victory would have set a rubber match between the Sooners and the Bears. The teams split a two-game, regular-season series.

The Sooners' road to the Final Four was paved with winnable games.

And OU's eight-point defeat against SMS easily might have been a victory.

"We were very aware," Hardeman said. "We saw how teams were falling. We couldn't have had it any better."

Said OU star Stacey Dales, "We knew the circumstances, and we understood them."

All they had to do was beat Washington.

Then SMS.

Then...

"We're not really a team that looks over someone," Hardeman said. "We just didn't show up."

OU not only lost the Washington game but also opportunity.

It was so unlike Sherri Coale's teams. They usually create opportunities where there are none. They travel to far-reaching outposts, venture into hostile environments and thrive in them.

That's what they did in the NCAA Tournament last season. In knocking off defending national champion Purdue, the Sooners were the only team to win on another's home court.

They lost in the regional semifinal to Connecticut, but that Sweet 16 loss was different.

"Last year I was sad," Coale said. "This year I'm mad.

"It is too hard to get here to squander the opportunity."

Coale knows how rare this opportunitywas. It's an opportunity that her teams might never have again.

This one should have taken advantage of it.

Jenni Carlson can be reached by e-mail at jcarlson@oklahoman.com.