Greensboro, N.C.
Even when the players stay four years, which is how it works in the women’s game, time flies.
As such, it was hard to believe that Essence Carson’s college basketball career ended Tuesday night when second-seeded Rutgers sagged in the second half and fell to No. 1 Connecticut, 66-56. Returning to the Final Four for the first time since 2004 are the Huskies, a grudge match with Pat Summitt and Tennessee looming. Going home is Rutgers, to reload for next season without its senior captains, Carson and Matee Ajavon.
Seems like yesterday (for me, anyway) that Carson spurned more elite programs north and south to remain a Jersey girl. Given that catchy stage name, blessed with diverse musical skills, Carson did not have a game that looked correspondingly rhythmic, all that free flowing, when she came to my town with Eastside High School of nearby Paterson during her senior year to dominate our local public school team. She was best defined then as a long-armed blur of vigorous activity and now as a three-time Big East defensive player of the year — in other words, the prototypical C. Vivian Stringer player.
She knew herself, and where she wanted to be and before she had played a minute at Rutgers, Carson proved to be a seasoned recruiter, too. She asked a high school rival and friend, Ajavon of Newark’s Malcolm X Shabazz, “Don’t you want to look up in the stands and see your mom?”
Ajavon thought this over, forgot about Maryland and Louisiana State. As teammates, Carson and Ajavon helped the ever-determined Stringer push the boulder up the hill, almost to the top last season, before being knocked off in the title game by Tennessee.
At that Final Four in Cleveland, during the group interviews that are invariably dominated by coachspeak, it was obvious that Carson had a whole lot to say. In a less public setting, I asked Carson about her status as de facto spokeswoman. She called it “a role I welcome.” Not long after, the country knew why.
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Do a Google search on Essence Carson and Don Imus and you will find countless tributes to a young woman who was so taciturn while going about her business on the court as a freshman that teammates called her Robo.
Carson would say she was biding her time, striving to fit in. True enough, when her voice was needed, in the days after the infamous shock-jock slur and particularly at the Rutgers news conference that was broadcast with the urgency of a presidential address, Carson had as much game as the most polished public speaker.
Majoring in music at Rutgers, especially versed in jazz and rhythm and blues on the piano, saxophone and bass guitar, Carson that day rejected the air balls thrown up by those, including Imus, who tried to blame the boorishness on common cultural stereotypes promoted by hip hop and rap.
“Music of that genre has desensitized America to some of the words,” she said before adding, “It doesn’t make it any more right to say it.” Once again, this time unwittingly, she was selling Stringer and Rutgers, not to a fellow recruit but as an instant role model.
“Hearing E speak, oh my goodness, it was amazing,” Nikki Speed, one of the five McDonald’s all-Americans coming to Rutgers next season to replace the two being lost, said when I interviewed her last month for a column about how Stringer had harvested a class that Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma would be proud to have.
Vanquished again, Stringer and her Scarlet Knights aren’t going away soon. Nobody knows this better than Auriemma, but when, if ever, will Stringer get to where Auriemma has been five times? It may be critically superficial to measure a coach by the number of national titles won but it is an inescapable fact that Stringer, having steered three different schools to the Final Four, is still looking for her first after 36 years. After last year’s run, in the wake of the Imus abuse, it is no stretch to think she wanted it now, more than ever, and especially for seniors from north Jersey.
Injuries decimated Stringer’s bench and the N.C.A.A. bracket builders put Connecticut in Rutgers’s way back to the Final Four. Stringer complained about the draw, carrying the victim thing a bit too far, no doubt trying to fire up the troops. Longtime observers have lauded her defensive tactics and motivational skills while wondering about her ability to coach championship offense. She, in turn, has reminded them that she has never had the most prized national recruits.
On Tuesday night, she had Carson, leading Rutgers to a ferocious start at both ends, to a 14-point lead, playing as well as any player in the country. Then the emotion wore off, Connecticut made its run, wore Rutgers and its thin rotation down.
Help is on the way for the next four years, though, thanks in large part to Carson. Long after she is gone, her impact will be felt.
E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com