Kiah Gillespie grew up in the shadow of the country’s most dominant women’s basketball program but commanded her own spotlight by becoming the best high school girls’ player in Connecticut.
Gillespie, a coach’s daughter, once seemed a likely candidate to play for Coach Geno Auriemma’s UConn program in Storrs, to which the gifted and talented are attracted like moths to flame.
But it’s a big country, and Auriemma typically has many far-flung stars on which to wish. So Gillespie, a 6-foot-2 forward who averaged 31 points and 16 rebounds a game as a senior at the Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, wound up heading down the coast to Maryland.