Nagy Has Made the Most of StingRay Opportunity

She talks like Zsa Zsa Gabor and her trademark is a flying, copper-colored ponytail.

Point guard Andrea Nagy, even more than Sunday’s game-winning shooter, Venus Lacy, is the player most responsible for driving the Long Beach StingRays into the ABL’s championship series, beginning Sunday at the Pyramid.

Coming to America from Budapest, the Hungarian-born Nagy--it’s pronounced Nawj--sought only opportunity when she stepped off an airplane in Miami in 1991.

She found it at Florida International University, where she became an All-American. Twice she led the nation in assists.

She didn’t find it in Seattle, where she sat on the bench. Incredibly, the Reign released her.

With Long Beach, she has become one of the ABL’s best, often compared favorably to Olympians Teresa Edwards and Dawn Staley.

Said Portland Coach Lin Dunn earlier this season, “You have to be careful with her--she’s a lot faster than she looks.”

Then there’s her pit bull-defensive game.

It was Nagy’s defense against Colorado’s Debbie Black and then Portland’s Molly Goodenbour, more than any other factor, that lifted Coach Maura McHugh’s expansion team from Round 1, to the semifinals, then into the finals.

Against Portland, Nagy effectively put Portland’s offense on a 15-second shot clock. She harassed Goodenbour in the backcourt so effectively that Portland’s shot clock was consistently at 12-15 seconds before Goodenbour made her first pass.

Then, with a season on the brink, with just more than a second to go and Long Beach trailing by a point, Nagy delivered the big play--a no-look, inbounds pass to Lacy underneath, who scored.

And now, Columbus.

Long Beach is 0-4 against the Quest and none of those games were close.

Shamelessly, Nagy passed the buck.

“Coach will think of something,” she said.

NO LIMIT ON SILLINESS

Rigging up an uncontested basket for Connecticut’s Nakesha Sales so she could break a record was silly.

But it’s also silly to impugn the values of women’s sports because of what Connecticut Coach Gene Auriemma arranged with Villanova last week.

Americans, male or female, will bend any rule for the sake of a record.

When the Chicago White Sox brought back 58-year-old Minnie Minoso in 1980 for two at-bats so he could claim he’d played in five decades--they did the same thing in 1976, for eight at-bats--was there a national referendum on the values of men’s sports?

“It’s much to-do about nothing,” McHugh said, of the arranged uncontested shot by Sales.

“Didn’t the Phoenix Suns put A.C. Green in a game for a brief period just so he could keep that playing streak alive?”

And this, from UCLA Coach Kathy Olivier: “It was blown out of proportion. I mean, both teams agreed to do it, right? I probably wouldn’t have done it because Sales is such a great player. UConn didn’t need to do it for her.”

FOLKL UNDECIDED

Kristin Folkl accepted flowers from Coach Tara VanDerveer in the annual farewell-to-seniors rite before Stanford’s last home game Saturday night, but pronounced herself a fence-sitter afterward, refusing to say if she would turn pro after this season.

She will graduate in June but has another NCAA basketball season coming, if she wants it.

“I’ve always been a person who sits on the fence until the last possible minute,” she told reporters after Stanford’s victory over Arizona.

“I won’t decide until after the season. Hopefully I’ll talk about it in Kansas City [site of this season’s Final Four].”

ONE FOR THE WOMEN

The people at the Los Angeles Athletic Club in charge of the John R. Wooden Award for the nation’s best college men’s player each year are about 10 years overdue for a women’s Wooden Award. They say they’re working on it.

“That is something we want to do, and we want to do it in a way that works,” said Sam Lagana, executive director of the Wooden Award Committee.

“We don’t want to jump into it. We want to make certain we have a genuine voting sample in place before we do it. We’re working on it. We want to make it happen.”

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ABL Finals at a Glance

Best of five.

Columbus vs. StingRays

Sunday: Columbus at Long Beach, 4:30 p.m., Fox Sports West.

Monday: Columbus at Long Beach, 7 p.m.

March 11: Long Beach at Columbus, 4 p.m.

March 13: Long Beach at Columbus *, 4 p.m.

March 15: Long Beach at Columbus *, 4 p.m.

*if necessary