Finally, they're gone. Good grief, it was like the "Saturday Night Live" skit: "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave." They hung around forever.

	Big things are expected from Chantelle Anderson, right, and Vanderbilt this season.

Scram, Class of 2001.

(Long pause. Moments of reflection. Heavy sigh.)

No, no, no, come back!!! ....

As we get set for a new basketball season, we will for the final time salute last year's seniors, a special group of kids who had a major impact on each of the Final Fours of the past four years.

Included were Tamika Catchings and Semeka Randall as freshmen for the undefeated Tennessee team of 1998. Purdue's Katie Douglas, Duke's Georgia Schweitzer and Georgia's Miller twins as sophomores helping their teams to San Jose in '99. Svetlana Abrosimova as a junior for the near-perfect 2000 Connecticut team. And, of course, Notre Dame's Ruth Riley, Douglas and Southwest Missouri State's Jackie Stiles on the senior March to the Arch this past season.

(Obviously not to be forgotten are UConn's Shea Ralph and Notre Dame's Niele Ivey, originally of the Class of 2000 but both bumped to 2001 by the freaking ACL, which is already at it again this year.)

The 2001ers might remind you of that silly stuff people wrote in your junior high yearbook: 2 good 2 B 4-gotten. Hell must be eternal junior high school.

Or, if you're in Springfield, Mo., and its environs, hell is seeing Stiles in street clothes during an SMS game. You could make some dough this winter selling a 12-step program to get over post-Jackie depression.

Incidentally, someone in our sports department in Kansas City is almost sure, after an SMS game, to say the standard, "How many did Jackie have?" before realizing you only do that in the summer now. Sort of like the "I Love Lucy" episode when Lucy and Ricky moved to Connecticut but Ethel and Fred kept, by habit, calling out to them. But then the Mertzes solved that by just moving to Connecticut, too, and starting a chicken ranch so ... oh, never mind.

But this does provide our lame-o-rama segue into this season. How? The Connecticut part.

A lot of people will pick UConn as preseason No. 1, but unlike last season it isn't a consensus. Of course, the Huskies lost Ralph and Abrosimova to injuries and then lost the national semifinal to the Irish, but remember how coming into last year UConn was considered a lead-pipe cinch?

"The last couple of years it was almost like, 'No question, they're the best team,' " UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "Whether it was us last year and the year before or Tennessee (for '98 and '99), it was, 'Yeah, absolutely, they're loaded.'

"Or other years, it's been, 'There's four or five great teams that have a shot at it; everybody else, no chance.' "

But this season, as Auriemma says, "is one of those weird years where everybody's standing up and going, 'Oh, yeah, what's so good about them? They've got problems. Look at Connecticut, they're not as good as they used to be, neither's Tennessee, neither's Duke, neither's Georgia. Who's as good as they used to be?'

"That's a good thing. The more people that go to work every day and think they have a shot at it, the better for everybody."

This is not to say there aren't lots of good players this season -- it's just that no one team has as many as some recent superpowers did. UConn has a senior group of Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Tamika Williams and Asjha Jones with whom we're very familiar. (Even if I'm still compelled to double-check the spelling of "Asjha" every dang time and continue to live in fear that "Swim" Cash will get into my copy someday.) But other than Diana Taurasi, the rest of the sophomores and freshmen are unproven.

And at Tennessee, can mega-talented Gwen Jackson carry a starring role? How quickly will the fab freshmen adjust to the big time? Will Ashley Robinson play this season after her F-ACL?

Still, you know, they're UConn and Tennessee. Some people's problems are a little more upscale than others.

UConn was picked as the Big East preseason favorite for the 90th year in a row. Or maybe it's just the ninth straight year. Whatever. The Big East ought to be fairly predictable. Reigning champ Notre Dame will do the best it can after losing three senior starters, and that still will be pretty good. Not likely repeat-caliber, but the Irish will beat most teams they should. Rutgers will win a 17-16 offensive nightmare along the way, with both teams shooting 4 percent, but the Scarlet Knights will rise to the big occasions.

In the SEC, the Vanderbilt-Tennessee rivalry should be especially riveting this season. And how will Georgia be different without the Millers? (As opposed to seeing how Kelly and Coco are different without each other, the psychological horror show that the WNBA treated us to this summer.)

Unlike many other conferences, the Big 12 wasn't senior-dominated last year. This year it is, including returning 2001 league player of the year Stacey Dales of Oklahoma. The league may have three top-10 teams in Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Iowa State. They're being picked to finish in that order in the league, but here's something to think about: Iowa State has the most favorable-looking conference schedule. It gets Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Baylor at home.

Guess what else is in Ames this year? The NCAA's Midwest Regional. However, homecourt "advantage" in the regional pressure-cooker hasn't always worked out for teams. Texas Tech in '98 and Virginia in '96 are fairly recent examples.

North Carolina State also is host to a regional this season, the East. In the ACC, though, the favored team is Duke. The Blue Devils lost leader Schweitzer and inside workhorse Rochelle Parent. But the youngsters who are back, led by Alana Beard, got a beneficial kick-in-the-teeth learning experience in the NCAA Sweet 16 last March.

And Nikki Teasley -- who originally was a 2001er but sat out last season -- is back at North Carolina. We'll see if she can defy the implosion watch.

The Big Ten? Instead of Purdue and Penn State, maybe Wisconsin and Michigan actually are the top two. But this league can be so hard-nosed, it's particularly tough to say who will be left standing come February/March. Another Big Ten program to keep an eye on is Minnesota. Under new coach Brenda Oldfield, who replaced Cheryl Littlejohn, the Gophers probably won't climb too many rungs on the ladder this season but at least could start the process.

Many recent Minnesota high school stars, including the Miller twins, have gone out of state to college, which is something Oldfield, who became adept in Minnesota recruiting while she was an assistant at Iowa State, will try to halt. Unfortunately for Oldfield, her little sister Stacy Frese is out of eligibility and can't transfer to play for the Gophers.

On the embattled-coach-is-gone front, we move, obviously, to the Pac-10 and Oregon. Former Ducks star Bev Smith takes over in Eugene. Apparently her job interview went extremely well, especially when she mentioned her adherence to the little-known unofficial motto of her homeland, Canada: "Hug a tree, not me."

(Interlude: Imagine the Miller twins, Littlejohn and Jody Runge playing "Monopoly." Littlejohn warns if she's blocked from getting all the railroads, she'll yank everyone's per diem. Kelly and Coco begin sobbing when told they can't share the baby shoe. Runge tosses the wheelbarrow in disgust.)

Back to the Pac-10: Washington lost a terrific senior in Megan Franza, but the Huskies have a good amount of young talent. So does USC. Then there's Stanford. The Cardinal publicity machine says the team's theme for this season is, "It's no secret," which one can assume prompts eye-rolling among the rest of the Pac-10.

Yeah, everything Stanford does is always kept hush-hush, isn't it? But it has been kind of hard times, relatively speaking, for Stanford the past three years. However, you could see things starting to return to normal at the end of last season. With point guard Susan King back and a lot of trees -- the basketball-playing kind, not the dancing kind in a costume -- for her to get the ball to, Stanford is likely back among the elite.

Louisiana Tech never leaves that level, although it is switching conferences, to the WAC. (Oh, sure, laugh at that geographical joke, but remember that Louisiana seemed pretty far west to Thomas Jefferson.) Like King, Tech's Catrina Frierson returns from the F-ACL. Ayana "Bird" Walker is one of the best defensive players in the game, along with everything she does on offense.

Anybody else to watch out for? Well, there's sure to be. Last year, we ended up with a Final Four made up from the Big East, Missouri Valley and Big Ten conferences. And Xavier wasn't all that far from making it for the Atlantic 10.

There are some standout individuals, such as UNLV's Linda Frolich and UAB's Deanna Jackson, who will bring attention to their teams. And, by midseason, maybe we really will have gotten past the 2001ers. Because ... well, it will be 2002.

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached at mvoepel@kcstar.com.