Once-Great Gemelos Clawing to Play

The best player you've never seen is rehabbing today, and again tomorrow. Just like she did yesterday and the day before that, and last year, and the year before that.

Jacki Gemelos has been at USC since 2006, recruited as one of the top women's basketball prospects in the nation, a surefire star out of St. Mary's High in Stockton (CA).

Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma knew he wanted Gemelos on his team when she was just 15 years old. She said yes to that offer and then changed her mind, committed to USC and prepared to start a career that seemed destined to end in a WNBA jersey and possibly a couple of Olympic medals.

But Gemelos has yet to play in a single college basketball game.

Instead, she has endured pain, shock, heartbreak, the doubts and worries of everyone who cares about her and five surgeries on knees that seem to be standing in the way of everything she wants.

"Almost every childhood memory I have is with my dad and basketball," Gemelos said. "It's been a part of me for so long, something wouldn't be right without it. All these dreams, all the hard work my dad did with me, all the hard work I put in, I'd be selling myself short if I didn't continue to try to pursue this."

Gemelos has had four ACL injuries since her senior year of high school in 2006, an extraordinary run of bad luck and disappointment that would send most players into life without basketball.

But Gemelos can't bring herself to go into that life.

"After my second (injury) everyone told me I'm crazy to continue to do this," Gemelos said. "It's going to be nice to prove all these people wrong."

If she does -- she is slated to return to the court for the Women of Troy in December or January -- it will be an extraordinary comeback story, the rebirth of a player once compared to Diana Taurasi.

And if either of her knees gives way again, it's over.

"She's her own person and we are supporting her," said her father, Steven Gemelos. "In the back of our minds, we are very fearful of it happening again. Everybody has agreed that if it does, we will throw in the towel as a family."

Steven Gemelos knows why his daughter wants to continue, why she's been willing to endure three straight years of rehabilitation and devastation only to end up with the clock starting over again. She has unfinished business on the basketball court.

"She was a special player and it drives her crazy not to be able to express that at the college level," Steven Gemelos said. "I never saw her outplayed in high school, not once and she went against a lot of the top players. Deep inside she knows that."

Gemelos, named the National Prep Player of the Year in 2006, first injured her right leg late in her final prep season at St. Mary's after averaging 39.2 points, 8.9 assists and 6.5 rebounds a game.

She lost her freshman season at USC, and was preparing for the next season in 2007 when she was injured during a pick-up game, tearing the same knee.

The third injury, this time on her left knee, came near the start of practice for the 2008-09 season. And then perhaps the cruelest twist of all -- after six months of rehabilitation -- she said she felt like "something wasn't right" in her knee.

The MRI revealed a surprise. It showed no ACL in the knee. The subsequent arthroscopic procedure revealed that her body had rejected the cadaver ligament and it had dissolved. The ligament was gone. So she needed yet another surgery to replace the ligament.

"That was absolutely the lowest point in my life," Gemelos said.

Still, she is back in the training room working toward her winter return to the court with a determination that is almost inexplicable.

"I could probably tear it 10 times and still want to play," Gemelos said.

Gemelos could still have as many as four college seasons left, though there's no way to know yet whether she would stay that long. She is set to graduate in the spring and will work on her master's degree while she plays.

"I know what I want, I've known what I want since I was seven years old and nothing has really changed in my eyes," Gemelos said. "I want to play in the WNBA and overseas in Greece and for the USA team."

USC had a coaching change in the spring, hiring Michael Cooper to replace Mark Trakh, the coach who recruited her and then never got to see her play.

Gemelos said she thinks Cooper and his staff will give her a fair chance to see what kind of player she can be. She talks often with assistant coach Kelley Gibson, who tore her ACL three times during her career at Maryland and played in the WNBA after college.

Gibson knows Gemelos' pain, both physically and emotionally.

"She's gone through a lot, and it's a lot of wear on you mentally," Gibson said. "But every day I see her in the gym, she's smiling. She comes out on to the floor as if nothing is wrong with her. She has that same fire and competitiveness.

"We've had to tell her to calm down somedays. She'd do stuff, cut, dribble between her legs, go behind the back, and go for a layup. In her mind, she still feels like she can do these things. Basically, we tell her, 'Jacki, we'll see.' "

Gibson said the approach of the USC coaches is going to be cautious.

"We are not going to demand that Jacki be the Jacki of years ago," Gibson said. "We just want her to be the best she can be and we don't know the best she can be until it happens. Right now, we have to pull her back."

Gemelos said she knows returning to the game will be a "huge, huge challenge."

"But I don't think I've lost my touch for the game," Gemelos said. "The only thing that's lacking is that I haven't played in almost four years."

Her father said she is going to have to be a "different kind of player."

"She can't play with the reckless abandon like she used to, she's going to have to play smarter," Gemelos said. "Hopefully, she'll get out there for a few games and hit a few threes. Then she can say she did it, say she came back and helped her team win. Maybe that will be a good healer for her and maybe then she can give it up.

"I know her and since this has all happened, she's probably had 400 good cries over all this. Deep in her heart, she just wants to do it for herself."

Gemelos said she knows that the people in her life who wish she would end her quest are just concerned for her.

"And there are other people who really think I'm crazy and I have to let that go in one ear and out the other," Gemelos said. "I have a feeling this is the year for me. This was the last straw. It won't happen anymore. It just can't."