It is not often that a player singlehandedly defines a sport.
But that is the role Diana Taurasi plays, as the leader of the Connecticut Huskies and arguably the biggest star in women's college basketball. And it is she who will command the bulk of the spotlight when her team welcomes Penn to Bridgeport, Conn., on Sunday night.
Taurasi is listed on the Connecticut Athletic Department's Web site as a 6-foot senior guard/forward. In other words, she does it all.
Consider the awards she has won in her four years running the floors of Gampel Pavilion and the Hartford Civic Center. She was the 2001 Big East Tournament Most Outstanding Player, the first time a rookie had ever won the award; a National Player of the Year nominee in 2002 and winner in 2003; the 2003 Big East Player of the Year and the unanimous 2003 Final Four and East Regional Most Outstanding Player.
This year, she is leading Connecticut with 15.5 points per game from 45 percent shooting, including 39.5 percent from three-point range. She has averaged 4.9 rebounds and 1.7 blocks and almost a steal per game.
Penn coach Kelly Greenberg conceded that "we're not going to shut her down. We can try but that's not going to happen."
Huskies junior center Jessica Moore said that Taurasi "really is the backbone and she is our foundation."
"Whenever she is playing well we just really feed off of that -- she really does set the tone for our team," she said.
But there may be a chink in Taurasi's armor. Over the last few weeks, reports have surfaced in some Connecticut and New York media outlets that she and Huskies coach Geno Auriemma have not been on the best of terms lately, and neither of the two are speaking to the media this week.
Then again, a four-loss season is cause for considerable alarm among this team and its rabid fans, especially considering the shocking nature of three of those losses.
The first one came at the Hartford Civic Center, where current-No. 1 Duke snapped the Huskies' 69-game home winning streak. With a national television audience watching on CBS, the Blue Devils staged a 15-point rally and won the game on a buzzer-beating three-pointer by Jessica Foley.
Then, in their next-to-last regular season game, Villanova upset the Huskies, 59-56, in front of the first-ever sellout crowd for a women's basketball game at the Pavilion. But the most stunning loss of all came in the semifinals of the Big East Tournament, when then-No. 23 Boston College became the first Big East team to ever beat Connecticut at the Hartford Civic Center.
But although Moore admitted that this season might have left the Huskies mentally "wounded a little bit," she also thinks that Taurasi's humility off the court will help to raise her game in the postseason -- despite any tension that might exist between her and Auriemma.
"She definitely isn't treated like a superstar around here and she doesn't want to be," Moore said. "She's a really, really humble person and it might not come across like that on the court, but she's very confident and at the same time she's very humble."
Penn senior forward Jewel Clark, who will likely guard Taurasi, dismissed the notion that the Quakers will try to use a rift between Taurasi and Auriemma to their advantage.
"I don't think you go looking for another team's problems," she said. "If we're banking on that, and it turns out that it's not the case, you've wasted your time."
But Clark also relishes the chance to go up against one of the game's best players in the brightest spotlight she will have ever been in during her Penn career.
"I hope I'm guarding her, you know what I mean," she said. "I'm not going to back down. You should want to be in the same arena, just to give yourself a chance."
