ESPN Women's Basketball

The "artifact" is a painter's cap -- made of paper, never really worn but just kept as a souvenir.

It's such a flimsy little thing, it's hard to believe it could have lasted this long even in one of those temperature-controlled glass boxes they have in museums and college archeology departments -- let alone have survived in cardboard boxes of random junk that have moved however many times I have in the last 21 years.

But it's still with me, that "With You Mizzou!" cap given away at the door on Nov. 30, 1983, the evening No. 1-ranked Southern Cal visited Missouri at the Hearnes Center in Columbia.

I was an MU freshman, and it was the first women's college basketball game I saw in person.

I went to see Cheryl Miller, who to me at the time was of Mount Olympus-type stature because I'd watched her and USC win the NCAA title game on TV the previous season. I didn't know how good Missouri was but would soon find out.

The reason for bringing up all this? Because it's a special afternoon for women's hoops in my home state this Saturday: No. 1 LSU will be playing at noon CT at Southwest Missouri State in Springfield. Then at 4 p.m. CT, No. 2 Stanford plays in the new Mizzou Sports Arena against the Tigers.

We've had two Final Fours here in Missouri the past six years, in Kansas City in 1998 and St. Louis in 2001. But to have the top two teams in the country here on the same day during the regular season is unprecedented in the Show-Me State, to my knowledge.

Unfortunately, I didn't get final approval on all the scheduling -- somehow, I never do -- because otherwise I would have made Stanford-MU a night game. Then I would have attempted to pull off a triple-header, with LSU-SMS, followed by Kansas State-Alabama (the second game of the day in Springfield for an event called the Triple Crown Classic) and finally Stanford-MU.

Of course, how I'd make deadline under that imaginary scenario is as much a fantasy as the idea I'd ever control scheduling ... alas, I'll stay put in Springfield and catch the second half of Stanford-MU on Fox Sports Net.

But, see, at least it's on TV ... a fact that also takes me down memory lane. The Tigers will be honoring their top two players in program history at Saturday's game -- Joni Davis and Renee Kelly -- and while I saw them play in person so many times, I don't have a single piece of video on either one.

There were no MU women's games televised that I'm aware of during my days at the school from 1983-87.

I wish I had even one game tape of the team that made me decide, at age 18, that writing about women's basketball was what I wanted to devote a career to.

In 1985 -- when Davis was a senior and Kelly a sophomore -- MU was good enough to be a Final Four team. But the Tigers lost in overtime in the NCAA Tournament at Northeast Louisiana, a team that did go to the Final Four that year.

MU was an elite-level program from the late 1970s up until the mid-1980s. You would not have known about this by almost exclusively reading St. Louis newspapers, as I did from elementary school through high school. Once in Columbia, I found some articles on the team in the various local papers in the journalism-heavy town, and would soon enough become a primary pest for various editors on the issue of improving women's hoops coverage.

But that November night, I walked in with no idea what the MU team was like, nor what impact it would have on my life.

Another kid from my dorm went with me, only because she had nothing else to do. At first, I thought I had to sit in the same seats where I had tickets for the men's games. As a stupid freshman, I had been uninformed about the process you had to go through to get a chance at good seats for the men, and so had ended up in section D-11.

If you've never been in the Hearnes Center, I'll explain: You pretty much need the Hubble Telescope to see the court from D-11. That area was so devoid of humans during women's games that you probably could have discovered some new species up there.

I quickly realized you could sit close -- very close -- for the women's games. There was Cheryl Miller right in front of me, and, pointing to her with reverence, I told my fellow dormie: "She's the best player in America."

Then I discovered the Tigers. It took Miller blocking the potential game-tying shot at the buzzer to stop them, 81-79.

Davis and Kelly were on the floor that night, and Saturday they'll be on the floor of the new arena, which doesn't have really horrible seats like those in D-11. Their retired jerseys -- No. 33 and No. 42 -- will go to the new rafters, and MU is selling tickets for a buck, hoping to have a huge crowd.

Meanwhile, the most successful women's program in the Show-Me State by every standard -- SMS, with two trips to the Final Four and more than a decade of great attendance -- will have its own packed house (with no cheap tickets) at the Hammons Center for LSU. And if you haven't heard about Jenni Lingor, you should: The SMS senior is one of the best all-around guards in college.

Yes, it will be quite a day for this sport in Missouri. And at some point, I'll stop and do what I'm doing right now -- picturing the moment, so vivid for some reason, when I was crossing Stadium Boulevard and walking toward my first college game.

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