None of the triumphs from the past year could console the leading scorer in NCAA women's history.

Now a rookie guard for the WNBA's Portland Fire, Stiles had scored just six points in an exhibition loss to the Seattle Storm, missing all eight of her shots from the field.

"Worst game of my whole, entire career," she said after Tuesday night's game, forcing a smile. "Just one of those days when I couldn't do anything right."

Coming off a college season in which she practically did no wrong, Stiles is struggling to grasp the professional game -- even as she's being looked to as one of the league's next superstars.

"I don't want to compare her to Allen Iverson, because she's not, but that's the kind of player she can be in terms of her dominance relative to the league," teammate Vanessa Nygaard said.

"She's going to be great, and she doesn't even know it. She has no idea."

Stiles is a relative stranger to many fans in the WNBA's 16 cities, but she is revered in the Midwest. She averaged 46.3 points as a senior at Claflin High School in central Kansas.

At Southwest Missouri State, she scored 3,393 career points, helping build the small school into a national power. While leading the Lady Bears to the Final Four, Stiles' fearless drives to the basket and humble demeanor put her squarely in the spotlight.

Portland was pleased to find the 5-foot-8 Stiles still available with the fourth overall pick in the WNBA draft.

In her first preseason home game, she hit the winning jumper with 5.9 seconds left to beat Minnesota.

"I loved every minute," Stiles said. "I just thought to myself, 'God, this is what I do for a living?' This is not work."

Her teammates already adore her, and they have tried to ease the tension of training camp by poking fun at her celebrity.

"She was telling me a guy she went to college with sold a practice jersey on eBay and got like 200 bucks or something," Nygaard said. "So I told her, 'Jackie, I'm collecting the sheets. I'm taking the hair out of the drain. It's all going on eBay. I'm making some serious Jackie Stiles money.' "

Stiles was off her game from the opening tip the next time out, however. A layup attempt was swatted by Seattle rookie Lauren Jackson, and minutes later Stiles was called for palming the ball in the open court. She also suffered a cut above her left eye.

And Portland lost in overtime.

"Right now I'm doing so much thinking on the court, and when I'm thinking I'm not near as good, so I have to just get to the point where it all comes instinctively," she said.

She went into coach Linda Hargrove's office and asked whether the coach was sorry she'd drafted her. Later, alone in her suburban apartment, Stiles telephoned her father at 1:30 a.m., waking him, seeking some sympathy.

"She is just so hard on herself," said Pat Stiles, who teaches anatomy and chemistry at Claflin High and is the school's athletic director. "She's always been the underdog, the one trying to prove herself. Now she's got all these expectations, and I think the pressure might be getting to her a little bit."

In the locker room after Tuesday's game, Stiles' teammates took turns sitting beside her.

"I said, 'Right now, people are watching you to see how you're going to respond,' " guard Sophia Witherspoon said. "I told her, 'We need you to be mentally tough. We're going to help you to do that, to know that if you have a bad game -- so what? Michael Jordan had bad games.'"

At practice the next day, Stiles was smiling again and shrugged off her statistics from the first three games: an average of 5.7 points on 3-for-17 shooting.

"It kind of feels like I'm a freshman all over again, trying to learn everything," Stiles said.

"I've learned never to doubt her, she's amazed me so many times," her father said. "When she signed with SMS, I told her, 'You know, you'll never be an All-American; you'll never go to the Final Four,' and she made me eat crow."