Diana Taurasi has never had much use for subtlety. It was obvious what kind of player she would be from the moment she became the No. 1 pick in the 2004 WNBA draft, from the moment she began her decorated college basketball career with the UConn Huskies, perhaps even from the moment that she picked up a basketball, period. But if you had to prove it with one specific example, an early game that showed the full range of both her personality and her skill, you could do worse than January 4, 2003.
This was the annual UConn rivalry game against Tennessee. It was the first Huskies’ roster that was hers as a leader: Taurasi’s first year on campus without Sue Bird and Swin Cash. This was not the best game that she would play in college. It was not the most important. (She would play in two more national championship games, both of them against Tennessee, and win them both.) But it may have been the one with the greatest sense of dramatic flair, and, naturally, the whole thing was directed by Taurasi.
