Brianne O'Rourke is in the center, bobbing, screaming, crashing against her teammates' bodies. For a few brief moments, a small group comes together in a pregame huddle.

As the Penn State women's basketball team forms a singular body underneath the basket, O'Rourke remains there: exactly where she's supposed to be. The Penn State point guard is, traditionally, the focus of it all.

Though she's only a sophomore, O'Rourke had expectations heaped on her since Day One. That's been head coach Rene Portland's philosophy. Essentially, Portland deposits a program's worth of pressure on one player -- the point guard.

But that's why O'Rourke came to Penn State. She wants to be in the spotlight.

O'Rourke is the seventh in the lineage of Penn State point guards, which dates back to 1981. Since that time, Portland has generally recruited one point guard to step in every four years. She expects them to start all four years, and above all, she expects them to direct the team.

That's why, on an otherwise empty court, O'Rourke sometimes practices shooting an hour and a half before games. That's why she leads the team onto the floor before each game. And once on the court, O'Rourke barks out signals and uses animated hand gestures to run through plays.

"I like it because, you know, it's on your pace or you're out there and you're the leader and everyone's looking to you," she said. "I kinda like being at the top and people looking at you and you starting everything."

But O'Rourke's position also makes her the target when things start to falter. Five-game losing streak this season? Benched. Reaction from the coach? Our point guard isn't getting it done. She needs to regain control of the team.

"I think I kinda expected it, but I didn't realize how much they really meant, what they said, until I got here," O'Rourke said of the expectations. "This year I realize it a little more."

And in two seasons, O'Rourke remains right there in the center, trying to maintain a handle. Each day, each practice is a learning experience. Through high and low, O'Rourke continues -- and attempts to live up to expectations surrounding the Penn State point guard tradition -- the best way she knows how.

 

***

Annie Troyan paused, squinted her eyes and looked off to the distance. Portland's assistant was straining, grabbing at whatever memories she could retrieve. She paused briefly and then relented.

"I don't know where it started," she said. "[Portland's] always given us the leeway as point guards to take over the game inside the court."

Troyan does know where it started -- it started with her. But she couldn't remember the first day Portland turned over the reigns.

More than 25 years ago, Portland handed the ball to Troyan, her freshman point guard at the University of Colorado. It was 1980 and Portland was the head coach of Colorado's women's basketball team.

A year later, Portland left to coach Penn State. Troyan followed her. Twenty-seven years later and Portland is still at Penn State. So is Troyan, the 20-year associate head coach of the Lady Lions.

But in 1981, as a sophomore transfer, Troyan started the bloodline of Penn State point guards.

Troyan graduated from Penn State in 1984 and, in her three-year career, dished 632 assists and helped set a foundation for the four-year starter tradition. And, to a large extent, that framework is rooted upon mental toughness.

"Leadership on the court, that's the biggest thing," Troyan said. "The personality of our team follows the personality of our point guard. It always has."

And to this day, nobody has led finer than Suzie McConnell.

She has since married and goes by McConnell Serio as her surname, but was the second four-year point guard at Penn State (1984-88). And with 1,307 career assists, she ranks first all-time in the NCAA in assists for both male and female players. She has 481 more assists than the next closest Penn State point guard, Tina Nicholson, who led Penn State in the mid-90s. McConnell Serio was Penn State's first consensus All-American and in 1988 won an Olympic gold medal playing for Team USA.

"For me it was very special, being a part of Lady Lion basketball," McConnell Serio said. "My four years were incredible. The players that I was able to play for and playing for Rene and playing for the assistants. I was fortunate to play for her."

McConnell Serio, however, did not expect to walk into a starting role. She said Portland didn't promise anything during her recruitment. But after coming off the bench in her first game, McConnell Serio earned the starting job for the next four years.

"I don't think that Rene foresaw what was to come," McConnell Serio said. "I don't think she saw that would be the trend because I don't think that she had the confidence to start a freshman back then."

What was to come: Dana Eikenberg, Nicholson, Helen Darling and Jess Strom, all of whom followed McConnell Serio as four-year point guards.

Darling led the Lady Lions to their first and only Final Four in 2000 and was an All America selection in her senior season. Strom, who preceded O'Rourke from 2002-05, ranks fourth on the Big Ten's all-time assists list.

"I don't know when she recruited me that it was her expectation that I would be a four-year starter, but I think that's the trend now," McConnell Serio said. "It is your team when you come in as a freshman. There are a lot of expectation to lead the team and be the extension of Rene on the floor."

* * *

At the start of this season, a four-game winning streak was just about the best thing the Penn State faithful could've hoped for. After the first 11 days it appeared that all was right with the once-prominent program.

Penn State cruised through the start and enjoyed three consecutive home games. O'Rourke averaged 9.5 points, five assists, and 2.6 steals per game while turning the ball over 10 times in the opening four games.

Statistically, she picked up where last season left off. O'Rourke started all 29 games last season and was named to the 2006 Big Ten All-Freshman Team. Though she finished with 109 turnovers, she led the conference in assists per game (5.1) and ranked sixth among the nation's freshmen. She also shot 34.1 from the field.

The fifth game of the season, a trip to face a highly ranked Duke team, came crashing hard and threw the Lady Lions backward. And O'Rourke took the brunt of the blame following the unraveling, which sent the team into a five-game losing streak.

Her numbers slumped: During the skid she averaged 3.4 points, 1.8 assists and 1.4 steals per game. She also had 11 turnovers and 17 personal fouls in that span.

On Nov. 25, she was removed from the starting lineup. On Nov. 29, Penn State was still reeling from a humiliating loss to Saint Francis (Pa.), one of the worst in program history. And Portland voiced her displeasure during a press conference. O'Rourke received the sharpest criticism.

"The point guard here at Penn State has always had control of the program. At this time, I don't really believe that Brianne has that right now," Portland said at the time. "She can work to become our quarterback again, but it takes a whole lot of work. And unfortunately, we're going to have to step back for a minute until she gets that under control again.

"Until we get our point guard fixed, we're going to run into some difficulties. It's very similar to a major injury when it comes to us. We'll keep attacking to make sure that's taken care of. So we have some rehab in that position to do."

Looking back now, O'Rourke seems accepting of the criticism. She has an unwavering trust in the coaching staff.

"It didn't bother me, it just brought me back to reality, I guess," O'Rourke said. "It just really made me think about what needs to be done and what she's asking for -- this is reality and it's not just going to come to me, I actually have to work for it."

After three games as the sixth man, O'Rourke was reinserted into the starting lineup on Dec. 3. On the season, she is averaging 5.4 points and 4.05 assists per game and shooting 28.5 percent from the field, all down from last year.

* * *

Inside the Jordan Center, like all big arenas, is a complex maze of hallways and rooms. O'Rourke, it seems, knows all of the back allies well. She, along with the rest of the team, spent nearly her entire holiday break practicing there. But there's one room she always circles back to.

O'Rourke makes a daily visit to Troyan's office. They look at film or talk about things to work on. Sometimes they'll just sit and talk about life.

Troyan's reoccurring mantra: "How does Brianne beat Brianne?"

Troyan said a successful individual freshman campaign set up O'Rourke for a difficult second year. The expectations are higher, and O'Rourke has to match last season's output. Troyan thinks it's a mental hurdle.

"Brianne is tough as nails," Troyan said. "That kid works so hard. I'm trying to -- I hate to say soften her up -- but there's times when she's going too hard. We're trying to say, 'Go hard but then have poise.' "

In fact, O'Rourke was encouraged to do yoga this summer to help her relax. She admitted doing it a few times. But it's obvious in speaking with her that a competitive flame, instilled at a young age, still burns.

Her brothers, Joey, 27, and Justin, 22, grew up sports fans, and Brianne would join whenever they went out to play. And no matter what it was, everything turned into a game, said their mother, Norma O'Rourke.

In chess or checkers, the brothers would do whatever they could to cheat their way to victory over Brianne. If the siblings were going back to the car in the parking lot, it was always a race to see who could get to it first. When they were watching TV, they'd argue over who had the remote controller.

"They really shaped me into the person that I am today," Brianne said. "My brothers played a huge role in that."

When Brianne was in high school, Justin chauffeured her around to local playgrounds, looking for a game of pickup basketball. He and his friends would play games of five-on-five against some of the guys at the parks. Brianne was always the fifth member of his team.

"When she got on the court," Justin said, "they were thinking, 'Oh we're going to kill them, they have a 13-year-old girl on the team.' But they wouldn't be able to guard her."

And sometimes they would bet that their team would win. A few times, Justin said, they walked away from the playground with a few hundred dollars in winnings.

Justin looked back on those days on the playground with a hint of fondness in his voice. He then took a step back and examined where his sister is now.

"She's tough," Justin said. "I just want to see her team start wining. I know they can."

* * *

Brookline is a quaint area in the South Hill section of Pittsburgh. In pictures that date back to the early 1900s, it appears that it retains aspects of small-town allure upon which it was founded a century ago.

Brookline Boulevard has changed slightly, but the body of the street, the storefront facades, appears generally similar from black and white up to digital color.

Time there seems spanned from generation to generation, if only in bits and pieces. Spanning the time from one generation of point guard to the next, Brookline also serves as hometown for O'Rourke and McConnell Serio.

The two share an odd connection, not only sharing a town, but a birthday: July 29, McConnell Serio in 1966 and O'Rourke in 1987. Lines connecting the two were drawn even before O'Rourke touched a basketball.

But when she did, people began to fill them in, according to Brianne's mother. Around the age 10, some people from Brookline would say O'Rourke was the next Suzie McConnell.

"There wasn't any little girl at that age who could shoot like she could and dribble like she could at that age," Norma O'Rourke said.

O'Rourke played up one or two age groups when she was younger and when she went to high school, she was shipped to one of the premiere private school's in the area: Oakland Catholic. The same Oakland Catholic team that McConnell Serio was coaching at the time.

And as a freshman, O'Rourke beat out a senior to earn the starting point guard job. During her freshman year she led the team to the WPIAL championship. O'Rourke helped the team to a state championship in her senior year, too. But from those first moments as a freshman, the die was cast: O'Rourke was expected to lead from the start.

As a sophomore this year, however, O'Rourke was knocked off course. She cruised through preseason conditioning and had herself in great physical shape, McConnell Serio said. So it came as a shock to see her hunched over and pale in practice once the season started.

McConnell Serio asked if O'Rourke was OK. O'Rourke was having stomach pains but insisted she was fine. She couldn't sleep that night, so, as a precaution, she went to the hospital but was sent home. She returned for the next day's practice.

The next day, O'Rourke learned that her appendix had ruptured. She spent a few nights in the hospital.

"I couldn't believe how sick she was," McConnell Serio said. "It was unbelievable, where she came from being sick in that hospital bed."

O'Rourke refused appendix surgery. Instead, she decided to take medication and rest for a few weeks. She wanted to make a speedy recovery. She wanted to get back on the court.

"People were like, 'You really can play with it? Are you gonna be all right?' " O'Rourke said. "I was like, 'Hey, they said I could play with it, so I'm gonna play. Why have surgery now when I can play with it?' "

That, her brother Justin might say, is her "Steel City attitude." Through it all, O'Rourke continues to play. From high school through now. At a young age she was tabbed as the next big thing. She's arrived at the big stage and now she's trying to assert herself in the star role in her own fashion.

She has the load of 20-plus years of tradition on her back. And amid scalding scrutiny, she's managed to keep basketball in perspective.

"I don't think she wants to be put in a mold," Justin said. "I think she wants to be described as her own player, but she does want to make her team proud and keep in that tradition."