What he's selling, they're buying

Jerin Smith could be playing for the Vanderbilt Commodores, the 12th-ranked school in the nation. Or she could have joined Texas A&M;, Texas Tech or Texas, all in the top 50.

Erin Power was heavily recruited by her mom's alma mater, Marquette, currently No. 19.

And Sarah Bucar left the Big East and turned down transfer offers from top-30 schools Bowling Green and James Madison.

Instead, all three decided to join the Quakers, not known for their women's basketball prowess and just one year removed from a 5-22 season.

They're not alone. Coach Pat Knapp estimated that of his 14 recruits, seven rejected offers elsewhere.

While the RPI college rankings certainly look different from those in U.S. News and World Report, academics alone cannot explain the Quakers' recent recruiting success.

Power, Smith, and current freshman Caitlin Slover all received interest from Ivy League institutions, including perennial conference powerhouses Harvard and Dartmouth.

Knapp said that "honestly, you need to bring a great energy and a great commitment, and pass it on" to the recruits.

He gave a sample sales pitch to someone debating different Ivy schools:

"Hey, they're not going to win it every year, someone else is going to win it, everybody's got the same opportunity, we've got a lot of energy here, we got a great staff here, we got some great young women here, our administration is committed, the Palestra is an outstanding building, the City of Philadelphia. Then you sell your school."

Knapp's work has paid off. Although players have different personal reasons for choosing Penn - Smith finally was able to leave Texas and move to the northeast city, while the Chicago native Power wanted to stay in an urban environment - everyone says the 54-year-old coach was one of their main motivations for coming to Penn.

"I feel like he was really genuine and he told me the truth," Smith said. "A lot of coaches I can tell they're not completely honest about everything. I guess his honesty got me."

Bucar agreed, and her relationship with Knapp is even stronger. She committed to him when he was a coach at Georgetown, but was forced to reevaluate her plans when he left to come to Penn three years ago. After one dissastisfying year at West Virginia, she decided that Knapp was her best option out there.

"He works his butt off to be the best coach that he can be," she said. "They say you know when you feel a connection, I felt it [with him]."

Knapp has had only eight winning seasons in his 20 year career, and his Penn team has gone 14-35 over the past two seasons. Although the coach refuses to call next year a rebuilding season - "we're going to improve again, and that's what we tell them" - the Quakers are about to lose their three best players.

And those that are coming aren't concerned about more losing seasons.

"Obviously we're losing great additions to the team, but it also leaves room for me and the other freshman recruits coming in to have a bigger impact on the team," Power said. The 6-foot-1 guard was known for her passing in high school, but said that she talked with the Penn coaching staff about becoming more of a scoring threat for the offense-depleted Quakers.

Smith's high school experience, meanwhile, was the basis for her faith in Penn. As a freshman, her Dunbar team was struggling, but seven new recruits made the program much stronger. She thinks the same can happen here.

As for the impending departures of phenoms Joey Rhoads and Monica Naltner, Smith said, "It concerns me a little, but I think somebody can step up and fill their shoes."

Recruiting is, as assistant coach Jennifer Wasson said, "the lifeline of your program."

And Knapp insists that he has gotten almost all of the recruits he desired, and in the rare events he cannot get his first choice, there is somebody on his list just as good.

"I can't sit here and tell you whether of the 14 kids we recruited, someone had their slot and took another school as a choice," Knapp said. "We wanted all of these kids from the get-go.

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