To University of Illinois sports fans, Ashley Berggren is the hard-driving, relentless basketball player whose dramatic rise in stature has mirrored her team's.

She's the ignition for an offensive engine that last season powered its way to a school-record 2,640 points and an average of 82.5 points per game that ranks second in school history.

   CHAMPAIGN  Billed as a matchup between All-Americans Murriel Page of Florida and Tracy Reid of North Carolina, the more appropriate showdown evolved into this: The Tar Heels vs. the Assembly Hall rims.

   Score one for the rims.

CHAMPAIGN – An announced gathering of 8,275 collected in the Assembly Hall on Sunday, hoping to witness the emergence of an Illinois women's basketball program that yearned for the national spotlight.

Old Dominion, accustomed to the glare of national television, shrugged and wondered what the fuss was about.

   CHAMPAIGN  Old Dominion received a scare Sunday when All-America point guard Ticha Penicheiro hurt her left ankle while scrambling for a loose ball.

   The Monarchs senior remained on the floor for several minutes, writhing in pain, before being carried off the court with 27 seconds left in the first quarter.

   CHAMPAIGN  Don''t suppose those first 10 minutes could be played over, huh?

   "I wish we had that first quarter back," Theresa Grentz said after her Illinois women''s basketball team stumbled badly out of the gate Sunday afternoon in the State Farm Tip-Off Classic at the Assembly Hall. "We looked like a poor deer that got caught in the headlights."

NORFOLK, Va. – Ticha Penicheiro was a 15-year-old basketball prodigy, selected by her native Portugal to train and go to school with others of her precocious ability.

Allison Greene was a recent graduate of Dartmouth College with ambitions of a professional basketball career. Ambitions that took her to Amadora, Portugal, in late 1990.

CHAMPAIGN – On this, the day the University of Illinois women's basketball team tips off its 1997-98 season, here's a by-the-numbers look at the State Farm Tip-Off Classic:

4 – The number of players in the tournament who received votes for The Associated Press preseason All-America team. Old Dominion guard Ticha Penicheiro and North Carolina forward Tracy Reid, right, were selected to the five-player squad, while Illinois guard Ashley Berggren and Florida forward-center Murriel Page were among the 10 others listed on ballots.

   Two years ago, they were coming off their eighth consecutive losing season and headed for yet another.

   Now, they are considered Top 10 material by all the preseason polls and are daring to discuss the possibility of winning a national championship.

   How did this University of Illinois women''s basketball program get from there to here?