March 29, 2003

     DAYTON, OH — She can shoot, sure, but her height, 5 feet 9 inches, is ordinary. So is her athleticism. So just how did Maria Conlon get a scholarship to play basketball at Connecticut and become the starting point guard as a junior? A hardy resilience known in sports as toughness.
     Take the time she was hit in the head by a javelin.
     This was the spring of 1997, her freshman year of high school. At track practice, someone called Conlon's name and, as she turned, a javelin clipped her face near the right temple, chipping a bone and causing some permanent hearing loss. She blacked out and was rushed to the hospital in Derby, Conn.
     "It could have struck her eye, or her temple," Maria's father, Tim, said. "She had an angel on her shoulder."
     When Kim Conlon arrived at the emergency room, she found her daughter sitting impatiently, a turban of gauze on her head, not wanting stitches because she had basketball practice that night with her A.A.U. team. Maria agreed to stitches, but only after her mother agreed to let her attend practice.
     "She's always had a certain toughness you can't give someone," said Chris Dailey, the associate head coach at UConn (33-1), which faces Boston College (22-8) on Sunday here in the semifinals of the East Regional. "You have it or you don't."
     Maria Conlon has always had it. In sixth grade, she played on a boys' team. One day, her mother said, her coach designated her to set screens against the opponent, and the first time she set a pick, she lost a tooth. Maria gave the tooth to the coach and kept playing. A second tooth was knocked out, then a third, but her insistence kept rooted.
     "She needed braces, and they were going to have to do a lot of extracting," Kim Conlon said with a laugh. "She saved me a lot of money."
     When Maria was about 10, Tim Conlon built a basketball court in the backyard, arranging pressure-treated wood into a kind of parquet floor reminiscent of Boston Garden. He loved the Celtics, so he painted the court green and decorated it with a sketch of a shamrock. Six of Maria's cousins, all boys, lived next door, so it was never difficult to find a game.
     Tim Conlon traveled 40 weeks a year as a salesman of safety equipment, and basketball was a way to bond on weekends with Maria and his son, also named Tim. Two spotlights allowed them to play after dark. Curfew was 9 p.m., so the lights would not bother the neighbors, except on Memorial Day, when a neighborhood two-on-two tournament lasted from 8 a.m. until midnight.
     "We only had one rule - if you played with Maria, you couldn't take it easy on her," Kim Conlon said. "You had to block her shot, you had to push her around."
     In the family basement, Maria sometimes dribbled a basketball as she watched television. Outside, her father painted a 3-point line at the distance of 21 feet 9 inches, 2 feet beyond the high school and college arc.
     "I knew she wouldn't be that tall," he said. "I figured, in order to get her shot, she'd have to shoot from deep."
     For hours at a time, Maria shot in the backyard. Once, in the fifth grade, Tim said, she missed a crucial shot in a game, came home, shoveled snow off the court and shot long after her father grew cold and tired and went back inside. At nearby Seymour High School, Maria led her team to a 96-4 record, a 62-game winning streak and two state championships, setting Connecticut records for 3-pointers in a season (86) and a career (246).
     She became a local legend in the Lower Naugatuck Valley. People asked for her autograph, the school retired her jersey and her picture later began appearing in local restaurants. In the rarest of honors granted an in-state player, she received a scholarship to UConn.
     In the 18 seasons that Geno Auriemma has coached at UConn, only a handful of his high-profile players have come from Connecticut, including Jennifer Rizzotti, Nykesha Sales and Rita Williams. Auriemma blames the state high school association, which forbids girls from practicing basketball until after Thanksgiving and prohibits entire teams from playing together at summer camps. State officials say they are trying to avoid specialization in fall sports and to maintain competitive balance in summer camps. Auriemma says this hurts the development of girls statewide.
     "They don't let kids practice enough," he said. "They don't get better."
     The current UConn roster draws from nine states, but only Conlon is from Connecticut. She has played an important role this season, becoming a starter after Nicole Wolff sustained stress fractures in her feet. Conlon has handled the ball, freeing Diana Taurasi to roam, and has hit 3-pointers notable less for their frequency than for their timeliness.
     "When we signed her, people were saying: `What are you doing that for? She's not fast, quick or big enough,' " Auriemma said. "There ought to be room for a player like that. Of all the contributions a lot of kids made this year, none could be bigger than hers. Other than Diana, she's the only true ball handler. She's really tough. There's worse things in life than taking a kid who knows how to shoot and how to win."
     As a freshman, Conlon struggled with the transition to the college game. Only limited minutes were available as a sophomore in a championship backcourt that featured Taurasi and Sue Bird. Last summer, realizing the opportunity available as a junior, Conlon got into the best shape of her life, giving up fried food and junk food, running and lifting weights, honing her shooting and dribbling.
     Auriemma wants Conlon to shoot more often and to run the team more assertively. Sometimes, Dailey said, Taurasi's teammates tend to stand and watch her as spectators instead of teammates. Still, Conlon has been indispensable. She made three critical 3-pointers in a 1-point victory over Tennessee, delivered a career-high 8 assists against Duke and collected a career-high 15 points against Miami.
     At a time when most UConn recruits arrive with all-American credentials, Conlon's presence suggests value in the less heralded, in a player who doesn't need her name above the marquee, who needs only to be a part in the chorus. "People see me, I'm not 6-4 or really athletic, but I'm here and I'm doing stuff and I have a national championship," Conlon said.
     And she may soon have a second.