Tennessee's 'Ace' returns home to chase NCAA title

For everyone playing in this year's women's NCAA Tournament, the road to the championship goes through Philadelphia. For Tennessee junior Kristen Clement, that road also leads home. "Little did we know that not only would the Final Four be here in Philadelphia, but it would be in many many ways a Philadelphia weekend," PWB co-chair Fred DiBona said at the ceremonial opening of Championship Week yesterday. "We're pleased that Kristin Clement, the great Cardinal O'Hara star, will be here this weekend playing in Philadelphia as a Philadelphian. "I remember sitting in the Palestra and watching her perform with great amazement." Clement has deep roots in Philadelphia, but she has ties with some of the members of the Penn women's basketball team that predate even her local fame. Quakers guard Claire Cavanaugh also attended Cardinal O'Hara. She played with Clement not only in high school, but on the AAU powerhouse Philadelphia Bells as well. She tells a story from their AAU days that, at this point, seems clairvoyant. When Cavanaugh and Clement were in the eighth grade, the Bells were the AAU's national champs. The finals were played at that mecca of women's basketball -- Knoxville, Tenn. "We got there really early," Cavanaugh said. "We arrived in our Philadelphia Bells gear and everything. This custodian, who I don't think had a clue what was going on, let us into the actual Lady Vols locker room. Anyway, we thought that was pretty awesome, and I could tell then that she was pretty enamored of the whole scene." Enamored, maybe, but not intimidated. Even as an eighth grader, Clement, and others, knew that she could go places with basketball. "She's such a good player," Cavanaugh said. "And she has been for a long time. She's the type of player that makes everyone around her better." If she made her teammates better, what did she do to her opponents? Quakers co-captain Diana Caramanico recalls facing Clement on several occasions when she was playing on a different Philadelphia AAU team. "When we played against her as 11-year-olds, everybody was like, 'Oh, she's really good, you've got to watch out for her left hand, she's killer on the left hand,'" Caramanico said. "When you're little, you expect everyone to be right-handed, so it's really difficult to be guarding someone who uses the left hand, and she just killed us. "She was amazing. She was the main focus of the Bells. When you had to play the Bells, you really had to be careful about her." Caramanico was quick to point out that Clement, of course, was more than just a young phenom. "She was one of those kids that never fizzled out," Caramanico said. "There are always kids that never really amount to anything. But she was one of those kids that, every year we played against her, she just kept getting better and better, adding more and more skills to her repertoire, and it really paid off. She worked really hard, and she's doing great now." Doing great means averaging 25 minutes, 5.6 points and a team-leading 3.5 assists per game for a Lady Vols program that just clinched its NCAA-record 12th Final Four appearance. While those stats aren't tops among the Final Four's local players, Clement will still likely receive the most attention during the weekend. For one thing, her team is favored to reach the finals, while the other three -- Rashana Barnes and Andrea Garner of Penn State, and Shawnetta Stewart of Rutgers -- will be playing the role of underdogs. A second reason is the fame she received as a player at Cardinal O'Hara, where she broke countless city and county records, including Wilt Chamberlain's career scoring record. But to the casual fan, she is also recognizable due to her much-publicized one-time relationship with Philadelphia Flyers star Eric Lindros. "She's a cutie," said College senior Paul Manion, a fellow O'Hara alum and 34th Street editor. "Women's basketball was a huge draw. It always packed the gym, and it was all because of her. There would be people there all the time, even for the crappiest of their games. "When she was a junior, they had five girls that all played [Division I] basketball, and they all would have been a star in their own right on any other team. She was just heads and shoulders above anybody, even in the country, let alone Cardinal O'Hara or Delaware County. "She got all of the attention because she was that good."

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