SPOKANE - Those personal moments you can't forget.

Ben Hogan lacing a 3-iron at the U.S. Open, Hugh McElhenny weaving down the field with a screen pass for the 49ers, Willie Mays tracking a ball in center field for the Giants.

And Jackie Stiles scoring 41 points Saturday night against Duke in the West Regional of the NCAA women's tournament.

"Ever seen anything like her?" someone asked after the game. (When you get old, people ask you things like that.)

"Pete Maravich," I said.

Defenders running at her from all directions, Stiles broke double- and triple-teams to score when there was no shot, driving the ball so hard at defenders they had to retreat. And then, in an instant, stopping, elevating, falling back and finally floating a soft shot into the basket.

She brought back the fadeaway jumper, a shot lost in today's men's game of dunking and dribbling. Wearing her ratty kneepads, she looked like something out of the '60s. She looked like Pete Maravich with a ponytail.

Washington will stay in its zone tonight as the Huskies battle Southwest Missouri State for a berth in the women's Final Four. Which is good.

You can't stop Jackie Stiles. Three Duke players - three physically gifted Duke players running, waving and screaming at her - couldn't.

Stiles averages 30 points a game and shoots 58 percent from the floor. No matter what.

"Lord, oh, mercy," said Lin Dunn, the coach of the Seattle Storm. "What was that we just witnessed? I've seen all the great women scorers, and this might be the best we've ever seen."

Dunn, whose team has the first pick in next month's WNBA draft, hadn't talked much about Stiles before this weekend. But she, like the nation, is waking up to a player who wasn't on ESPN once during the regular season, whose team was sent to Rutgers for first- and second-round games the way Washington was sent to Gainesville.

Stiles had 32 points against a Rutgers team that shut down Notre Dame's Ruth Riley and held Vermont to 29 points. Stiles has more points (3,339) than any woman in college history. She has been in double figures 90 consecutive games.

"I think she will be a big-time player in the WNBA," Dunn said. "Right now, I'd rank her among the top five prospects in the draft, with Lauren Jackson (Australia), Tamika Catchings (Tennessee), Ruth Riley, and Svetlana Abrosimova (Connecticut). And in no particular order."

Stiles is only 5 feet 8. With the kneepads, she seems like a character from a sequel to "Hoosiers." The comparison to Maravich is a good one, but they are different players.

Maravich was a show. Stiles is strictly a scorer.

She runs continually to get open. She has a quick release from beyond the three-point arc if you don't defend her there. She can drive through your defense if you do. But her greatest weapon is what the Duke coach called a "jump hop fadeaway."

"She is a scoring machine," Dunn said. "She has great speed and quickness, and I'd really like to know what her vertical jump is. Her ability to pull up and go back really creates space for her against bigger players.

"I don't think the college game has had a player of this impact since Sheryl Swoopes in 1994."

The movie of her life - The Jackie Stiles Story - begins in creaky Claflin, Kan., 237 miles southwest of Kansas City. Population 630 with no stoplights.

Jackie is shooting baskets, of course. Outside in a raw Kansas wind. Someone estimates that she has shot the ball 4 million times, or 1,000 shots a day since she was 12.

One routine is 200 shots from four different spots on the floor. Keep shooting until at least 1,000 go in. Once in high school, she was undercut on a shot, fell and suffered a broken right wrist.

Three days later she was back in the gym shooting with her left hand. A few weeks after that she ripped the cast off and started shooting right-handed again.

She won state championships in track and cross country. She once took 50 shots in a state basketball championship game, but her team never could quite take it all.

If Stiles' team can beat Washington tonight, she will get the fame that has eluded her beyond Springfield, Mo., where she is a cult figure with her own Web site. She would return to Missouri for the Final Four in St. Louis.

"She takes that team and puts in on her back," Washington Coach June Daugherty said. "Watching her up close, as I did Saturday night, you really appreciate how quick she is, how strong she is."

And how memorable she is.