U.S. Women in Tall Shadows : Olympic trials: Grentz knows her basketball team will take a back seat to NBA stars on men’s team.

Five-year-old Kevin Charles Grentz has been doing some thinking about his upcoming summer vacation in Barcelona, Spain.

He hadn’t said much about it, though. Kevin knew that his mother was going to be working there during the Olympics. She is coaching the women’s basketball team, and he and his brother Karl are going along.

So Theresa Grentz was surprised when Kevin brought up the topic recently.

“We don’t talk about the Olympics a lot at my house,” she said. “But he said, ‘Mom, I’m really excited that I’m going with you to the Olympics.’

“I’m starting to feel pretty good about this. But kids have a way bringing perspective right back to you.”

Grentz smiled at the assembled media Thursday for the first day of the Olympic trials, paused and delivered the punch line.

“He said, ‘I am really hoping you can get Michael Jordan’s autograph for me,’ ” she said. “ . . . Then about two weeks ago, we were watching the Knicks and the Bulls play and he says out of the clear blue sky, ‘Now, does Michael know he’s meeting me?’ ”

Grentz laughed as hard as everyone else in the room. She mentioned the family story in response to a question about the massive amount of attention directed at the men’s Olympic basketball team. Are Magic and Michael & Co. a blessing or a burden?

If she doesn’t have a problem being overshadowed in her own household, Grentz certainly isn’t suffering any anxiety over the issue in public.

“(The men) are definitely the forerunners,” Grentz said. “Whether or not I have problems with that--no.”

This time, there is a particularly heavy burden upon the U.S. women’s coach at the upcoming Summer Games. There is less attention because of the NBA stars on the men’s team, coupled with the inherent pressures of winning the gold medal.

The last time the women came up short of gold was in 1976 at Montreal when the United States lost to Japan in the opener and finished with a silver medal. In 1984, Pat Summitt became the first Olympian to win a basketball medal as a player (in 1976) and then as a coach when the United States won the gold in Los Angeles. Four years later, Kay Yow coached the United States to another gold medal in Seoul.

Grentz brings a combination of collegiate and international experience to this job. Her Rutgers teams have reached the last seven NCAA tournaments and have compiled seven consecutive 20-win seasons.

Still, Grentz won the Olympic job with some dazzling results in international competition. In 1990, her teams pulled off an impressive double, winning the World Championships in Malaysia and the Goodwill Games in Seattle. It also didn’t hurt that she was nowhere close to the bench when the United States lost to Brazil and Cuba in last summer’s Pan American Games at Cuba. The loss to Brazil ended a 42-game winning streak.

“For me, I feel most comfortable with what we did two years ago,” Grentz said. “However, that’s not good enough today. As far as last summer, those coaches and those players did everything they possibly could. It’s important to remember they did not have players in the same positions they had in ’90. Things were a little different.”

The sight of Cheryl Miller guarding Nancy Lieberman-Cline at the trials would have been unthinkable several months ago.

Lieberman-Cline, 33, is attempting to become the oldest woman to make a U.S. Olympic basketball team. At 17, she was the youngest U.S. player at the 1976 Olympics.

If she doesn’t make the team, Lieberman-Cline will be in Barcelona as a TV commentator.

Her comeback has been hindered by bone chips in her right elbow. The injury kept her out of competition for 10 days, and she had a cortisone shot Monday.