CLEMETTE HASKINS : Clem’s No-Longer-So-Little Girl Has Helped Put Western Kentucky Back on the Map

Comparisons come like points to Clemette Haskins, star of the Western Kentucky women’s basketball team. That means often.

Still, it’s not as bad now as it was her freshman season, when some people must have thought her name was I Remember When. You don’t shake that type of thing easily around Bowling Green, Ky., when you’re the basketball-playing daughter of the great Clem (the Gem) Haskins, a three-time All-American for the Hilltoppers in the 1960s and now the men’s coach at the University of Minnesota.

“Every jumper was like his and every pass was like his,” Clemette, now a senior, recalled the other day after arriving in Los Angeles for Western Kentucky’s second-round NCAA playoff game with USC today at 2 p.m. at the Sports Arena.

“Above all, it’s definitely a compliment. But after a while, you hear it so much that I have to tune it out and play my game.”

Her game started to develop in the National Basketball Assn. with the Chicago Bulls. Sitting on the shoulders of Tom Boerwinkle and Dave Neumark, a pair of her father’s 7-foot teammates, she shot more in some practices than Clem did. She sometimes shot as many as 200 times a day, according to the legend, and is said to have been making free throws on her own at age 5.

So it was hardly surprising that she was one of the best players in the country in high school. Picked as an All-American by Kodak and Parade for two years, all-state, “Miss Kentucky Basketball” her senior season, Clemette did it all as her father coached the Western Kentucky men’s team.

“The first time I watched her play, she hit all net on the first 10 shots she took,” USC Coach Linda Sharp said. “She impressed people in high school a lot.”

The college choice came down to the Trojans and the Hilltoppers. Clemette still talks of how she likes Sharp and Los Angeles. She said decided on Western Kentucky to be near her mother than to add to the legend of the Haskins name.

That happened, though, too.

“She has really put Western Kentucky in the map,” Sharp said. “She brought fame to their program, and a lot to her individual abilities. I think being the daughter of Clem Haskins brought her some of the attention, but in her own right she is one of the top guards in the country.

“I knew when she went to Western Kentucky, things would start happening, and they did. They have been to the playoffs every year she’s been there and the Final Four twice. She is that caliber as a player.”

Haskins said: “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I’d like to think I helped, but we’ve had a lot of great players over the years.

“By being local talent, I may have helped with fan interest with the people who followed my career in high school. That helped with a lot of the success, bringing people in the gym, making Lady Topper basketball exciting and showing people that women can play the fast-break game.”

Either way, there’s no doubting the individual success. This season, the 5-10 Haskins has averaged 16.2 points a game and passed her father, becoming the seventh-leading scorer in school history, men or women.

Clemette--the name is a combination of Clem and Yvette, her mother’s name--will graduate in May with a degree in broadcasting. She is strongly considering that as a career, but first is scheduled to give a girls’ basketball clinic this summer in Minneapolis.

There, she will also get a close look at her father’s job. The nonplaying part of basketball has not appealed much to Clemette, but neither does the idea of being away from the sport.

“I’ve been in the game of basketball all my life and it would be hard to go totally without it,” she said. “I’ll probably be in the gym three weeks after the season ends.

“I haven’t really thought about coaching. But it may be in my future. My blood’s pretty thick.”

Notes This will be the first meeting between USC (21-7) and Western Kentucky (24-8). The Hilltoppers were 5-6 on the road. . . . Western Kentucky Coach Paul Sanderford, who has a .779 winning percentage in his five years at Western Kentucky and two straight trips to the Final Four, has used 13 starting lineups this season. “They have a lot of players and we can’t get confused with that,” USC Coach Linda Sharp said. “We have to concentrate and understand what the different players do when they come in.” . . . Seven of Western Kentucky’s eight losses were against teams that made the NCAA tournament: Texas, Iowa, Vanderbilt twice, Old Dominion, Southern Illinois and South Alabama.