Montella and Taurasi are two adjacent villages about a 45-minute drive from Naples, in southern Italy. Montella is the birthplace of Geno Auriemma, head coach of the defending national champion and perfect (39-0) UConn women's basketball team. Taurasi is the hometown of Mario Taurasi, father of Diana Taurasi, UConn's all-world superstar, who is now the unquestioned leader of this year's team, which some pundits have named "the Queen and her Court".

When news of the phenomenal basketball exploits of the irrepressible
Taurasi reached Auriemma, he wondered what the chances were that there was a connection between his hometown region in Italy and this
wonderful, budding women's basketball star. When Auriemma visited Diana at her home in Chino, California, he spoke her father's native language during the visit. When Diana, her mother Liliana, an Argentinian, and her father visited Connecticut, Diana's mother wasn't too sure it was the right place for her daughter to come and play college basketball.  They were 3,000 miles from home, and they arrived at night. It was dark outside, and nothing like the metropolitan Los Angeles area where they lived. When they arrived at the Auriemma household for dinner, they were surprised to find a bottle of Taurasi wine from Mario's hometown was served with dinner.

With the home cookin' advantage Auriemma enjoyed during the nationwide recruiting sweepstakes for Taurasi, the other top programs didn't stand a chance against Geno. What are the odds of a coach finding a player whose father is from the next town over from his birthplace in a foreign country? I don't know, but the Syracuse University professor who calculated the odds of two basketball teams from UConn being ranked No. 1 in the country during the same week in 1995 (gazillion to one) would probably give even longer odds on this amazing coincidence. Auriemma andTaurasi were destined to be a match made in heaven.

Fast forward to December, 2002 and Mario's daughter Diana is leading the current edition of Coach Auriemma's UConn team to an undefeated 7-0 start. She came to Storrs touted as the Magic Johnson of women's basketball, and as she grew up gym-ratting and playgrounding her way to California high school basketball stardom at Don Lugo High School, she modeled her game after the "Magic Man" himself. She would have been, is and will be the first round selection in the WNBA draft yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Last season, with the Huskies clinging to a tenuous six-point lead with
a little over one minute left in the national championship game against
Oklahoma, Auriemma threw away his usual team-oriented playbook and called for an isolation play with Taurasi backing her defender down the lane. She did it, turned and put up a tough shot from about 12 feet out, scored and drew the foul. Three point play, game, set, match, another national championship and perfect season for the Huskies.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. UConn's senior class of Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Tamika Williams and Asjha Jones, perhaps the greatest single class in the history of women's basketball, graduated and were all gone by the sixth pick in the first round of the WNBA draft. What would UConn do without them this season? There was a lot of angst among fans of the Husky women heading into this season.

Whoever coined the phrase "What, me worry?" probably didn't have Diana Taurasi in mind, but it perfectly fits her personality. Auriemma calls the burden he's putting on his junior superstar "impossible", as she will be expected to lead her team this season in every imaginable way.  That's because her teammates are long on talent but short on experience.  She has four very talented freshmen newcomers to help her (Ann Strother, Barbara Turner, Willnet Crockett and Nicole Wolff), all of whom were high school stars, but the college game is much faster and the players are bigger and more talented than high school competition. UConn also returns some veterans who have played with Diana for a couple of seasons in practices and games. Maria Conlon, a junior point/shooting guard, Jessica Moore, a redshirt sophomore and starting center, and Ashley Battle, a redshirt sophomore, who appears to have won the starting job at power forward in the early season, although she's capable of playing multiple positions on the court.

Despite the pre-season angst of Husky fans, Taurasi has led her UConn team to seven victories and no losses heading into the mid-December final exam break. Among the wins was a 30-point performance by Taurasi against Oklahoma, a 73-60 victory in a rematch of last year's national championship game, which earned UConn the Rainbow Wahine tournament championship in Hawai'i. She also scored 24 points while leading the Huskies to a 68-44 home victory over Southern California.

Despite Taurasi's incredible talent, she remains the consummate team
player, keeping her teammates involved in the action, and giving credit
to them for their talent. She has called her freshman teammate Ann
Strother, last year's high school player of the year, "one of the ten best players in the country". Despite her team-oriented game, make no mistake about her ability to take over and dominate any game she wants to, if the situation calls for it. Against Tennessee at Knoxville last
season, she ripped the hearts out of 25,000+ screaming Lady Vol fans by pouring in a career-best 32 points. She put an exclamation point on that performance by punching one of the orange-colored basket stanchions late in the game. "I just felt like punching something orange" she quipped in her postgame comments. Another thing she will be punching a lot of holes in will be the Husky record book. She's destined to set a bunch of new records, and perhaps add another national championship or two along the way.

Through all the adulation, accomplishments and responsibilities heaped upon her, Diana Taurasi remains a bubbly, fun-loving kid, perhaps not so much in age anymore, but in her heart. Nothing fazes her, and she lives her life the way a very hungry person might take a big bite out of an apple. Diana takes a big bite out of life, and an even bigger bite out of her opponents on the basketball court. She's fully capable of playing any position on the floor, and she jokingly (although no joke to her opponents) refers to herself physically as "a specimen", in reference to her huge hands, long arms and long legs.

The other premier player in women's college basketball this season
is generally considered to be Alana Beard of the Duke women's team.
There has been considerable debate already about who's the best, Diana or Alana. While both are superior players, and you can critique their respective games ad nauseum, perhaps the only way to settle the issue will be head-to-head competition, when the Huskies travel to Durham, North Carolina for a showdown with the Blue Devils on February 1. The Taurasi-Beard debate will rage until then, when one of them may emerge is the victor and front runner for national player of the year honors. Who will it be? I'm not a betting man, but if I were, I would put my money on Diana, for she is truly a "California Dream" come true for Geno Auriemma and the UConn Huskies. The "Italian Connection" is definitely alive and well in Storrs, Connecticut this season.