NEW ORLEANS (AP) – The feud won’t stop here.

Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma and Tennessee’s Pat Summitt will be back at each other’s throats fighting for the women’s championship again for the same reasons they were there Tuesday night.

They’re relentless rivals and the best in the game.

They could pass for brother and sister, maybe kissing cousins, if they weren’t so busy trying to bash each other.

They prowl the sidelines with the same ferocity and fiery

eyes – his dark, hers bright blue.

They bark at their players and the refs, point fingers and shake fists, burn calories by the minute and strain the neat creases of their perfectly tailored suits.

Wisecracks, jabs and personal histories aside, they have more in common than either is willing to admit.

They both hate losing, no matter who’s on the other side. They know how to recruit, how to replace stars, keep continuity in their programs, and get the most out of their players. They’re shouters who are tough disciplinarians.

Auriemma, who learned his hoops and street smarts in Philadelphia, alternately flashes a prickly wit and fun-loving demeanor. Summitt, from Henrietta, Tenn., balances rigor with a private warmth that fosters loyalty.

A year older at 51, Summitt came into the championship game with 852 victories over a 30-year career at Tennessee – tops among women coaches and trailing only Dean Smith (879) and Adolph Rupp (876) among all college coaches. Her six NCAA titles are second only to John Wooden’s 10 at UCLA.

Auriemma entered the game with 531 victories in 20 years, including four national titles. Their winning percentage is identical: .836.

No doubt Auriemma will join Summitt someday in the Basketball Hall of Fame, and perhaps their frosty relationship will have melted a little by then.

“It’s silly,” UConn star Diana Taurasi said of the feud. “At some point they are going to get past this. They are the key to women’s basketball and it would be nice to see them get along.

“He is either an arrogant guy who likes to run his mouth or a guy who just likes to poke fun,” Taurasi added, “and Coach Summitt, she’s old school.”

Mickie DeMoss, Kentucky’s coach and former longtime assistant to Summitt, sees it differently.

“Pat’s a Southern country girl who doesn’t know how to respond to Geno,” DeMoss said. “I’ve told her, ‘Don’t take it personally, take it lighthearted.”‘

That’s not likely.

Auriemma once called Tennessee the “evil empire,” but his empire has dominated in recent years, beating the Lady Vols in their last three national title games and seven of the last eight times they played going into this championship tilt.

Summitt bristles at Auriemma’s public barbs.

“I don’t have his cell phone number,” she said sarcastically. “We don’t talk. We speak before and after the games. That’s it. But that’s the relationship that Geno worked very hard to create. At one time I thought we had a pretty good relationship. I don’t know why it went south, but that’s the way it is.

“You would think as many times as he’s beaten us, he would feel sorry for me and talk to me.”

Don’t count on it.

Someone asked Summitt if she were driving down a dark highway and saw Auriemma with his car broken down, would she drive by or stop to help.

“Well, I stop and ask if I can help him. Why wouldn’t I?” she said, then added, “Reverse the role.”

Auriemma’s reply to the same question?

“I would walk.”

Maybe that has something to do with the way Auriemma has felt like an outsider, almost an intruder, on the women’s basketball scene from the beginning.

UConn was just starting to make a national splash, in New Orleans in 1991, reaching its first Final Four. That was the year Tennessee won its second NCAA title. Auriemma got noticed, but came across as perhaps a little too cocky.

“When we started winning championships in 1995, when we got to be really, really good, we were like the new kids on the block, and, hey, isn’t it great, here comes someone else,” he said. “I remember a comment was made that, you know, there’s been a lot of newcomers, there’s been a lot of people that have pretended to be good.”

Old Dominion, USC, Texas, Virginia, Stanford – they were all good teams at times, he said.

“But only Tennessee stood on the mountaintop forever,” he said. “And there was a sense that after a year or two we would just go away and go back to tiny Storrs and say, ‘Boy, wasn’t it great to visit New York City once.’ But a funny thing happened. We kept coming back.”

That’s when things “got a little bit dicey,” he said, in the rivalry between UConn and Tennessee, and between him and Summitt, “because we wouldn’t go away.”

It was fitting, then, he said that in order for UConn to win its third straight national title, it had to get past the last team to do it – Tennessee.