HARTFORD, Conn. - A week ago, it was easy to have doubts about Diana Taurasi.

In the second half of the season, she didn't seem on top of her game. For all the hype, she averaged just 15.8 points per game. And she couldn't lead her team to wins against either Villanova at the tail end of the season or Boston College in the semifinal of the Big East tournament.

Then I came to Hartford. Then I saw her light up the Hartford Civic Center in the East Regional Final against Penn State. And then I didn't have a doubt at all.

The showdown with Penn State for a coveted trip to the Final Four opened with the first three consecutive jumpers for the Huskies straight from Taurasi. The next UConn basket was off of her assist. By the end of her 36 minutes, Dee, as she's known up in Connecticut, led her team and every other player in the tournament with 27 points, while hitting 8-for-15 from the field.

Penn State's big gun, Kelly Mazzante, who averages 21.3 points per game, tallied just 14, shot 5-for-17 from the field and didn't get to pose in center court for the celebratory photos.

The difference is that for Taurasi, it's all about the games you get baseball caps for winning, it's about the times when you can climb a ladder to cut a net down after a victory, it's about the nights that put your squad in the national spotlight.

And the effects of that are clear. While Taurasi will end her career with four Final Four appearances and two NCAA championship rings, Mazzante will have her scoring titles and this Elite Eight showing. Big game performance is what matters the most, and even Mazzante recognizes that.

Mazzante said she would trade all 2,919 points to be playing for a national championship.

After four years of Dee, Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma knows how to put into words the role that Taurasi plays in the big game bang of UConn.

"The best way to explain it is that we have Diana and you don't," he said the Sunday before the game. "And every other team in this tournament wishes they had her."

Again, last night, it was one of those bling, bling games. And again, last night, much to the lament of the Lady Lions, it was another one of those times when Princess Di was unshakable.

Take for instance, the stretch of time in the second half in which the Lions began to orchestrate a comeback with a 16-4 run that cut the lead to nine. Taurasi's answer was a cool three that sucked all the momentum from anything blue and white.

"That was a deadly answer that they have to your comeback," Penn State women's basketball coach Rene Portland said.

A deadly answer, without a doubt. Deadly for the Lady Lions, and deadly for the two voters who didn't select Taurasi as a first team All-American, for those who claim she should not have won the 2004 Naismith award and for the person that Auriemma called out for writing a letter-to-the-editor, saying she doesn't deserve the accolades she has accumulated.

Auriemma talked about how the past five years at UConn, in which he has sent a team to the Final Four every year, have been a fairy tale for him, and how he hoped it could end that way for his seniors.

For Taurasi, whom the Connecticut media guide dubs as "The Best...Ever," a fairy tale ending would be a third consecutive NCAA title. For now, it was more than fitting that Connecticut's finest, in her final appearance in the Hartford Civic Center, would write more of the fairy tale script building up to whatever ending develops in New Orleans.

Before this year's tournament commenced, fellow senior Maria Conlon was asked by ESPN.com how ready Taurasi was for the tournament.

"It's tournament time," she told them. "It's Diana time."

Tournament time is what Diana is made for, and nowhere was that more clear than last night.