In recent years, the state of Ohio has been very kind of the UConn women's basketball program.

Dating back to landing highly-touted Tamika Williams out of Dayton, the Huskies have been able to pluck some of the top talent out of the state.

A quick breakdown of 1,000-point scorers in UConn history shows that Ohio is tied for third behind Pennsylvania and Connecticut for having the most members of the 1,000-point club.

Pennsylvania 5 (Swin Cash, Wendy Davis, Leigh Curl, Meghan Pattyson, Ashley Battle)
Connecticut 4 (Nykesha Sales, Jen Rizzotti, Cathy Bochain, Laura Lishness)
Ohio 3 (Barbara Turner, Tamika Williams, Mel Thomas)
Massachusetts 3 (Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters, Carla Berube).

Not only did UConn land Turner, Brittany Hunter and Thomas out of Ohio but have a commitment from Samarie Walker, considered by many as the high school junior in the state of Ohio and recently began to show interest in another of the state's top players - Natasha Howard.

Ironically, Jamelle Elliott played a significant role in UConn's recruiting success in the midwest and now she is the head coach at Cincinnati where she places a high priority in enticing Ohio's top players to remain within the state boundries.

"I am aware, being at Connecticut for so long, how much talent is in the state of Ohio," Elliott said. "One of my top priorities is to make sure of hopefully make sure that some of the talent that is in the state of Ohio is going to stay here in the state and will want to join the family here at the University of Cincinnati."

That hasn't been the case in recent years. Using one internet recruiting base as a guide, only one of the top five players in Ohio (Ohio State commit Emilie Harmon) has chosen to remain in state among the incoming freshmen as Mikaela Reuf is going to Stanford, Karisma Penn is headed to Illinois, Kendall Hackney will play at Southern California and Alexis Rogers has signed with Duke. The story was the same last year as the top four rated players from Ohio (Amber Gray/Tennessee, Cierra Bravard/Florida State, Shany Selby/Duke, Ayana Dunning/LSU) left the state.

If a top-notch recruiter like Elliott can go in and change Cincinnati's fortunes, it would stand to reason that the prospects of powerhouses like UConn and Tennessee landing the top players from Ohio will become a little more challenging.

"Ohio is a big basketball state, especially on the women's side," Turner said. "They love women's basketball and if they can bring success to Cincinnati it will be amazing energy because they have Ohio State there and they support their women's team really well and Jamelle can get some of the same support and will be able to attract those Ohio kids."

Before UConn played at Cincinnati in January, I asked UConn coach Geno Auriemma to pinpoint the secret for his success recruiting in Ohio.

"I think the No. 1 reason is that there is just so many of them in that state," Auriemma said. "There may be more players in Ohio than any other state in the country because girls' basketball is really good and it is really important in Ohio so you've got this tremendous depth of talent and then you get kind of lucky that it is the right kinds of kids in Ohio who have seen others have success and they want to be a part of it. From some areas of the country, kids are unwilling to leave. You talk about the midwest, you can get those kids to come east. There are certain places where people will want to go to school regardless of where they live. The South is hard, it is not as easy to get kids from coming down south but Ohio has so many good players."

Turner raved about Elliott's ability to communicate with players and believes she will turn the Cincinnati program around.

"I think her strength is how she relates to the players," Turner said. "She was that coach you would go to and talk to her about any problems or issues that you had and you would get her honest opinion on anything. I think that is what I enjoy the most of being able to play for her. She is at a school like Connecticut and has coached under somebody like Coach Auriemma for (12) years and there is no better experience than that to walk into a head coaching job after working for Coach Auriemma for such a long time."

Turner is currently in Houston working with former NBA star John Lucas. She credits her work with Lucas in the offseason last year in helping her make the transition from undersized WNBA forward to effective perimeter player. Now she wants to take the next step.

"Coming off the season I had last year, I am looking to get better that is why I am down here with John just putting in my time," Turner said. "I'm working on more of the same stuff, just fine tuning it. I'm trying to become a better perimeter player, making myself more comfortable playing out on the perimeter. That is really all I can work on, being more explosive is the obvious thing."

MEA CULPA
A mind is a mysterious thing. I can remember complete conversations I had 10 years ago, I can remember the birthday (April 26) of a girl I went to college with but I have not heard from or seen in more than 15 years but I can't remember that Temple lost to Florida in the first round of the NCAA tournament in March.

If anybody read my story on Elliott's hiring in Wednesday's edition of the Register, I mentioned that Tonya Cardoza's Temple team lost to UConn in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Of course it never happened. That was the matchup people were looking forward to - except those in Gainesville, Florida as the Gators beat Temple in the NCAA opening round in Gampel Pavilion before losing to UConn in the second round. I appreciate the reader who informed me of this error. I despise making factual errors in my stories and pride myself in my accuracy but sometimes mistakes happen. I have already sent in a correction which should run in tomorrow's paper.