Tina Charles' stat line in the box score looks just fine by almost any measure: 15 points, 11 rebounds in 18 minutes.
Unless the person doing the measuring is UConn Huskies coach Geno Auriemma, who sees the personal fouls that kept her out of the game for much of the first half.
Auriemma has a knack for viewing the glass half-empty when it comes to Charles. Fine has never been good enough to stop the yelling and the cajoling. It is really an existential thing between the demanding coach and his senior center who hasn't always risen to meet his demands.
"It's easy to be frustrated with Tina. If I didn't get frustrated with Tina it wouldn't be any fun coaching this team," Auriemma said Tuesday after the top-ranked Huskies' 83-58 win over Texas in San Antonio. "You watch Tina play for the first six or seven minutes and you will say 'Wow, there is nothing this kid can't do.' She could go for 30 every night.' "
LORETTO, Pa. -- Delaware women's basketball coach Tina Martin let the phrase "triple-double'' creep into her comments following her team's season opener Tuesday night, and once it was out, she couldn't reel it back in. But anybody who had watched the highly anticipated, unusually delayed college debut of Elena Delle Donne wouldn't have needed prodding to envision such feats in the future.
"If Coach says it, then yes, I can, definitely. Whatever I can do to contribute to the team the best I can to my ability, I'll try it,'' said Delle Donne, the redshirt freshman who, on her way back to her favorite sport, had once been the best high school player in the country, then one of its best-known victims of intense homesickness.
SAN ANTONIO -- Tennessee and Connecticut in the same gym, but not on the court at the same time. Maybe San Antonio will bring Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma back together, but not on this night.
Instead, the top-ranked Huskies and the Lady Vols combined to behave a little ungraciously to their Texas hosts in the ESPNU Road to the Championship doubleheader at the AT&T Center.
Tennessee routed overmatched Texas Tech in the first game, 91-53, while the Huskies had little trouble with No. 10 Texas, winning 83-58.
But the night wasn't going to end without a little excitement. Not with Auriemma in the house.
What have we learned after one weekend of the college season?
Brittney Griner is a freshman. OK ... that's a little obvious. But we might forget that as we are distracted by the dunking. When Griner picked up four fouls early in the second half against Tennessee, it was a needed jolt of reality. Freshmen, well, they have a tendency to foul at inconvenient times and with maddening frequency. Keeping Griner on the floor may be a bigger challenge for Baylor than breaking in a load of young players.
Jayne Appel isn't 100 percent. Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said as much about her senior center, who is coming off offseason knee surgery for the second year in a row, after the team's win over Rutgers, the end of a very good starting weekend for the No. 2 Cardinal. Appel finished with 11 points against the Scarlet Knights on 3 of 10 shooting, and 12 rebounds. But VanDerveer sounds concerned.
"She has no ups," VanDerveer said. "She doesn't have spring."
When Connecticut ran through the 2008-09 season with a 39-0 record and cruised through the Final Four to a national title, they turned an entire season, thousands of games involving hundreds of teams, into an exercise in inevitability.
At the cusp of a new college season, the biggest question is: Can the Huskies do that again? Or will the search for a new point guard to replace Renee Montgomery will bring UConn back to the pack?
Connecticut is the undisputed No. 1 team in the nation at its start, the unanimous choice in both national polls. But, of course. The Huskies have Maya Moore and Tina Charles, two of the top three or four players in the country, they have outstanding role players such as Kalnna Greene and Kaili McLaren. They have Geno Auriemma, who embraces the role of front-runner in a big, enthusiastic bear hug.
Tara VanDerveer, right, has been coaching for nearly 30 years. She doesn't think she's recruited siblings before. So as new experiences go, it's worked out pretty well.
Chiney Ogwumike, a 6-foot-3 forward from Texas and the No. 1-rated recruit in the country, signed her national letter of intent to play at Stanford on Thursday. Chiney will join her older sister Nneka, who is a sophomore forward for the No. 2-ranked Cardinal. Ogwumike chose Stanford over Connecticut and Notre Dame.
Dunks in women's basketball have been like meteors in the night sky, fleeting moments of excitement, flashes that fade quickly until the next one shows up. Six women have dunked in a college game, totaling 15 dunks.
When a dunk happens, it makes the highlight reel, sparks a brief discussion about the impact on the women's game and then fades away again.
But along comes Baylor's Brittney Griner, who promises a meteor shower. It's no overstatement to say that Griner will change the women's game beginning Sunday when the seventh-ranked Bears take on No. 8 Tennessee in Knoxville in the State Farm Tip-off Classic.
For the first time in a long time, Joan Bonvicini is living in an apartment, one that takes up the first floor of an old house and overlooks Puget Sound.
For the first time in a long time, Bonvicini's days are about coaching basketball.
For the first time in a long time, Bonvicini is happy.
The former Arizona coach has found new bliss at Seattle University, a program beginning its transition to Div. I status.
"I've come through something extremely difficult and I know this is going to be great," Bonvicini said. "I just really feel happy to be here."
Kay Yow is still very much a presence in the North Carolina State women's basketball program.
Her name is on the athletic department's Wall of Fame, and on the basketball court at Reynolds Coliseum. Her photo still hangs in the women's basketball locker room.
"She was North Carolina State basketball, and you don't and you can't wipe that away with a new staff," said new N.C. State head coach Kellie Jolly Harper.
Tina Charles' stat line in the box score looks just fine by almost any measure: 15 points, 11 rebounds in 18 minutes.
SAN ANTONIO -- Tennessee and Connecticut in the same gym, but not on the court at the same time. Maybe San Antonio will bring Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma back together, but not on this night.
What have we learned after one weekend of the college season?
When Connecticut ran through the 2008-09 season with a 39-0 record and cruised through the Final Four to a national title, they turned an entire season, thousands of games involving hundreds of teams, into an exercise in inevitability.
Tara VanDerveer, right, has been coaching for nearly 30 years. She doesn't think she's recruited siblings before. So as new experiences go, it's worked out pretty well.
Dunks in women's basketball have been like meteors in the night sky, fleeting moments of excitement, flashes that fade quickly until the next one shows up. Six women have dunked in a college game, totaling 15 dunks.
For the first time in a long time, Joan Bonvicini is living in an 
