Kelly Mazzante isn't sure of when the first time Rene Portland saw her play was, but she does remember vividly the first time she saw the Penn State women's basketball coach in the stands at the Montoursville High School gym.

"She snuck in so no one would see her," Mazzante recalls, "but I was going for a ball out-of-bounds and I dove and tried to knock it back in and it hit her."

Ah, the ever-present dangers of women's college basketball recruiting.

The incident, however, is a good example of the lengths coaches -- even high-profile ones with jam-packed schedules like Portland -- will go to let their recruits know they're out there.

As women's college basketball recruiting has become bigger and better - more schools with larger budgets searching for more athletes - both coaches and athletes have had to adjust, and adjust quickly.

Recruiting standards have been adjusted by the NCAA, giving coaches less time to talk to recruits, and outlining specific time guidelines.

"It's becoming big-time now, almost like men's basketball," says Penn State assistant basketball coach Annie Troyan. "There's a whole lot of influence out there that has changed how recruiting is handled."

Women's basketball has been growing, and it's far from finished. The number of participating Div. I teams jumped from 273 during the 1981-82 season to 316 during the 2000-01 season, according to the NCAA, with the number of total athletes on those teams increasing by nearly 1,000 during the same period. The average squad size also increased by nearly a person and a half, from 13.4 in 1981-82 to 14.8 in 2000-01.

Keila Whittington is one of Portland's assistants responsible for not only locating the talent, but ranking it, and eventually landing it. Right now, Whittington and the other Penn State coaches are in the midst of trying to figure out what players to bring in to replace one of their top recruits from three years ago -- junior guard Mazzante, who led the nation in scoring last season and is on her way again this year, although Whittington and the other coaches hesitate to use the word, "replace."

"We are trying to get some very good players because we're losing Kelly," Whittington says. "You look at what you're losing. You don't like to overrecruit and have people sitting around."

Obviously, the first priority is getting what coaches feel are the best players possible. But Whittington and other recruiters do want players to feel comfortable with their surroundings, and to realize that once they decide on a particular school, they've made the right decision. That's why the late-summer part of the offseason is devoted to helping recruits become as familiar with the program -- and the campus -- as possible before they even arrive.

During a three-week period in September, high school seniors are permitted to have official, 48-hour on-campus visits. At Penn State, Whittington and the Lions give them a grand tour of every aspect of Happy Valley they can cram into those two days.

"We tour the [athletic] facilities, have breakfast together, meet the athletic director [Tim Curley]," Whittington says.

Once upon a time, there were no such restrictions on when or for how long recruits could visit coaches or vice versa. But as the game gets bigger, what the NCAA has to watch is limiting how much contact a school can have with a player. Limiting the amount of exposure that college coaches have to high school players puts more emphasis on the player taking the initiative, and forces the universities to make sure that the limited time they have with a player is time well spent.

Women's college basketball is taking hints from the men's game and cutting back in this area. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) proposed legislation this summer that would prevent correspondence from anything except emails during the July 8-31 recruiting period, according to the WBCA website.

With the NCAA limiting recruiting time, all-star camps taking place all across the country, and a dozen of their competitors after the same blue-chippers, college coaches, just like the players they court, must be on their game, 12 months of the year.

"Coaches need to identify who's out there quicker, identify their needs, find the right people and backups, in case their prime people go somewhere else," says

Mel Greenberg, a longtime women's basketball writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Coaches must also keep an eye on the summer camps and the AAU tournaments, which not only enable players to get year-round competition against their top peers, but expose them to scouts as well.

This means a lot of time on the road for people like Whittington, but with the limited window, it has to be time well spent.

"In that three-week [summer recruiting] period, you have to pick and choose how long you're going to stay, whether it's a day and a half, three days, four days," Whittington says. "And it's all based on where our recruits are."

Coaches have to make sure their prospective recruits know they're there, know they're interested -- even if it means occasionally getting pelted by a loose ball.