Uconn’s Lobo Never Rests On Her Star Qualities While Grabbing The Spotlight, 6-4 Senior Deflects The Attention

Rebecca Lobo is the No. 1 player on the nation’s No. 1 team in women’s basketball.

The 6-foot-4 Connecticut senior can score, rebound, pass and play defense. She’s wellspoken and pushes herself in the classroom as hard as she does on the court. She is a fine role model.

In every sense of the word, Lobo is a star. Except she doesn’t act like one.

Never has, according to her mother.

“Obviously, everybody feels good when they’ve done something well,” RuthAnn Lobo said from her home at Southwick, Mass. “But it’s almost like she’s embarrassed by the attention. In high school, she always tried to deflect it.”

Lobo remembers the time her daughter was nearing the Massachusetts state scoring record as a senior in high school. The local newspaper ran a “Lobo Watch” to show exactly how many points she needed and it would be a moment to savor when it happened.

Yet her family and coach had to beg her to shoot.

“She was passing the ball off and a lot of people were getting exasperated,” her mother said. “I finally had to say, `Look Rebecca, people are coming to the games to see you play. They want to see you break the record.’ And she sincerely said to me, `No they’re not.’

“So I said to her, `It’s not just for you. It’s for the team, it’s for the town, it’s for western Massachusetts. You need to do that.’ Then her coach said, `You need to do this so we can get it out of the way before the tournaments.”’

Lobo eventually broke the record and finished with 2,710 points - the most by any high school player in Massachusetts, male or female.

She has continued to be unaffected by her success at Connecticut, where she has had plenty. Lobo is the school’s top career rebounder and shot blocker, and No. 2 scorer. Among Big East players, she’s only the fourth to score more than 1,000 points and grab more than 500 rebounds.

Last season, Lobo was chosen to several All-America teams, plus the five-player academic All-America team. She has made the dean’s list every semester and was a Rhodes Scholar candidate.

“I hope I have my head on straight,” Lobo said. “But if it did get out of whack, my teammates would smack it right back into place. That’s the way our team is.

“We believe that we’re not just a group of 12 individuals and if we played as 12 individuals, we would not be where we are now.”

“I don’t know what we would do to keep her in line because we’ve never had to even worry about it,” teammate Jen Rizzotti said. “Because she handles everything so gracefully and she gives credit to everybody else.”

Lobo is averaging 16.7 points and 10.6 rebounds per game - down from last season’s figures of 19.2 and 11.2. But Connecticut wins most games so handily that Lobo averages only 28 minutes per game. Plus, four teammates also have double-figure scoring averages.

So Lobo doesn’t complain about stats, not when the key one is 20-0 - the Huskies’ record.

“I figured my numbers would go down this year because our team is very well balanced and we have a lot of offensive weapons,” Lobo said. “If the other team focuses on me, then I’m just going to kick it out to the others.

“I’m having a lot of fun. We’re winning.”

Lobo is averaging a career-high 4.1 assists.

“When she’s not scoring, she’s making the pass that’s letting somebody else score,” Rizzotti said. “She’s a great player and she motivates the rest of the team.”