Dallas — Chris Dailey, UConn's associate head coach, is originally from New Brunswick, N.J., where she went to St. Peter's High School. From there, Dailey went to play at Rutgers University, also in New Brunswick.

“I went to college two miles from my house,” Dailey said with a laugh Thursday afternoon. “I could have walked home from my college.”

Would she have ever considered going to college 3,000 miles away from home?

“No!” Dailey said.

Yet it's her job to talk players into doing just that.

There are players such as UConn's Katie Lou Samuelson, who ventured from Huntington Beach, Calif., to play for the 11-time national champion Huskies. Gabby Williams came to Storrs from Sparks, Nev. Likewise in this weekend's Final Four at American Airlines Arena, there is Stanford's Marta Sniezek, a sophomore, who played high school basketball for the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., and hails from McLean, Va.

“That's one of the toughest decisions I had to make,” said Sniezek, whose Stanford team plays South Carolina at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the national semifinals, before UConn takes on Mississippi State in the second game.

“I went to school in the city, just being in the city, being super busy. … I was originally looking at Ivy League schools, but Stanford has the best of both worlds. The biggest adjustment was being away from my family. I talk to my parents every day. But I adjusted to the great weather.”

Conversely, coercing players into wanting to come to countrified, wintry Storrs, Conn., is a bit different than picturesque Palo Alto, Calif., even for locals. Dailey remembers once recruiting former Wilbur Cross High School great Sabrina Johnson Breland from New Haven, who kept pointing out that there were cows on campus.

“I told her, 'If you say it one more time, I'm taking you back to New Haven,'” Dailey said, smiling. “… I tell people we have four seasons at UConn, spring, summer, fall and basketball.”

All-time great Diana Taurasi was one of UConn's first high-profile recruits from the West Coast. Taurasi, from Chino, Calif., won three national championships for the Huskies and has since won three WNBA titles with the Phoenix Mercury and four Olympic gold medals.

Dailey said she heard through the recruiting process that Taurasi was not prone to leaving the West Coast.

“When you talked to her there was something,” Dailey said. “(Taurasi) was probably the most East Coast West Coast kid I've ever met. Sometimes, kids from the West Coast had the reputation for being kind of soft and she was not soft in anything she did.

“She wanted to play for coach (Geno Auriemma). … I remember the first winter was the worst winter we ever had and she said, 'This isn't so bad.' She was still really positive.”

Auriemma, in his 32nd season at UConn and with his team in its 10th straight Final Four, was asked recently about the Huskies' California ties, which include Taurasi, Charde Houston, Willnett Crockett, Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Samuelson. Samuelson's older sisters, Bonnie and Karlie, stayed home to play at Stanford before Katie Lou selected UConn.

Auriemma's initial reaction to the question: “How much time do you have?”

“It presents a unique challenge when you get somebody that has to travel that far to go to school, number one,” Auriemma said. “Number two, I guess kids grow up differently out there. There's just a different mindset, a different attitude, a different mentality.

“There's this, 'Hey, don't worry about it; everything will be fine,'” Auriemma said. “It doesn't fly real well in my world. One of the biggest challenges is that you have to try to convince them that everything is important. Every little thing is important. A lot of times with (Samuelson), she wants to decide what's important. From my experience, California basketball players, they're like Italian car drivers in Italy: red lights, stop signs, whatever, they're just a suggestion. You don't necessarily have to do it.”

Samuelson, for her part, says the distance hasn't bothered her, perhaps because she traveled so much with USA Basketball — to the Czech Republic and Cancun, Mexico, for world championship tournaments, for example — before her arrival at UConn.

“When I was deciding, a couple schools I was looking at were far away,” Samuelson said. “I knew there was a chance I could be going far away. It never really bothered me.”

Dailey said the pull of UConn is strong because “what we do is different, what we do and how we do it is different.”

Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, meanwhile, has a history of players coming from the East Coast, too, including former Norwich Free Academy great Krista Rapphahn, a 2006 graduate.

She said Sniezek, like many players, was attracted to the elite level of academics, as well as athletics that are offered at Stanford.

Added VanDerveer: “But I think it also helped that we have direct flights.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com