Sorry about everything Notre Dame and Connecticut. Same for you Purdue.

This Women's Final Four is all about Jackie. No matter how many titles are gathered in St. Louis for the NCAA's 20th annual event for the women -- and there a combined three between Purdue and Connecticut -- the biggest story of the tournament is Jackie Stiles.

The 5-foot-8 shooting guard from Southwest Missouri State is Pete Maravich with a ponytail, Dr. J with a big ol' toothy grin. She's got game to the point that Stiles won the Wade Trophy this week as women's player of the year. She has already broken the women's career and single-season scoring records.

In a game criticized for lacking the skill of the men, Stiles is that magnificent one-on-one player who stares down the competition and exudes, "I can't be stopped."

"Jackie, in my opinion, is the best player out there this year," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "She can do it all. Anybody that thinks she is not good has not seen her play."

That will change this weekend. St. Louis will become her stage. The Savvis Center will become "The House of Stiles." The home-standing Lady Bears -- Springfield, Mo., is three hours away on I-44 -- are the lowest-seeded team in the field. She and they will be the loveable underdogs.

Conventional thinking is that the national champion will come out of Friday's semifinal between top seeds Notre Dame and defending champion UConn. The two superpowers are playing for the third time this season, having split two other meetings. Fifth-seeded Southwest Missouri State's opponent, Purdue, won the title two years ago.

"Until your team wins big and wins on the national level, it's very difficult to be recognized as good a team as you are," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "Is Jackie Stiles a better player than last year? Probably. But her team is better, too. Until you win and win on national television, people tend not to pay that much attention to you. It's unfair but that's the way it is."

Maybe that will change this weekend. The nation will be treated to Stiles' charisma that is Dennis the Menace, Huck Finn and Shirley Temple rolled into one. After fouling out in the regional final Monday against Washington, Stiles received a standing ovation from the predominantly Husky crowd. Fans waited for an hour in the Spokane Arena that night chanting her name, waiting for a glimpse of "Jackie!" Seconds after the plane touched down in Springfield the next night, someone thrust a sign out that read, "Jackie, will you marry me?"

Never mind that it was a 5-year-old and never mind that Stiles already is engaged to a local high school coach.

Both Kansas basketball coach Roy Williams and Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder brought up Stiles' name during press conferences this week. Their comments were apropos of nothing except admiration of her greatness. That and the fact that Stiles is the hottest basketball story out there not containing the words "Shane Battier."

"It's the greatest untold story out there," Southwest Missouri State men's coach Barry Hinson said. "I thought the Washington coach hit the nail on the head. She said the only tragedy is that it is in her fourth year and the last two games she has taken the national spotlight. It's so sad. Had we been in Chicago, had we been in Dallas, had we been in St. Louis, in a marketable area where the national media picked up on it more so, there'd be a Jackie Watch every day."

The Watch has begun. Small children try to get a glimpse at her. Adults in the homey Ozark town of Springfield adore Stiles as the perfect role model. Forget about pinning her down for an interview since Monday when the Lady Bears advanced to their first Final Four since 1992. There's just too much to do: practice, awards show in Minneapolis, bus ride to St. Louis. The media finally got her to sit down Friday at the Final Four press conferences.

"It's been a dream and now we're actually living it," Stiles said. "St. Louis, you can't script it any better than that. I can't even describe what I'm feeling."

Probably the same elation that scalpers felt when Southwest Missouri made it to St. Louis. The Savvis Center seats 22,527 for basketball. The school has been allocated only 800 tickets. The Hammons Center typically sells out with 9,000 folks to see Stiles and the Lady Bears. Do the math. It isn't going to be pretty for some wallets of rabid fans.

"This ticket is more popular than The Last Supper with Jesus Christ," Hinson said. "In this circumstance you'd talk about selling 10,000 to 15,000 easy. I know one thing the ticket scalpers are fired up. They're grinning ear to ear."

Hinson has become a mouthpiece of sorts for Lady Bears basketball. Frequently, he is easier to reach than Lady Bears coach Cheryl Burnett. That's curious for a women's program that can use all the publicity it can get. Hinson, though, is glad to spread the good word that Burnett sometimes won't.

"I know there's jealousy at other programs," Hinson said. "There's absolutely subzero here. ... I don't think when Naismith invented the sport, he limited it to a gender. If we could shave Jackie's hair off and put a buzz top on her we'd suit her up, too. All the Lady Bears play with the guys during the summer. There's a dramatic difference but people always ask me, could she play on a men's team?

"I say if you put her as a two guard on a men's team with a really good point guard then she could play. She's going to make an open shot. Shoot, who knows, she probably could have scored on us at will."

Hoosiers and The Natural have nothing on Stiles' story. She came out of Claflin, Kan., population 616. She is the leading scorer in Kansas high school history -- girls and boys -- having averaged 46.4 points in her career. She once scored 71 points in a game.

Fans would start setting up lounge chairs at 9 a.m. outside Claflin's gym to wait until the doors opened at 4:30 p.m. for her games that night. Recruiters pelted her with phone calls shortly after midnight June 21, 1996, the first day the NCAA allowed coaches to make contact.

Finally, her dad Pat, Claflin's athletic director, suggested she sign with Connecticut and sleep on it. She signed and slept but never faxed in the scholarship papers that would have changed the person and the UConn program.

Instead, she felt a bond with Southwest Missouri State where she had attended summer camps.

"SMS was in my heart," Stiles said. "I think I was born to be a Lady Bear."

As her game grew so did her heroine status. As a 12-year-old, Stiles was madly in love with her new baby sister Carlie. But Carlie had been born with congenital encephalopathy. The part of the brain that controlled her motor skills did not develop.

Somehow between track, basketball and school, Jackie was able to fit Carlie in every day. During one of the few days that Carlie was not sick, the Stiles family went to watch Jackie's final seventh-grade game.

On the way home, 9-month-old Carlie stopped breathing. She was revived but a week later Carlie died. In her sister's casket, Jackie placed her most prized possession: a gold medal from a national track meet.

"Seeing what she went through and here I am healthy," Stiles told the Springfield News-Leader. "I set out to accomplish great things for her just because she didn't get an opportunity."

So the game you see has a drive buried deep in the All-American's soul. Stiles is not physically imposing but she is fearless. Washington laid down "The Jackie Rules" on defense to stop her Monday night. Stiles scored 32.

The Huskies should have known. Against Duke, Stiles became the first player to score 1,000 points in a season. The Lady Bears have seen it all anyway -- box and one, zone, man-to-man, double-, triple-teams. If defenses focus on Stiles, guard Tara Mitchem (13.6 points) and forward Carly Deer (9.0 points) know enough to take advantage of holes that open up for them.

Stiles' game harkens back to the old days when it wasn't heresy for a single player to control a game. It's also refreshing. Not every team has to have five players average 14 points a game and play within a system that glorifies the coach and not the players.

Sorry Irish, Huskies and Boilermakers. This weekend it's all about Jackie.