"Pressure Jackie Stiles!" Chancellor said as the 5-foot-8 guard dribbled upcourt. "Let's see if she can handle it!"

Really, Chancellor already knew the answer.

"I've never seen a workaholic or a 'shootaholic' like she is," Chancellor, the Houston Comets coach, said after practice. "Some people want to eat for a living, others want to do other things. This girl just wants to play ball. I've never seen anything like it."

It's been a year since Stiles, the gregarious WNBA rookie of the year who's trying to make the USA team, propelled her underdog Southwest Missouri State Bears into the Final Four in St. Louis, where they lost to Purdue in the semifinals.

"I'm going through some major withdrawals right now," Stiles said of watching the NCAA tournament, which is culminating in the Final Four this weekend at the Alamodome. "I'd give anything to be out there again. It's the best time of your life."

Not that she's minding life too much right now — even less than two weeks after surgery in which she had a cyst removed from an ovary. Stiles, who turned 23 in December, was supposed to rest in the week following the operation, but instead she worked out four times on her own.

"We couldn't keep her off the durn floor," Chancellor said.

Stiles, who is from a small town in Kansas and is used to playing underdog, said the main reason for her early workouts is simple.

"I know I have a long way to go before I make the team," she said of being one of eight players trying to make the 12-member USA squad that already has guaranteed spots to five players. "And I don't ever want to take one day for granted."

Pat Stiles, then the varsity basketball coach at Claflin (Kan.) High School, placed a basketball in his daughter's hands when she was 3 years old.

"He'd show me a drill and I'd go off and try to master it while he was coaching the team," Stiles said. "That's how it all got started."

Stiles played several sports while growing up, but she grew more attached to basketball as a teen-ager, and a little encouragement from a college assistant coach didn't hurt. When Stiles was 12 and playing in an AAU tournament, SMSU assistant coach Lynnette Robinson noticed the quick girl with the deadly aim.

"If you keep working hard," Robinson told a wide-eyed Stiles, "you could earn a Division I scholarship."

"It's amazing what that little bit of encouragement meant to me," Stiles said. "From then on I wanted to play Division I basketball and become an Olympian."

In her senior year at SMSU, Stiles became the all-time leading scorer in NCAA women's basketball history. She then earned the WNBA rookie honors with the Portland Fire. Now she's angling for a slot on the USA team that will compete in the World Championships, set for Sept. 14-25 in China.

"This is my ultimate dream," she said, "to make the national team."

The WNBA formed when Stiles was in high school, giving her another goal to shoot for — playing for pay in the USA instead of overseas. That's another reason Stiles refuses to take her current opportunities for granted.

"To be on this team ... these are players I had posters of hanging in my room, and now I'm on the court with them," Stiles said while glancing around at the likes of Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes and Dawn Staley. "I just can't get over that, but you have to on the court, or they're really going to dominate you."

That hasn't happened so far, even as Stiles battles back from offseason wrist surgery, and the removal of the cyst. Her SMSU teammates used to joke that Stiles' wrist was going to rot off because she shot the ball so much on her own, prompting her to claim that maybe that's finally come true.

"You don't break the NCAA scoring record by just sitting on your rear every day and not shooting," WNBA opponent and USA teammate Chamique Holdsclaw said of Stiles' work ethic. "She works hard and she's willing to put the extra time in."

Even so, Chancellor admits he wasn't sure Stiles, at 5-8 and 144 pounds, could handle the daily grind of professional basketball.

"I'll be frank, I was amazed at what she did in the WNBA," Chancellor said. "I didn't know if she was strong enough, but she really is."

Stiles averaged 14.9 points per game and made 43 percent of her 3-point attempts, tops among rookies.

"If you're a shooter, you're a shooter," said Holdsclaw, who plays for the Washington Mystics. "I mean, look at Allen Iverson in the NBA. He and Jackie are probably about the same weight and everything. You've got be able to find ways to be successful in the league, and that's what she's done.

"I'm sure coming out of college a lot of people wondered how she would do. But as a player you can't really worry about that. You just have to come out and do what you love to do."

Said Stiles: "If you believe in something and you work hard, you can achieve anything you want to. No matter where you're from or how big you are."