Last night I headed to the Arizona State/Yale game to do a story on the close friendship between Arizona State coach Charli Turner Thorne and Chris Gobrecht of Yale, who hired Turner Thorne as a graduate assistant when she was the head coach at Washington.

After speaking to Turner Thorne about how her coaching career got started with the aid of Gobrecht, I changed the subject. Turner Thorne was the head coach of the U.S. team which won the World University Games. UConn's Tina Charles, Tiffany Hayes and Maya Moore were all members of that team although Moore was unable to play in the game because of a sprained knee. Here are her thought on the three Huskies.

"Maya Moore is just an incredibly special young lady and I did get to coach her up
until the first game, she was in trials, she was in training camp and was the instant leader of that team as a sophomore.

"Her maturity, her willingness to be coached, her willingness to try to do everything that you asked her was incredible."

"Tina Charles, obviously the light bulb just completely went on for her at the tail end of last year at UConn. I got the benefit of that. I was so proud of her, I got to see some of the Texas game and she has continued (to improve). We all know what Geno will say 'work harder, work harder.' She was real fun to coach and is just a fun person. If you motivate her, she will get to 30 (points). If she is fired up, she is going to get it done."

"Tiffany Hayes, wow what an athlete. There was a block, it was a huge play. There
was a scramble and they were about to score a layup, she took off from behind the 3-point line and in a split second blocked the shot against the backboard. This is Tiffany Hayes, about 5-10. She was a younger player on the team but she was
huge for us, very dynamic and Geno is going to get the most out of her. They are going to be incredibly tough to beat for the next couple of years."

Before heading to Yale, I asked Tiffany Hayes about her thoughts on Turner Thorne.

"With me being the younger player there, I would get down on myself and she would tell me 'calm down, this team has a lot of leaders and take what you can from them.' She told me to play my game and things will come. I learned a lot from her and am
glad to have had that experience.

"The most important thing she helped us with is when things weren't going well in the games, we were down or the other team would go on a run, she would calm us down. She would say 'hey, look everything's going to be OK. Just calm down, you guys
get it back together, come back together as a team.' She was that kind of a coach."

Speaking of Hayes, I asked her about what UConn learned about themselves playing against 10th-ranked Texas when she provided some unexpected comedy relief involving the nickname "omnu" the team gave freshman Kelly Faris.

Here's the transcript of the interview:

Hayes: Caroline and (long pause) Kelly stepped up. I was about to call her omnu and did a pretty good job.

Me: What do you call Kelly?

Hayes: Omnu. At our championship dinner, everybody was 'hi, how are you?' She was like 'I am Kelly, I am new.' We were like 'omnu?' And
we just started calling her 'omnu' that's her name.

Me: Who came up with that one?

Hayes: I think either Meghan or Kalana. We just call her omnu now and I completely forgot her name was Kelly. I was about to say omnu when you asked me that question.