HOOP DREAMS

The young women of college basketball . . . who formed them? Who shaped their games? Who defined them as athletes?

One, Tennessee’s Michelle Marciniak, says it was Michael Jordan, whose picture she kept in her sock during high school games.

Another, Leslie Johnson of Western Kentucky, said it was Charles Barkley. And she developed into a tough, physical Barkleyesque player, even taking on the nickname “Baby Barkley.”

Basketball broadcaster Nancy Lieberman-Cline, 37, a women’s basketball pioneer and now a Basketball Hall of Fame member, grew up in Queens idolizing Willis Reed and Walt Frazier of the New York Knicks.

“I played center because Reed played center and I could use my left hand because Reed was left-handed . . . and I wore number 10 because Frazier did,” she said.

“I took a little from each guy and added it to my game,” said Lieberman-Cline, later an All-American at Old Dominion.

But most players on today’s high-ranked women’s teams said their role models were female athletes--Wilma Rudolph, Monica Seles, Jennifer Azzi, Lieberman-Cline . . .

Advised of this, Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation, called the 1990s a breakaway decade in women’s sports.

“With more and more women’s sports appearing on television, we’re finding young women today growing up patterning themselves after female athletes,” she said. “Years ago, that was rarely the case.

“When I was the athletic director at Texas, we paid $45,000 to produce eight telecasts of our women’s basketball games.

“Those tapes would go to our regional cable outlet, but what we didn’t know was, they’d swap them to a network somewhere else. Maybe they’d swap one of our games to a western network for, say, a UOP women’s volleyball game.

“The point is, young girls in recent years have been seeing women athletes from all over the country, and we’re just now seeing the impact of that.”

“It’s not just the fact there are more women’s sports on TV, look at what’s happening in mass advertising,” said Don Sabo, sociology professor at D’Youville College in Buffalo, N.Y.

“The U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team is now seen every day in TV ads [for Nike]. It’s no longer odd to see a woman athlete as a product spokesperson.

“There’s no longer much bias associated with sweat and women athletes. So there’s a closer link between adolescent female athletes and their role models.”

Said Richard Lapchick, who heads the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston, “The New York Times last year was all over that [national champion] UConn women’s basketball team, and that coverage spun off onto a lot of other papers.

“That’s the trend, to more women’s coverage. Hopefully in future generations you’ll find nearly all female athletes will tell you their athletic role models were women.”

Role models can leap off a movie screen and seize a young girl’s imagination. Take the case of Georgia’s Brandi Decker, who in 1988 saw the film “Wilma,” a 1977 biography of 1960 Olympic sprint champion Wilma Rudolph, who died in 1994.

“It’s the fact she overcame so much in her life . . . polio as a child, being told she’d never walk again,” said Decker, a junior forward.

“I saw that movie, and I’ve been fascinated by her ever since. I went to the library and read about her. I wrote a school report on her and got an A. And I pledged the same sorority she did at Tennessee State, Delta Sigma Theta.”

Not surprisingly, Decker is also a track athlete. After basketball, she switches to the long jump and 300-meter hurdles.

One of Decker’s teammates, Rachel Powell, however, had a male role model: “Pistol” Pete Maravich, who died in 1988. Her older brother, while he was teaching her to play basketball, had a Maravich highlights video and she became addicted.

“He had such a spectacular offensive game . . . I’m still fascinated by him,” she said.

For Connecticut’s Carla Berube, the courage of Seles carried an impact.

“I followed that whole story [of the knife attack on Seles by a German fan of Steffi Graf in 1993] pretty closely, and I was really impressed with her courage,” she said.

“I followed her closely before that too. Her intensity as an athlete, it’s fascinating to me. You can see the way she plays that she loves competition.”

Said Vanderbilt’s Sheri Sam, “Nancy [Lieberman-Cline] was my role model. I never took basketball seriously until I attended one of her summer camps.

“She was the first female athlete who gave me a clear picture of what sports could do for me as a woman, how far it could take me.”

Role models are often regional. For Brittney Ezell of Alabama, who grew up in Franklin, Tenn., there were Azzi and Tiffany Woosley.

Both were legendary Tennessee high school players. Azzi became an All-American at Stanford and Woosley at Tennessee.

“Azzi was from Oak Ridge, Tenn., and she’s still the most intense player I ever saw,” Ezell said.

“She did things with a basketball I didn’t think were possible, dribbling between her legs, scoring from anywhere, passing behind her back.

“I like her even more now, when I watch her play on the Olympic team. She took her game to the next level. . . . You can see what hard work in the weight room has done for her body. There’s a relentlessness about her. . . . She’s about wanting to be better every year.

“Woosley had an air about her, almost a cocky kind of confidence. She was at her best in tough games too. Any type of pressure situation, she wanted to be right there.”

Wisconsin guard Keisha Anderson was a teen in Racine, Wis., when she turned on a game during the 1992 NCAA women’s Final Four in Los Angeles and saw Virginia’s Dawn Staley.

“I decided then that Staley was my role model,” she said.

“She was great at using her natural quickness to its best advantage on defense, and that’s how I’ve tried to pattern my game. As a playmaker, she always seems to want to make her teammates look good, and so do I.”

Leslie Johnson, who is sitting out this season at Western Kentucky after transferring from Purdue, grew up with male and female basketball role models--Barkley and Venus Lacy, a late 1980s Louisiana Tech All-American.

“I grew up in Fort Wayne, Ind., and my father took me to NBA games in Detroit,” she said.

“I loved watching Charles Barkley, how he used his body so well against taller players to score inside. He has no trouble scoring on 7-foot guys.

“I’m 6-1 and that’s how I play, I have an aggressive style and I love scoring from inside, on taller players.

“That’s why Venus Lacy was my favorite women’s player. She had a tough, aggressive style. In fact, she was really mean out there.”

Can a teammate be a role model? She can be if you go to Texas Tech, where you played with Sheryl Swoopes, the Final Four’s outstanding player in Texas Tech’s 1994 national championship season.

Michi Atkins, Melinda White and Michelle Thomas were all freshmen on that team.

All three identified Swoopes as their role models and all talked of her work ethic.

“The best thing that’s happened to me at Texas Tech was that first year, when I had to guard Sheryl in practice every day,” Atkins said.

Shonda Deberry of Old Dominion in Norfolk, Va., grew up in south Georgia, on a 200-acre farm where her father grew tobacco, soybeans and corn, and raised hogs and cows.

It was easy, she says, to idolize Georgia’s Teresa Edwards, who is now on her third U.S. Olympic team.

Deberry says she had farm chores to perform, but nothing kept her from the TV set when Southeastern Conference women’s games were televised.

“One time my dad took us to a Georgia game and I not only met her but got my picture taken with her,” she said.

“I loved watching her because she did everything so well. I loved her aggressive drive to the hoop, and her intense defensive style.”

Deberry realized a dream in December, when she got to play against her idol. The U.S. national team, undefeated against the major college powers this season, beat Old Dominion, 97-40.

“I got to guard her for maybe 15 minutes,” Deberry said, laughing.

“Let me put it this way: She can still play. She beat me at both ends. I noticed her quickness more than anything. She made me feel like I was nailed to the floor.”

Some women, though, still have male role models.

Marciniak, the Tennessee guard, said she still never misses a chance to study Jordan.

“He was definitely my role model,” she said. “His 100% effort all the time, his love for basketball, his intensity . . . “

And said USC’s Tina Thompson, “I never saw a women’s game on TV until maybe I was a senior in high school.

“In fact, I don’t think I ever went to a women’s basketball game. I remember watching women athletes in the Olympics, but that’s about it.

“My role model was Magic Johnson.”