ESPN.com - ncw - None of this seems fair to anyone

Maybe it's a little like that writing about the Huskies star seeing her college career come to an end a month and half before she expected it to. At first you feel ... well, wordless.

But here we are, another star fallen. More phrases to string together about how she'll have to grow and learn from this, how the team will try to rally behind her, how ... everything happens for a reason.

ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH! No, it doesn't!

You can't even count all the things that have happened for no good reason just since 2001 started. A massive earthquake striking India, where they apparently have like one crane per million people. The lacrosse coach in California being killed by her cretinous neighbors' dogs. The Oklahoma State plane that crashed, killing 10 people, including two players.

Death, of course, is the measuring stick that we're all supposed to use to determine perspective about everything. How bad is it? Is it gonna kill you? Did anybody die?

Some folks will race to cram this down your throat, this insistence that perspective has to be immediate. It doesn't have to be.

Perspective -- real perspective -- usually comes more gradually. For some people, that may be a couple of days. Others may take longer.

"She'll handle it fine," Auriemma said of Abrosimova. "She'll get through it like she gets through everything else.

"At first you don't want to believe it, and I think (Monday) the shock of it probably hit her really hard. Here's a kid who's been playing basketball year round, now she's had it taken away from her."

For how long is uncertain. Will Abrosimova or Tennessee's Tamika Catchings be able to play in the WNBA this summer? Abrosimova has a torn ligament in her foot, Catchings has one in her knee. Catchings has talked about returning in time to perhaps play in the NCAA Tournament, which is the kind of thing kids say, bless their hearts.

You can't say it can't happen, although things obviously are quite different for injured senior stars now than they were even five years ago. A kid whose only pro future was some sort of uncertain overseas venture might have been more inclined to say, "Put a brace on me and let me play out this season. This is it. I'm never going to have anything like this again."

Now, with the WNBA, the end of a star's college career -- premature or otherwise -- isn't the same sorrowful send off into basketball exile.

In that, there's comfort to be taken for Abrosimova and Catchings, along with their many fans.

	“	It not only hurt those two teams, but all of women's basketball. You want to see them, and it affects the game as a whole. ”
		— Marsha Sharp, Texas Tech coach

Still ... we all feel cheated by fate that two of the college game's stars are yanked away like this.

"It not only hurt those two teams, but all of women's basketball," Texas Tech coach Marsha Sharp said. "You want to see them, and it affects the game as a whole."

But we all know the game will go on. It did even in Stillwater, Okla., this week, where all that fate took away is not going to be given back.

No space stays empty; somebody will come along to fill it.

In the case of Abrosimova, it became evident in UConn's loss last week at Tennessee that freshman Diana Taurasi will try to fill the gap -- as Abrosimova herself tried to do in 1998 when Nykesha Sales ruptured her Achilles' tendon and missed the end of the season.

The Huskies have had a major injury to a star in four of the past five seasons: Shea Ralph (knee) in the 1997 NCAA Tournament and then again late that summer, Sales in January of '98, Sue Bird (knee) in December '98 and now Abrosimova.

What stands out, obviously, is that the season the Huskies didn't lose a star -- last year -- they won their second NCAA title. Likewise, they remained relatively healthy in '95, when they won their first.

But you can be certain that thoughts of a third title were secondary to UConn fans when they heard the news of how serious Abrosimova's injury was.

The first thing that probably hit all of the was, "Oh, no, not with her parents finally coming to see her later this month."

The story of Ludmila and Oleg Abrosimova saving their money to make the trip for senior night in Storrs on Feb. 23 has been well-documented. They've never been out of Russia before -- but remember, it hasn't been all that long that you could get out of Russia.

Sure, we Americans have our stereotypes firmly in place. But the image of the blue-collar worker in Russia making next to nothing in salary by American standards is not a myth. Oleg Abrosimova works at a shipyard and makes, reportedly, about the equivalent of $3,000 a year.

The best deal you can get with months-in-advance purchase of two adult round-trip air fares from St. Petersburg to New York City is about $1,500.

Then there's getting from NYC to Storrs.

Think about what half your yearly salary is. Now think how long it would take you to save that much.

But the Abrosimovas are coming, and they likely have no idea the amount of affection that will engulf them when they escort their hobbled daughter onto the Gampel Pavilion floor. It might make the coldest Cold Warrior melt.

But it won't melt anything much at the NCAA. It's frustrating to think of the kids like Abrosimova whose parents don't have the means to see their children play at least once a season.

The NCAA does have a special-assistance fund that provides money to athletes for emergency situations or family crises, such as the need to return home for a funeral or serious illness of a relative. The development of this fund was a big humanitarian step for the NCAA, which has sometimes seemed very lost in the letter and not the spirit of rules.

But regardless of what certainly has to be a universal truth -- nothing is more important in human existence than family -- there's no real way for kids to get some help in a non-emergency situation.

Sure, you can say that the family made a decision for the kid to play so far away. You can say the kid is getting tuition, room and board, athletic gear, some great trips. You can say that with some 70,000 athletes in Division I alone, it's impractical and illogical to bring up individual cases because the rules have to apply to everybody.

"We want to do everything we can to help student-athletes while they're in our program, while working within the rules," said Jeff Hathaway, UConn's senior associate director of athletics. "We're not going to use Svet as a situation to make a statement or not make a statement.

"We've been down the road so many times with this issue. My comment isn't going to change NCAA rules."

Why not allow a student-athlete to take out a low-interest loan for the specific purpose of bringing parents or other family members for a visit during the season -- with such a loan program administered and financed by the NCAA, based on need?

Fair enough, but what does change them? Administrators have to say stuff like this, but they also do have the opportunities to at least try to affect change.

As it stands now, of course, that would violate the NCAA's nebulous principle that student-athletes not be allowed benefits that other students can't get. Which is already such a waffled premise that you wonder how it's even theoretically maintained.

Does the NCAA have enough money to do this? Or give athletes stipends? Are you kidding?

Columnist David Teel of the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., a former co-worker and longtime keen observer of college athletics, did the math a couple of years ago when the NCAA received its $6 billion TV contract for the men's basketball tournament.

Teel figured out that the NCAA could pay every Division I athlete a stipend of $1,000 a year -- a total cost of about $70 million -- and it wouldn't even put that great of a dent into the average annual revenue from the TV deal: $545 million.

Of course, this entire issue is the most vast, compelling and difficult-to-navigate aspect of college athletics. Far more educated and experienced folks than myself grapple with it every day.

And I'll acknowledge that it's simplistic, naive, perhaps myopic to be so disturbed that even with the vast amount of money around college athletics -- and at UConn, that includes the rare revenue-producing women's basketball program -- there was no way for anyone to help the Abrosimovas come over here more than once to see their daughter.

It was unfortunate even before she got hurt, now it's heart-wrenching.

Yes, the season will go on. We'll see if UConn still ends up with the No. 1 seed everyone came in expecting the Huskies to get. Abrosimova, like Catchings, will have rehab to do and decisions to make. Basketball continues without her. Auriemma is right, of course. She'll be OK.

But on Feb. 23, whether you're a UConn diehard or the furthest thing from it, you won't be able to help but think of how it could have -- should have -- been different.

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached via e-mail at mvoepel@kcstar.com.

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