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Moriah Jefferson, UConn's Pint-Size Playmaker, Is Ready For Her Moment

Moriah Jefferson plays point guard for a historically great UConn team, but she's always shared the spotlight with her talented teammates, Breanna Stewart and Morgan Tuck.
Photo by David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports

Several members of the Connecticut women's basketball team stood in a narrow hallway just outside the press conference room at Madison Square Garden in late December. Seniors Breanna Stewart, Morgan Tuck, and Moriah Jefferson are on the verge of achieving an unprecedented four championship titles in four years, but for the moment they were answering the now-familiar series of postgame questions that follow a win.

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It had been a close one, for a change: Maryland, their opponent and an excellent young team, entered the night with the most efficient offense and defense in the country, albeit having faced a less demanding schedule than Connecticut.

Down the stretch, the Huskies largely played a two-person game, and most of the reporters surrounded that pair's most prominent player, Breanna Stewart. This is understandable—as has been written in this space, she is an outlier in every conceivable way, sometimes leaps over entire teams, and will be the top pick in the upcoming WNBA draft.

Read More: Breanna Stewart, In Pursuit Of Perfection

Stewart's partner in that night's game-sealing, Moriah Jefferson, would be the headline star of virtually any other team in the country, but because her college career happens to overlap completely with the unstoppable Stewart and Tuck, a brilliant reader of situation and space on both ends of the floor, Jefferson rarely gets more than a third of the spotlight.

Which is a shame, because Jefferson is ridiculously entertaining to watch, and already among the very best to play at Connecticut, the finest program in women's hoops over the past two decades. Jefferson is as unique as she is talented. She does everything a point guard is supposed to do, but no one's really seen anything quite like her.

How are there seven DePaul players in this shot? Photo by David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

Her blinding speed and remarkably accurate finishing provides the Huskies with a significant cushion of transition points in every game she plays. Jefferson will have spent four years running the Connecticut offense, a situational, read-and-react system that forces players to understand defensive schemes in real time and improvise. Few collegiate players will be better prepared for the next level of point guard play in the WNBA.

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"I was trying to rack my brain to think about who to compare her to in league history, and I couldn't come up with a name," one WNBA talent evaluator told VICE Sports. "She wreaks havoc on the court. You know she's there. She changes the game instantly."

If there's a catch, it's that Jefferson is small and slightly built; she's listed at 5'7'' but almost certainly shorter. This hasn't been much of an issue yet in her career, but it's easy to imagine guards the world over posting her up at every opportunity.

"A lot of people ask me about her size," another WNBA talent evaluator told me. "She's so fast, she's quick, she's athletic. The size doesn't scare me. I don't think it scares anyone. There have been small guards that have been able to make their way in the league, and she'll be the next one."

For her part, Jefferson isn't too concerned about her individual legacy at Connecticut.

"I'm just living for my team," she said. "Any accolades I get, at some point I'll get to take a step back and say 'Wow, it's amazing what I've been able to accomplish.' In the here and now, I'm just making sure I'm coming out every day and preparing for my job here."

Meanwhile, an entire league is preparing for a skill set that has so far proved nearly unstoppable. There's a belief across the WNBA that Jefferson will come into the league and not only continue posting her Connecticut–level numbers but actually improve upon them. Sue Bird, the gold standard for Connecticut point guards, averaged 14.4 points per game in her final Connecticut season, playing alongside Diana Taurasi and Swin Cash, and then an identical 14.4 points per game in her rookie WNBA season.

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"That's the thing with UConn players," one WNBA talent evaluator said. "There's so many scoring options, you think, What is she really capable of? I don't think we really know yet. She's been asked to lead an offense and lead a team of really talented players. You put her in a situation where she's asked to score, I think she probably has another gear in her. You have to give her a couple of steps, offensively, because she's so fast she can get by you—and that's not going to change at the pro level, by the way."

Shooting, one of many things Moriah Jefferson is super-good at. — Photo by David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports

Given a system where the ball doesn't go to Stewart first, Jefferson could finally look for her own shot on a more regular basis. If she gets picked second overall, by the San Antonio Stars—as the conventional wisdom holds—she could very well be the first option on offense right away.

If San Antonio winds up passing on her, the Connecticut Sun have the third overall pick. The chance to add a transcendent UConn star like Jefferson would be virtually impossible to pass up, but the Sun already employ Alex Bentley, a talented young combo guard who made the WNBA All-Star team this year—and who also stands just 5'7". That's where the question of size comes into play.

"I don't think she's guarding any twos," said a WNBA talent evaluator who thinks very highly of Jefferson. "In transition, they'll take her right to the post. We see that with players who are even a little bit bigger than her."

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"She's going to be able to keep players in front of her," said another evaluator, who sees Jefferson as clearly the second overall pick. "Her biggest challenge is going to be coming off hard screens, when she's being posted up. Anytime somebody's physical with her, I think she's going to have a problem. Now, she's a smart player—I think she's going to learn how to manage that. And any team that has her, they're going to figure out how to manage that. And I think she's going to do more offensively than she's going to give up defensively." Those are a lot of caveats, born of a lot of respect, but the challenge is real.

This type of shot is easier to get when you're faster than everyone else on the floor. — Photo by David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports

Jefferson is determined to maximize what she already has, though her improvement has come on things like shooting the ball—first the three, which she elevated to a 49.6 percent rate last year, and now her midrange game. She's at nearly 67 percent from two this year, efficiency usually found only among bigs who get most of their shots on putbacks and dunks. Jefferson's there in large part because she is simply that much quicker than everyone else. It doesn't matter that bigger, stronger women can block her shot or her path to the hoop; they aren't quick enough to get the chance, or smart enough to anticipate what she'll do.

Even when they do—as when a trio of burly Maryland interior defenders, including the 6'2" Kiah Gillespie, stood between Jefferson and the basket—she responded by effortlessly shedding two of them from a Tuck screen. Then, keeping her eyes on the basket as she pirouetted through the lane, Jefferson managed to get the ball around Gillespie, who had (officially) seven inches on her, and into the basket.

"It's hard for me, because the way my body is, it's really hard for me to gain weight," Jefferson said. "So I've worked on a diet plan, I've talked to my strength coach about how to keep the weight on. But other than that, this is what God's given me, and that's what I have to take."

Few people understand how much the Huskies owe their success to their point guard as Breanna Stewart. She and Jefferson have started together since their freshman year.

"I think that Moriah deserves more attention than she gets," Stewart said, glancing over at Jefferson in the narrow hallway of a building they'll soon be visiting as pros. "Everyone can see the way she plays. She's going to leave the program setting her mark, that's for sure."