BOZICH | How Sacred Heart's Grace Berger transformed Indiana women's basketball | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The Who’s Who of women’s college basketball lined up to recruit Grace Berger out of Sacred Heart Academy.

There was the University of Louisville, one of several Atlantic Coast Conference schools in the scrum. Ditto for the University of Kentucky, which gave her an option in the Southeastern Conference.

Stanford, a perennial national power, made its pitch. So did the Michigan. Don’t overlook Notre Dame.

Or Indiana, which aspired to great things that the program had never achieved.

But in women’s college basketball six years ago, there was another program that turned the most heads when it came into the gym: Connecticut, lead by Hall of Fame coach Geno Auriemma and its record 11 NCAA titles.

UConn wanted a long look at Berger. And when the Huskies looked, this is what they saw:

“It always seemed like Grace didn’t have a great game when UConn was watching,” said Berger’s father, Todd. “She just wasn’t her best.”

UConn will be watching Grace Berger again at 2 p.m. Saturday. Auriemma’s team will face Berger and Indiana in the Sweet Sixteen of the Bridgeport (Conn.) Regional.

The Huskies are the No. 2 seed, pushing for their 27th appearance in the Elite Eight. The Hoosiers are the No. 3 seed, pushing for their second Elite Eight and then first Final Four.

IU head coach Teri Moren and her staff never flinched at the competition to sign Berger from Sacred Heart, and Grace Berger has never flinched from her role in pushing the program to achieve things it had never achieved.

It’s safe to call her and her teammate, Ali Patberg, the two most transformative players in the history of the Hoosiers’ program. Grace Berger's numbers confirm that: 1,518 points, 633 rebounds and 435 assists, which translates to averages of 12.3 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.5 assists over four winning seasons.

But as a 6-foot guard, it's about more than numbers. Grace Berger is the player Moren entrusts to make plays when a winning play is necessary. The nation saw that Monday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

With less than a minute to play and IU tied with Princeton, Moren and her staff called a play that basically resulted in Grace Berger getting the ball 30 feet from the rim and beating three defenders on a driving, change-of-direction, twisting, contested layup.

Everybody knew what she was going to do — including Princeton. She did it anyway. Princeton could not make her pass the ball, lose her handle or miss the shot.

“Growing up, I was always told that if I could handle the ball, there would be a spot for me on the team by my dad,” Grace Berger said.

Nobody has watched her play more than her father, a former player for St. Xavier High School and Transylvania University. When I asked Todd Berger how many times he had seen his daughter make that move, the conversation wound its way back to the first game she played in a youth league in Middletown.

She was in Kindergarten, probably 6 years old. Most of the girls in the league were at least a year or maybe two years older. Her team won, and she scored 26 points because she dribbled the basketball faster and with more control than anybody in the gymnasium. She changed directions and dribbled away from trouble — just like she did against Princeton.

Legend around Grace Berger has it that she developed her ball-handling skills because she was so obsessive about the game that she forced herself to dribble two basketballs — one left-handed, the other right-handed.

“Just 10 minutes a day, every single day growing up. That’s what I did — and I still do it," she said. “I have the same routine that I had when I was 7 that I do before the game now, so just consistent work at it.”

Timeout. Todd Berger said that story is not true.

“It was more like an hour to an hour and a half every day,” he said. “In the winter, she would be in the basement or the furnace room just pounding the basketball. She couldn’t go to bed at night if she didn’t practice her dribbling.

“When the weather was nicer, she would go outside in the driveway. One day, she came inside and told me there was this man watching her.

“I came outside, and it was Rick Robey (the former UK star and Todd Berger’s friend). Another time, (former UK star) Nazr Mohammed stopped to watch her. They just couldn’t believe how good she was with the basketball.”

Believe it. Everybody believes it now, especially the people around the IU women’s basketball program. Although Todd Berger grew up in Louisville, Grace’s mother, Mary Charlotte, was from New Albany, Indiana, where the family lived until Grace was 5.

“There’s definitely some crazy IU fans in the family,” Todd Berger said.

That was a plus for the Hoosiers in the recruiting process. So was the opportunity to earn an IU degree, something Grace Berger achieved last year with a major in sports marketing and management and a grade point average of 3.9. She’s finishing work on a master’s in athletic administration and has already confirmed she’ll return for a fifth season at IU next fall.

Moren has called this team a delight to coach because of the leadership that comes from players like Berger. The coach is convinced Berger will play in the WNBA.

When Jerod Morris of The Assembly Call decided to add a women’s basketball podcast to package with men’s basketball radio show and podcast that he has hosted for more than a decade, Grace Berger was the pick to represent the IU women.

“It seemed at the beginning of the season that she would be the go-to player on a stacked team, so that made her interesting,” Morris said. “And every time I had heard her talk, she had a combination of quiet confidence and 'loud' humility that I really resonated with. So I thought she’d be talkative enough to carry a multi-episode show and give real insight on the team and season.”

Berger has carried The Grace Berger Show through eight episodes while helping Indiana navigate its way to a 24-8 record and its place in the Sweet Sixteen.

And Grace Berger made certain that Geno Auriemma will get one more look at her Saturday afternoon.