Question for Diana Taurasi: How would you compare yourself to Alana Beard?

	If there's one thing Taurasi doesn't lack -- it's confidence.

Taurasi: "We're a lot alike. She can do anything she wants. And she's a basketball player who's an athlete, not an athlete who tries to be a basketball player."

Question for Alana Beard: How would you compare yourself to Diana Taurasi?

Beard: "We are very, very different. When we met, I was really quiet. I wasn't the type of girl to go up and talk to people. She was crazy. We're totally different."

Who's right? Truth is, the best two players in women's college basketball -- scheduled to meet for the first time as collegians Saturday night (7 ET, ESPN2) in Durham -- are startlingly more similar than they were when they met three years ago. So too are Duke and UConn -- the two best teams in women's hoop. And the merging of personalities and programs are linked.

Taurasi and Beard, both juniors, met on what can now be considered the Dream Team of women's basketball. The year was 2000, and the team was the USA Junior World Championship squad. The roster included Beard, Taurasi, Nicole Powell (now at Stanford) and Ashley Robinson (Tennessee). Together they represent women's basketball's first wave of the do-everything guard/wing/small forward. They might eventually be to the WNBA what the Class of '83 was to the NFL. And Taurasi and Beard are sure to be Elway and Marino.

But back then, Beard was an almost-silent trucker's daughter from Louisiana and Taurasi was a never-silent former soccer goalie's daughter from Cali.

Geno Auriemma coached the team. "The first time I saw (Alana) at practice," he recalls, "I was immediately taken by the seriousness with which she approaches everything she does."

There was no fun for Beard -- just basketball. "I was very antisocial," she says.

Taurasi? Well, she was about as self-conscious as a streaker. When she roomed with Beard in the Czech Republic and the two couldn't get to sleep one night, Taurasi picked up the phone and pranked called the coaching staff. "Me no speak no Czech Republic!" she squealed into the receiver while Beard stifled her giggles into a pillow.

Here's the difference made simple: Taurasi decided to go cross country to Storrs, Conn., even though her mother had told Auriemma to his face that she didn't endorse the decision; the only reason Beard kept Duke on her list was because her mother forced her.

And the two reacted completely differently to college life. Taurasi was too loud, too brave, too everything. She shot the lights out and then looked for a power generator. Her older teammates pushed her around to teach her a lesson in dues-paying. She shrugged and prattled on like a hobo on a soapbox. In the last game of her freshman season, she went 1-for-15 in a national semifinal loss to Notre Dame. But there was Taurasi a year later, making the game-breaking shot to put her Huskies safely in the lead in the NCAA title game against Oklahoma.

Beard nearly didn't make it at Duke. She was so homesick that many days would begin with heavy sighs and end in tears. "I didn't go out," she says. "I had to deal with everything myself. I didn't have my family to help me."

Still, Beard had that ultra-earnest work ethic; she won all but one daily practice award her entire freshman season.

But here's where the differences begin to fade. On the court, Taurasi and Beard show almost the same unguardable traits. Taurasi has extremely long legs -- her inseam is an almost impossible 36 inches, even though her height is only twice that. That gives her NBA range and surprising rebounding ability. Beard has go-go-gadget arms. That gives her sick defensive prowess and ... surprising rebounding ability. This is the essence of a new realm in the women's game: A decade ago, long arms and legs made for awkwardness; now they make for dominance.

And along the way, Beard has grown into the role Taurasi always so easily filled. Smiles are now frequent and not forced. Orders are given and not just heeded. The wallflower has blossomed. Just in the last month, Beard has made it a mission to scare the bejeezus out of coach Gail Goestenkors. She's hid in the aisle of the team bus and grabbed her leg from behind, then hid in the bushes outside a restaurant and jumped out at the last possible moment. Sounds a lot like the UConn guard who laughs when her coach lays into her for shooting too much.

Duke has come out of its shell as a program as well. Coach G has taken Beard and Co. from Sweet Sixteen to Final Four to No. 1 in the nation at midseason. A team that couldn't get anybody other than friends and family to attend a game now has Cameron Indoor Stadium sold out for a Saturday night game. This weekend there will be Durham boys and girls in Beard jerseys to match the Taurasi unis that populate Husky Nation.

No one doubts that these two teams could meet again before next year's return engagement in New England. In the same era that Beard and Taurasi have transcended the physical limits of past generations, Beard and the Blue Devils have transcended the monopoly of UConn vs. Tennessee. Both revolutions are built to last. Beard can see the parallels; she just won't say it. Taurasi, however, will say whatever's on her mind.

Question: What will end up making the difference this Saturday between Beard and Taurasi? UConn and Duke?

Answer: Not much. Not much at all.

Eric Adelson is a staff writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at eric.adelson@espn3.com.