UConn freshman could be 'the best female player ever'

Maya Moore of the top-ranked Connecticut women's basketball team is the first freshman - male or female - to be named Big East Player of the Year. She is averaging 17.7 points, the highest freshman average in school history. (bob child/Associated Press)

STORRS, Conn. - The new face of women's basketball recorded her first public service announcement when she was 9 years old. Maya Moore peered into the television camera without a hint of trepidation and calmly asked everyone to please fasten their seat belts.

"We watched the tape just the other day," said her mother, Kathryn Moore. "We were howling. She looked like such a little grown-up. People always want to know how she became so poised. I really think she came out that way."

Moore, 18, may be in her first season at the University of Connecticut, but she's the best player on the No. 1-ranked women's basketball team in the country, as well as the Big East Player of the Year - the first freshman, male or female, to achieve that distinction.

She's not only the top freshman in the country, she may be the best player, a multifaceted talent who fills up every column of the box score. Moore shoots 3-pointers, lays in finger-roll baskets, rebounds in traffic, passes deftly, disrupts passing lanes on defense, and, perhaps most compellingly, has a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

"If the ball comes off the glass in a funny way, she's there anyhow," marveled UConn coach Geno Auriemma. "It's uncanny. How does she do that? I don't know. How does [Yankees shortstop] Derek Jeter know the ball is going to be overthrown? You look at him and you say, 'What's he doing over there?' He just knows. He's always where he should be, and so is Maya Moore."

After Moore led UConn past Big East rival Rutgers March 3 - a game in which she was leveled by a hard foul from Epiphanny Prince - Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer declared Moore "the best player of this decade."

"There was nothing we could do with her," Stringer lamented. "Maya is in another category."

Two summers ago, DePaul coach Doug Bruno coached Moore on the USA Basketball 18-and-under national team. He noted her fastidious approach, persistent pursuit of the ball, and uncommon resolve, then concluded she was even better than advertised, which is akin to saying LeBron James lived up to his hype.

"She has a chance," said Bruno, "to be the best female player ever."

Pursuit of perfection
It is a rite of passage in Auriemma's storied women's basketball program that if you are a freshman of any consequence, he will poke you, prod you, taunt you, challenge you, and insult you until you crack.

Then, when he has broken you down, he will bark at you to straighten your shoulders and toughen up.

All the great ones have endured this ritual. Rebecca Lobo, Swin Cash, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Tina Charles. Some fared better than others.

None of them emerged unscathed - until now.

"I'd like to rattle Maya a little bit, but I don't get the response I'd like to get from her," Auriemma said. "She just looks at me. Never changes expression.

"I don't even yell at her anymore. What's the point?"

Auriemma tried spouting his usual "freshmen don't count" mantra, but he's abandoned that as well.

"I've never told her to take over the game," said Auriemma. "I've just told her to go out and play the way she plays."

Kathryn Moore is unmoved by the forecasts of greatness for her only child. Because Maya's father hasn't been a part of her life since she was very young, Kathryn has raised Maya alone. Mother and daughter have embarked on this remarkable basketball journey side by side, a pair of perfectionists whose painstaking attention to detail has served them well, but has proven, on occasion, to be counterproductive.

"I used to review Maya's school work with her," Kathryn explained. "We'd stay up all night arguing over the most nitpicky things, like which particular word made more sense in a particular sentence.

"Being a perfectionist is fine. But sometimes it interferes with the natural flow of your daily life."

When Maya's mother assigned household chores, she didn't expect her daughter to still be scrubbing the bathroom more than an hour later, but there she was, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, polishing the chrome one more time in hopes of eliminating that last irritating streak on the faucet.

Auriemma identifies with these tendencies, since he occasionally falls prey to his own obsession with excellence. There is the legendary story of UConn's first national championship in 1995, when the players gathered in their hotel room to celebrate. Someone suggested they pop in the tape of the title game. Within minutes, Auriemma was hitting the pause button and chastising his players for not denying the ball on the weak side.

During practice last month, Auriemma, who has been reduced to manufacturing problems with Moore's game, kicked her off the court because she did not chase down an offensive rebound with the tenacity he would prefer.

She dutifully jogged to the sideline, expressionless, but she was stung. No one ever had questioned her effort.

"I did not like that," said Moore. "It was embarrassing. It happens almost every day to somebody on this team, but you don't think it's going to happen to you."

Although Auriemma barked at her to get lost, Moore lingered. Whenever there was a break in the drills, she would stride purposefully back onto the floor, only to have an agitated Auriemma shoo her off again. This went on for the better part of 20 minutes, until finally the coach relented and his best player retook her rightful place at the epicenter of the team.

"It's probably not good that both of us are so similar," Auriemma conceded. "In some ways, I've met my match."

Bruno isn't surprised. His USA Basketball team was made up mostly of players who were about to be freshmen in college. Moore, Vicki Baugh, and Kayla Pedersen were the only three who still had a year of high school left, and they were reminded daily by the older players who ruled the court.

"We called the older kids sophomores, which in Greek means 'wise fools,' " said Bruno. "We had some know-it-alls. We ended up having to take their cellphones away because they were texting home at 2, 3, and 4 o'clock in the morning. It would have been easy - understandable, even - for the younger kids to follow along.

"But to watch Maya walk away from the crowd and stand on her own two feet displayed to me a mental toughness that is rare for someone her age.

"It doesn't surprise me at all Geno can't break her."

Moore is averaging 17.7 points per game, which leads the team and is the highest average for a freshman in school history. It easily eclipses the first-year performances of UConn greats such as Lobo (14.3), Jen Rizzotti (12.3), Kara Wolters (11.1), and Taurasi (10.9), all of whom would go on to be named National Player of the Year later in their careers.

So starting next weekend, Moore will go into her first NCAA Tournament with a blue Husky bull's-eye on her back. She will face double- and maybe even triple-teams. She will not be able to evade the spotlight or the scrutiny that accompanies soaring expectations, but, she figures, nothing could be more taxing than what her own coach has put her through.

"It's exhausting," Moore said. "He's always trying to find something."

Earlier in the season, after a routine win over Louisville in which Moore led the team with 23 points, Auriemma began hammering away at her for her rebound total, which he kept insisting was 2 (it was actually 7).

"I told her, 'You don't rebound anymore,' " Auriemma said. "You shoot threes and run back, and that's it. You're content, and I don't like it.'

"As usual, she said nothing. Just nodded her head. But then she went out three days later and grabbed 17 rebounds against Syracuse."

Right fit in Storrs
Moore is uncomfortable with losing. When it happens - and it's been a rare occurrence for a young woman whose high school team, Collins Hill (Ga.), was 125-3 with three state titles and one national title - she tends to dwell on what she could have done.

How long has she been this way? She figures the last time a loss didn't gnaw at her for days was when she was 8, a basketball novice, and her team was trounced, 40-1.

"We went out for pizza and hamburgers afterward," she said. "It was fun."

The game was her entrée to a new environment, a way to instantly make new friends. Moore went to four different middle schools as her mother, a business executive, dealt with the downsizing of corporate America. The Moores were living in Missouri when Kathryn received a promotion and moved to Charlotte, N.C. They were in their new home less than two months when Kathryn's new job was eliminated. She looked in vain for something else in Charlotte, before she and Maya moved on to Georgia.

"It was a bad, bad time," Kathryn said. "People all over the country were losing their jobs.

"Basketball became a wonderful outlet for us. Whatever was going on, basketball had a way of making it better."

Moore made headlines when she chose Connecticut over Tennessee, Duke, and Georgia. Shortly after Moore chose UConn, Tennessee declined to renew its yearly contract to play the Huskies. Rumors were rampant that the recruiting skirmish for Moore played a role in Tennessee's decision to discontinue the rivalry.

The player in question simply shrugs.

"I would have loved to have played for all four coaches," she said, "but in the end, Coach Auriemma seemed like the best fit for me. This is where I want to be."

The recruiting fallout continues, as it recently came to light that UConn arranged for a tour of the ESPN studios for Moore, and though that may be a secondary recruiting violation, it is not expected to result in NCAA penalties.

Going and going
Kathryn Moore has moved to Connecticut to be closer to her daughter and runs an accessory business out of her home.

While Maya was recovering from her fall against Rutgers, which left her hobbled with a lower back injury, Kathryn scooped her up from campus and brought her home for her signature turkey, spaghetti, and macaroni and cheese.

If the injury has hampered her, she's not letting on. Then again, Maya Moore is not in the habit of revealing weakness.

"I've never seen her break down," said her roommate and fellow freshman, Lorin Dixon. "It doesn't happen. She plays like she has been here for years."

When he's not comparing her to Derek Jeter, Auriemma is reminding Moore that the game of basketball is flawed, and that no one can play it perfectly - not even her.

"Sometimes he says the nicest things," Moore said. "I'm still trying to figure him out. I keep looking for trends, patterns. The only thing I know is he doesn't believe in depending on freshmen."

That, young Maya, is about to change.

Jackie MacMullan can be reached at macmullan@globe.com.