MILWAUKEE — By all means, these two freshmen could have gone on the court and failed.

One was a 5-foot-7 point guard who would be shadowed all day by the best player in the country. The other had not played against this caliber of guards on the defensive or offensive side of the ball this season.

Yet Jess Strom and Tanisha Wright refused to be intimidated, and more importantly controlled, by the No. 1 Connecticut women's basketball team this past Saturday. Instead, the two girls from the Pittsburgh area put on a clinic that showed how someone should play at the guard spot in the NCAA Tournament.

Strom played the quintessential game for a point guard, especially in the early going. She opened the game by making crisp passes that resulted in easy layups and was perfect on her first three three-point shots. Strom finished with 12 points, eight assists and just one turnover.

What surprised people enough to knock them right out of their chairs was that Strom did it against a player whom the WNBA has been drooling over for years. Strom knew how good Naismith Award winner Sue Bird is, but she made a point of coming out and playing her normal game against the guard.

"Of course I was a little bit intimidated, I looked up to her when I was in high school and I know she's a great point guard," Strom said. "I had to forget her name and just play her like any other player."

Strom did not play like just any other guard on Saturday and neither did her best friend Wright, who was a huge factor in making the game close and who played well on both ends of the court.

Anointed as the team's defensive stopper by Penn State women's basketball coach Rene Portland, Wright had a game-high three steals and helped keep the UConn offensive juggernaut from running away with the game.

It was how Wright cut through the Huskies' tough inside defense to score on acrobatic layups that made radio commentators yell excitedly in disbelief.

Wright's play not only helped her to 18 points but it also helped open up some of her teammates for easy scores, something that Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma said his team did a poor job of preventing.

"You can play as hard as you want on defense but if you are not intelligent you look stupid," Auriemma said. "I think when Wright got in the lane, we did a half-decent job of helping. I don't think we ever rotated down to help the guy that was helping."

One of the reasons for that may have been that UConn was paying close attention to Kelly Mazzante. The nation's leading scorer was blanketed by Husky defenders all day, which gave other players like Strom and Wright the chance to shine offensively.

"We have Kelly Mazzante on our team so of course people are keying on her always, and that's basically what they did," Wright said. "They threw everyone on Kelly, so that definitely helps a lot because they don't know what we are doing. They may be thinking that I am going to pass the ball to her when in reality the play is for me."

The play was run for Wright and Strom many times and they both took advantage of it. Even though Penn State could not come up with the upset that would have shocked the college basketball world, Portland was still pleased by the performance that her two freshmen put on.

"These two freshmen just played the game and they didn't care that they were freshmen," Portland said.