In her illustrious Penn career, Diana Caramanico set records that nobody else has approached, with 2,415 points and 1,207 rebounds.
Still, there are days when she wishes she could make one more easy layup or sky for one more board.
After all, her team needs her out there.
Not Penn, but Penn Charter, the private high school where the newly-crowned Big 5 Hall-of-Famer heads the women's program after just four years in the coaching business.
"It's frustrating sometimes when it's a close game and I haven't been able to be on the court," said Carimanico, whose Quakers are 9-12 in her first season at the helm. "There haven't been a lot of games when it's close down the stretch and I haven't physically been able to do something to affect the game."
Last night, she was inducted into the Big 5 Hall of Fame along with her former AAU teammate and ex-La Salle guard Jen Zenszer and the late John McAdams, longtime Palestra public address announcer. It was the first class honored in two years, as the ceremony took a one-year hiatus for last season's 50th anniversary celebration.
Caramanico's road from all-everything player to coach and Hall-of-Famer was a whirlwind.
The three-time Ivy League Player of the Year and three-time Big 5 MVP took her skills overseas to Strasbourg, France after graduation.
Still, she maintained close relationships with the program and with the man whom she defined as her "best friend" both in their college days and now.
Geoff Owens, who played for Fran Dunphy's men's team, proposed in 2003.
Then it was on to the coaching life. After two years at Germantown Academy, she spent a year as an assistant at Penn Charter. And at the age of 27, she took control of the program.
"I really do like the coaching," Caramanico said. "Not just teaching basketball, but really life skills."
Even as she's spending nights running practice, going to games and scouting the opposition, she still makes some room for the "other" Quakers.
She attends several games a year to watch both the men's and women's programs and keeps up her ties with the alumni.
"Coach [Patrick] Knapp has done a really good job of maintaining the alumni connection to the team," Caramanico said of the third-year leader.
"I was a little nervous when a new coach came to the team because I felt that my connection to the school was gone. But he and his staff have done everything to make me feel welcome every time I come back to the Palestra."
With Knapp, the admiration goes both ways.
"I said in an e-mail to our alums the other day, 'as great a player as she was, she's an even better person,' " Knapp said. "She's around, she's very supportive. She's a sweetheart."
Caramanico was humble when she took her place among legends last night. Throughout her career, she just went where she was told, and somehow the ball got into her hands at all the right times.
She was sure to thank all the coaches she ever had and realized the importance of that role in the lives of future basketball players.
And to steal a phrase, it might take one to know one.
"She has the passion for it and the desire to succeed with it," said former Penn men's coach Fran Dunphy, whose camp Caramanico was sure to work every summer.
"And she's got a great way with young people."
Zachary Levine is a senior mathematics major from Delmar, N.Y., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is zlevine@sas.upenn.edu.
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