Shea Ralph has the mane and the comeback stories, Svetlana Abrosimova has the dimples and accent, Sue Bird has the shy grin and her own comeback story.

	UConn's Swin Cash averaged 9.9 points, 5.3 rebounds and 20.8 minutes last season.

And if you're not a Connecticut follower, maybe you think that's all so cute your eyes have just rolled into the back of your head.

Already decided the defending national champion Huskies are gonna get on your last nerve this season? Wish Geno Auriemma would follow through on getting his supposed dream job, being an assistant for the Sixers?

Hey, Iverson, what's up? Electricity go off in the house again, leave all the clocks blinkin' 12:00? Your platinum Rolex in the shop? Lost track of time because you were busy re-recording "40 Bars?" That was some impressive poetry, Mr. Frost. Incidentally, you're 52 minutes late to practice. ...

If all things UConn are anathema to you ... well, it's gonna be a long winter, friend. Might as well try to find something about the Huskies you might like, or least might dislike a little less.

So how about unselfishness? Good humor? How about players who truly appreciate their fans' support, are gracious and interesting to talk to?

Face it -- there are a ton of reasons to like this team. That doesn't mean you have to like UConn -- just that everyone who follows the sport should take comfort knowing that the championship mantle is resting on some well-deserving shoulders.

And if it stays there through this season -- as all of us media large brains are predicting, for what that's worth -- it will be because of the most old-fashioned of reasons.

The Huskies' greatest virtue is teamwork.

It sounds hokey and simplistic, like some "Afterschool Special" that you just snort at. Especially now just a week before election day, most of us would have to ingest a gallon of "Barney" serum just to rise to the level of hard-bitten cynic. (As opposed to the lowest rung of cynicism: When you'd sit on your hands and bite your tongue if Peter Pan asked you to clap and cheer to save Tinkerbell's life.)

But it's the truth about UConn. An example of the Huskies' teamwork? There are plenty, but this trio tells the tale as well as anything.

Swin Williams, Tamika Jones, Asjha Cash. Er ... that's Swin Jones, Tamika Cash ...

Oh, come on, lame joke, been told a million times. They're not that much alike. Sure, they're all 6-foot-2 forwards, they're all juniors, they all list "Beloved" as a favorite book. But Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams are not that easily confused for one another, right?

"Usually it's me getting mistaken for one of those two," Williams says. "After a while, even coach gets us mixed up. Of course, coach will call me anything. One day he called me 'Shea.'

"Fans will come up and say, 'Oh, I'm your biggest fan. I love the way you play,' and then they call me Swin. Or call me Asjha. Or call Asjha me. We get it all the time."

One would assume they can confuse opponents, too. Yes, Cash has a slimmer build than Williams and Jones, who are roommates who wear the same-size clothes and thus truly have a joint closet.

"When we go to (name of store deleted in case the NCAA might think it's an endorsement), we pick out clothes and I pay half, she pays half," says Williams, and if you get the idea she's got a personality that would light up an entire city all by herself, you're on the mark.

"We have everything arranged: light khakis on this side, dark khakis over here ... "

They have learned to share music, too, although it's more Williams who has expanded her range. She came to UConn from her home of Dayton, Ohio, a confirmed oldies fan: the Drifters, the Temptations, the Supremes, Al Green -- she even knows what an eight-track tape is. (All readers over the age of 30 can reach for a tissue now. Told ya' there was something to like about this team.)

"Both my parents loved that kind of music, but mostly my dad -- he was a DJ when I was younger," Williams says. "The reason why I know all the songs -- we would go on these long trips to Florida or Alabama to visit family, and my dad would play that music all the way there. I'd sit in the backseat and memorize all the songs on the way to Disneyland or whatever."

	Asjha Jones, left, didn't start a game last season, but averaged 8.9 points.

Jones' assessment of Williams' musical taste when they met: "She was like an old woman."

Jones is the quiet one, by the way. Although not as quiet as she used to be.

"If you're around Tamika a lot ..." Jones says. "She's got me talking a little more."

Then there's Cash, of whom Williams says, "She not only watches 'General Hospital,' she lives it. We call her DQ: drama queen."

Cash, from McKeesport, Pa., and Williams have known each other since they were about 13, through summer ball. When the two of them plus Jones, from Piscataway, N.J., all committed to UConn, some eyebrows were raised.

How would they get enough playing time? Wouldn't one or two become disgruntled? Or maybe all three?

"We never really talked about it -- who's going to be starting, who's going to be doing this or that," Williams said. "It's not hard. In fact, having other players like you makes it a lot easier. We don't lose anything when one of us goes out.

"It's just about wanting to play team ball. If you wanted to be selfish, we'd lose a lot of games."

Well, not necessarily. They just might not win quite as many. They might not have won the national championship.

"I think (those three) are the perfect example of putting the team before yourself," senior Shea Ralph says. "They're in the same class, same position, all highly touted before they came in.

"You have to give up part of yourself to be a great team. They knew each one wasn't going to be freshman of the year, wasn't going to get all the attention. But if you asked them, they'd say they'd make that decision to come here 10 times over because they got the ultimate goal."

The 2000 national championship team continued the legacy of a program that, frankly, really needed the piece of hardware it got last season. The '95 NCAA trophy was getting a little lonely.

The fans' expectations, the media coverage, the talent level -- all made UConn's quest perhaps just a little more urgent the past five years. It's a situation Tennessee has been in for long time; UConn dealt with those pressures last season almost flawlessly.

In regard to all that weight, Cash said at Big East media day last week, "When you come in here as a freshman, you're really in awe. But after awhile, you just realize it's really big and try to build on it."

As freshmen, Cash, Williams and Jones were part of a team that lost in the 1999 Mideast Regional semifinals to Iowa State. That season, Williams started 19 games and Jones 18. Cash -- who missed 12 games due to a stress fracture -- started 14.

It was clear UConn had the pieces in place last season to make the title run. Bird, who'd missed most of the previous season with an ACL injury, was back at point, which made Ralph and Abrosimova (and Auriemma) much more comfortable.

At power forward, Cash started 34 of 37 games. Jones and Williams didn't start any. But their final averages for the season tell how valuable each was: Cash (9.9 ppg, 5.3 rpg), Jones (8.9 ppg, 4.9 rpg) and Williams (9.1 ppg. 3.6 rpg.; she missed six games due to a broken left foot) combined for nearly 30 points a game and more than a dozen rebounds.

The Final Four also told the story: Jones made the all-tournament team off the bench. In the 89-67 semifinal victory over Penn State, Jones had 16 points, Williams 10 and Cash nine. Williams and Jones also combined for 13 rebounds; both played 23 minutes to Cash's 16.

In the 71-52 championship-game victory over Tennessee, Jones had 12 points and eight rebounds in 22 minutes, Cash nine points and three rebounds in 18 minutes, Williams six points and two rebounds in 14 minutes.

Yet what you probably remember most from the Final Four is Bird's performance in the semifinals (19 points, zero turnovers) and Kelly Schumacher's title-game swatfest (nine blocks).

And who was the Final Four MVP? Ralph.

When you take all that into account, that teamwork stuff actually doesn't sound very hokey.

Two good role players, Paige Sauer and Stacy Hansmeyer, are gone from that group. The rest of the championship squad is back, with high-profile freshmen such as Diana Taurasi coming in.

There's a lot of unknown nationally, due to so many teams relying on freshmen to contribute right away. For now, other than Tennessee, there doesn't appear to be a clear challenger to UConn this season.

But Williams says she and her teammates aren't talking much about any of that. They all know what the goal is and how to get there. And they know how easy it is to slip along the way -- no matter whether fans or media fully realize that or not. If nothing else, that loss to Iowa State in '99 taught a lot of the current Huskies that lesson.

Would Swin Cash or Asjha Jones or Tamika Williams by themselves at some other school have bigger numbers? Almost certainly. And that's something to think about -- not only does them all being at UConn greatly add to the Huskies, it subtracts what they each could have been for somebody else.

Not even UConn -- or Tennessee -- can stockpile all the talent. But when you can get as much as the Huskies have now -- and keep everybody happy -- you've got something to be appreciated.

We'll let the "quiet one" have the final word.

"We won the national championship, so what more can you ask for?" Jones said, and then answered her own question. "The type of people we are ... we know we've got more work to do this year."

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached via e-mail at mvoepel@kcstar.com.