This Diana Is Still Regal

Diana Taurasi can be the WNBA’s Larry Bird. Or its Magic Johnson. Depends on who’s talking. She is seen as the star the Phoenix Mercury so desperately needs, one who would provide the WNBA with its own LeBron James, a drawing card around the country for a league looking for a Q-rating boost.

Taurasi has one more NCAA tournament to play for Connecticut. She would like to help the Huskies win a third consecutive national championship and then qualify for the women’s U.S. Olympic basketball team, become the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick, then carry the Mercury on her back, as she did Connecticut a year ago, to an unlikely title. And then?

“I don’t know,” Taurasi said. “Just keep having fun.”

Lately the fun has been harder to find for Taurasi. The consensus national college player of the year in 2003, Taurasi has already been named Big East player of the year for 2004. But Duke senior Alana Beard is the favorite to win most of the national player-of-the-year awards this season.

While Taurasi has led Connecticut to a 25-4 record, the Huskies are seeded only No. 2 in the East regional. The “only” seems ridiculous except Taurasi’s team was once the favorite to win its third consecutive national title. Now, the Huskies, who open defense of their NCAA title Sunday against Penn, are no longer considered a lock to make the Final Four.

Taurasi, a 6-foot swing player from Chino, averages 15.5 points, 3.9 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.7 steals a game, but over the last 14 games, as she has struggled with a sore ankle and balky back, Taurasi’s scoring average has fallen to 11.6 points a game and the Huskies have suffered upset losses to Villanova and Boston College.

Which hasn’t lessened her appeal to her future employer.

“What continues to jump out at you,” said Phoenix General Manager Seth Sulka, “is Diana’s basketball intelligence, her feel for the game, her understanding of the game. It’s off the charts. What you sell with Diana is the basketball, just the basketball. I believe all basketball fans, men or women, will enjoy watching Diana play.” When Taurasi left Southern California four years ago, spurning UCLA and breaking her mother’s heart, it was so she could play basketball at a place where fans cared and at a place where she could frolic on the court in front of national audiences, win titles and be the best.

Lili Taurasi, Diana’s mother, told Connecticut Coach Geno Auriemma, “I hate you.” It was because Auriemma came into the Taurasi house and took Lili’s daughter away.

“When she left,” Lili said, “I was very upset. I am crying, saying my baby is 18 years old and leaving from my house. In my country, you leave when you get married.”

Lili was born in Argentina. Mario Taurasi, Diana’s father, was born in Italy, same as Auriemma, and then moved to Argentina.

Their youngest daughter was all American jock from the start, a little girl with big hands and a natural sense of where a basketball should be thrown and where a player should run. Running to Storrs, Conn., was just another instinctively good decision by Taurasi.

“Connecticut has been amazing,” Taurasi said. “The fans travel everywhere, go everywhere They just cling on to the team.”

Taurasi clings to nothing. She grabs things. The ball, the shot, the emotions of winning and losing. The last shot, the big shot. She bellows to the ceiling, she claps her hands. She has a wide smile and makes fans smile.

Renee Brown, WNBA vice president of player personnel, has seen Taurasi play dozens of times. “What I find is that I’m drawn to Diana,” Brown said. “Not only to her ability but to the feeling she exudes that she loves the game. What I also like is that she’s got a swagger to her walk and she can back it up. You look at Diana and she seems to be saying, ‘I’m good, I know I’m good, and I’ll show you how good I am.’ ”

It seemed that confidence, that swagger, may have gotten the best of Taurasi earlier this month during the Big East tournament. In a quarterfinal victory, Taurasi committed some quick fouls that put her on the bench. Taurasi and Auriemma exchanged heated words and after the game, Auriemma blasted his star player.

“D hasn’t fouled anybody in four years,” Auriemma told reporters. “She has not been wrong in four years, and I’m just sick of it. You don’t sit there and argue with me. Nobody argues with me on the bench.... My problem is, how can you commit, as a senior this time of year, three of the dumbest fouls I’ve ever seen and put us in a situation where you’re on the bench and they’re in the one-and-one. The kid has a responsibility now. It’s your senior year. It’s March. Help us win. That’s all. Don’t do stupid stuff.”

This was taken in some quarters as a sign that the rapport between volatile player and volatile coach had come to the end, especially when Connecticut was upset in its next game by Boston College.

In the Virginia Tech game, Taurasi had scored only four points before fouling out. In the loss to Villanova a week earlier, Taurasi had scored eight points.

Taurasi would not make excuses for her struggle, shrugging off the nagging injuries. “If I’m out there, I have high expectations and everybody else should too.”

And there is definitely nothing but respect from Taurasi for her coach.

When asked what she will most miss about college, Taurasi was quick to answer: “Geno. All the stuff he’s taught me on and off the court. I can’t put it in words. But that’s it. Geno.”

Nell Fortner, former coach with Purdue and the Indiana Fever as well as head coach of the gold medal-winning 2000 Olympic team, says she puts Taurasi in the same class as the legendary Cheryl Miller both in skill and pizazz.

“The thing that separates Diana from other great players and puts her in the same category as Cheryl as best of all time is the aura they have around them,” said Fortner, a women’s college basketball analyst for ESPN. “Diana’s charisma is important to who she is on the floor, and that’s going to be a great thing for the WNBA.

“The skills Diana has, the way she carries herself is absolutely what the WNBA is missing. Look what Magic Johnson did. He led with his charisma. The WNBA needs that kind of charisma as much as it needs anything.”

Ann Meyers Drysdale said Taurasi’s all-around skills, her feel for the pass, for the flow of a game, her will, all remind her of Bird.

“Diana makes players better,” Meyers Drysdale said. “People say she can’t play defense, she’s not quick enough laterally, but then she leads UConn in blocked shots and is high up in steals and you can’t even account for all the steals she helps her teammates get.

“She wants the ball at the end of games like Jerry West did, Michael Jordan did, Bird did.”

Meyers Drysdale, a WNBA analyst, said she hoped Phoenix hands Taurasi the team in the same way Cleveland has given over the Cavaliers to rookie LeBron James.

“Every night’s a show for her,” Meyers Drysdale said. “You have to ride her.”

Sulka sounds as if he expects to.

“Diana will draw in men, will draw in the non-women’s basketball watcher,” he said. “She reminds me of Serena Williams, who is so explosive and so flamboyant and so fun to watch play tennis.

“Our core fans, our season-ticket holders, are genuinely excited about us getting Diana. But I’m also finding that the fathers of these fans or the male sports fan who doesn’t have an understanding of the women’s game, have started talking about us having the No. 1 picks and saying, ‘You’re going to get that Taurasi kid, right?’

“These guys may not know one other thing about women’s basketball, but they know her. Pro sports, all pro sports, is about star quality. Diana Taurasi has star quality.”

Taurasi tries to stay modest. “There are too many great players in the league to say one player will revitalize it,” Taurasi said. “The league already is fun to watch. Maybe I’ll make it funner.”

Auriemma believes she’ll make it better.

“Diana doesn’t have the talent some players in the WNBA do,” he said. “She’s not as quick. She’s not as fast. But she’s a 6-foot point guard who can do things nobody else can do, and she has that vision. That translates in any league.”

Taurasi was invited this week to attend the third and final training session for the 2004 women’s senior national team, which will compete in the Athens Olympics. Taurasi will be one of three players competing for the one open spot on that team.

“I sure hope I can make that team,” Taurasi said.

Fortner says she hopes Taurasi makes the Olympic team. “Diana is the future,” Fortner said.

And she’s the great hope of the WNBA, where observers think Taurasi and Duke senior Alana Beard could develop a rivalry like that of Magic and Bird.

“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on Diana,” Meyers Drysdale said. “But one thing we’ve seen. Diana can handle pressure.”

She handles it, embraces it, strangles it, owns it. Then she smiles.

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Times staff writer Robyn Norwood contributed to this report.

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Tailing Off

Whether it’s injuries or the pressure of carrying a young team in her senior season or the strength of the Big East competition, the second half of the season has been marked by a drop in scoring and shooting by Diana Taurasi, Connecticut’s All-American from Chino. Since a 27-point performance against Rutgers on Jan. 19, here are Taurasi’s game-by-game numbers. as well as her statistics for the first 15 and last 14 games this season and overall statistics for 2002-03, when she was national player of the year :

*--* Pts FGM-A R A Jan. 24 Seton Hall 11 4-10 0 7 Jan. 27 Virginia Tech 13 4-10 5 4 Jan. 31 St. John’s 2 0-0 2 0 Feb. 5 Tennessee 18 4-13 5 5 Feb. 8 Miami 21 7-12 7 3 Feb. 11 Syracuse 10 3-10 5 4 Feb. 14 Rutgers 11 4-9 6 4 Feb. 17 Pittsburgh 11 4-7 6 8 Feb. 21 Boston College 13 5-10 0 6 Feb. 25 Providence 6 2-6 3 10 Feb. 28 Villanova 8 3-13 4 4 March 2 West Virginia 17 6-16 4 10 March 7 Virginia Tech 4 2-10 2 3 March 8 Boston College 17 6-13 2 6

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AVERAGES

*--* Pts FGM-A FG% Reb Ast FIRST 15 19.2 6.8-13.7 495 4.1 4.5 LAST 14 11.6 3.9-10.0 388 3.6 5.3

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*--* 2002-03 17.9 6.4-13.5 476 6.1 4.4

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