Just getting started
Freshman Maya Moore is already a star, and UConn's best hope to end a Final Four drought.
By GREG AUMAN
Published January 30, 2008
Maya Moore was a two-time winner of the Naismith Award, given to the nation's top high school player - Tennessee's Candace Parker is the only other player who can boast that - so her success this season can be only so surprising.
"Me, personally, I've had goals. These are things I've expected all along," said Moore, a 6-foot freshman forward who is averaging a team-best 16.7 points for No.1 Connecticut, which puts the nation's only undefeated record on the line tonight in Hartford against USF.
In two months, in just 11 career starts, Moore has already earned comparisons to the greatest players in UConn history, but she's also aware that when you play for the Huskies, success is best remembered with championships.
"It's been amazing," Moore said after practice Tuesday. "I'm living a dream right now. It's even more than I expected. Just being able to play in front of thousands of people every night is special."
Moore, who was born in Jefferson City, Mo., but played high school ball in the Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville, has made a quick impression on Huskies coach Geno Auriemma. He recently gave the Atlanta Journal-Constitution five traits that are keys to her game: intensity, court awareness, versatility, maturity and poise. If she's to help Connecticut to its first Final Four in four years - a ridiculous drought, by Huskies standards - she'll need all five of those, with humility to offset all the praise she's getting.
"She is a player who can revolutionize the game like Candace Parker or Diana Taurasi," Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer told the South Bend Tribune last week. "She is a player who can carry a team, except that in Connecticut's case she doesn't have to. I don't see any other player on the horizon who can dominate like that."
Moore, 18, flashed that dominance early in Sunday's game against Notre Dame. In the first 41/2 minutes, she scored 15, going 4-for-4 on 3-pointers, including a four-point play. She also showed her youth: She didn't score again in her 26 remaining minutes, taking only three shots against an array of gimmick defenses.
"I think she has to do that, just to remind everybody, 'I'm still a freshman,'" Auriemma told the Connecticut Post. "And that's not a bad thing."
She's emblematic of the Huskies as a whole: young and ridiculously talented. Season-ending injuries to starting guards Kalana Greene and Mel Thomas have hurt UConn's depth, thrusting another freshman, guard Torin Dixon, into the starting lineup. Moore has already been named Big East freshman of the week six times, matching center Tina Charles' total from a year ago; Rebecca Lobo's school record of seven, set in 1992, is in serious jeopardy.
Auriemma has eased Moore into the spotlight, bringing her off the bench in the first eight games. That hardly stopped her: In a November blowout of Holy Cross, she went 14-of-16 from the field for 31 points, and she has scored in double digits in all 19 games this season.
Moore's versatility has helped as UConn has shifted its lineup since the injuries. In the team's only win by fewer than 10 points, at Syracuse, she had 17 rebounds, taking only two 3-pointers. In her past two games, she has been more dangerous outside, going 7-for-10 beyond the arc. She's one of two Big East players with both 30 steals and 30 blocks.
"It's not necessarily expanding my role, it's just doing everything I do a little more," she said. "We're trying to make up for the loss of two great athletes, but I think the main thing is mental, just making smart decisions."
Losing key players has given Connecticut an air of vulnerability, adding drama to their postseason hopes, but Moore said that perception only helps the Huskies.
"It's extra motivation," Moore said. "People think we're down and out, that we're weaker. It puts even more of a target on our backs, but we try to use that as motivation."