It's hard to be around Jacinta Monroe for any amount of time and not come away enjoying the experience.

UConn teammates Tina Charles, Tiffany Hayes and Maya Moore discovered that when they were teammates on the U.S. team which won the World University Games title over the summer and the non-Florida State media got to deal with a person that Hayes calls "one of the funniest people I think I will ever meet in my life."

It didn't have to turn out that way. More than 10 years ago Monroe lost her father Jay who succumbed to cancer. Monroe, who surpassed the 1,500-point plateau in Sunday's win over Mississippi State, honored her father by having a tattoo with his name as well as a heart and a cross etched on her left wrist. But in reality, her greatest tribute to her late father is the positive manner in which she has chosen to life her life.

"I definitely had to learn how to move on," Monroe said. "I didn't want to for years and years and sometimes I still don't want to but I just have the wrap my psyche around the fact that he is not coming back but he would want me to continue on and get my education, play ball and do what I am doing."

When I asked Monroe is she feels fortunate that people tend to gravitate towards her because of her bubbly, fun-loving personality, the sense of humor I was told about emerged.

"It feels great to know they don't know my darker side, I am just kidding, don't write that," Monroe said with a laugh. "It is a good feeling."

Monroe, an athletic 6-foot-5 senior who is likely to be taken in the first round of next month's WNBA draft, certainly won over the three UConn players who barely knew her before the tryouts for the World University Games team in May.

"She has the ability to make anybody laugh," Moore said. "She is a great teammate, she cares about her teammates and she is competitive. She is herself and doesn't try to be anything else. She makes you comfortable with being yourself because she is comfortable with herself.

"That is something that changes your life. You may not understand why certain things happen but you always have the choice in the way you respond to it. She has chosen to respond to it in a positive way and she could easily have a negative atttitude and not want to engage with people but she choses to live life and make the best of her life. How hard she works on the court and how she treats people, looks out for her friends and her family ... She is very inspiring that way and is not
going to go around saying 'woe is me?' and having a pity party."

LEGEND JOINS BIG EAST
Former Olympic gold-medal winning coach Anne Donovan will be taking over at Seton Hall and UConn's Geno Auriemma, who succeeded Donovan as the U.S. senior national team coach, predictably lauded the hiring.

"I think it’s a great hire for Seton Hall," Auriemma said. "You’ve got a lot of different ways to go. Go get a young, up and coming assistant, go get an established head coach from college. Now you get somebody who has been a college coach, who’s been a pro coach, who’s been an Olympic gold medal winner as a player, as a coach. You talk about filling the whole box score, the whole stat sheet with one person, Seton Hall has certainly done that."