When Cincinnati and Western Carolina squared off Tuesday at the Great Alaska Shootout, it brought together two first-year head coaches with amazing bloodlines.

Jamelle Elliott of the University of Cincinnati spent the last 16 seasons as first a player and then an assistant coach at the University of Connecticut, the mecca of women's basketball.

And Karen Middleton of Western Carolina spent 10 seasons as an assistant to Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, who along with UConn's Geno Auriemma is one of the sport's living legends.

At UConn, Elliott shared a part of six national championships. At Stanford, Middleton was part of 10 NCAA Tournaments, four Sweet 16s and three Elite Eights.

Not bad places to hone your skills.

And not easy places to leave.

"It was tough," Elliott said. "It was a comfort zone for me, but I have personal goals, and it was a goal to be a head coach. So here I am."

She brought with her years of knowledge obtained from Auriemma and admits to having adopted many of his habits and philosophies.

"One of my assistants called me L.G. -- Little Geno," she said, laughing. "That's all I know. He was a mentor, a father, a friend.

"I just hope I pick up his wins and his national championships."

Not that Elliott doesn't know what it's like to win national titles. Her six championship seasons at UConn included the school's first in 1995 -- when Elliott was a player and a monster rebounder.

Elliott never missed a game or a practice in four seasons and she graduated as UConn's second-leading career rebounder (1,054). At the time, she was the second Husky to finish with more than 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds.

While Middleton hasn't yet been nicknamed Little Tara, her decade at Stanford was a time to soak up everything she could from VanDerveer.

"Tara is a great teacher," said Middleton, who spent two seasons as assistant at Illinois between her Stanford and Western Carolina gigs. "She has one of the best basketball minds in the country. Her mid-game adjustments are pretty spectacular. I learned a tremendous amount of X's and O's from her.

"I took a ton of information and knowledge from her, and I hope if we can't win (a national title) this year, they will."

Middleton was a high-scoring sharpshooter as a player for South Carolina and still owns the school record for career 3-pointers (317) and career 3-point accuracy. She made 44.5 percent of her treys and the 115 she sank in 1991 still rank as the sixth most in a single season in NCAA history.

Elliott and Middleton know each other from all those years as assistants at high-profile programs. Their first showdown as head coaches ended in Elliott's favor, with Cincinnati taking a 67-54 win.

For Elliott, it wasn't the first time a trip to Alaska yielded success.

She and Auriemma came north in 2000 to recruit Colony High's Jessica Moore. They spent less than 24 hours here, but that was time enough to convince Moore -- now an WNBA player -- to take her game to UConn.

"We're still close," Elliott said.