Delaware's Delle Donne feels right at home

When Elena Delle Donne, the leading scorer in the nation in women's college basketball, couldn't sink a shot against Drexel on Feb. 19, she kept hitting the tattoo of her sister, Lizzie, on her rib, saying to herself, "You've got to help me." She rubbed the tattoo with her shooting hand. "Come on, Lizzie, help me!"

Finally, Lizzie did.

After having missed 15 of her first 18 shots from the field, Elena hit the game-winner with two seconds left, and the University of Delaware beat Drexel, 40-39.

Elena and Lizzie Delle Donne live at life's opposite extremes, and Elena's profoundly disabled sister has given the superstar an incredible gift - perspective on life.

"She's my inspiration," said Elena. "When I tap my side, it's a reminder of why I play, who I play for. The battles that she faces are way more than any battles that I'll ever face on a basketball court."

It was this perspective, and closeness to her sister and family, that convinced Elena - a hugely heralded recruit, the top player in the nation her senior year of high school - to defy the basketball gods four years ago and walk away from the University of Connecticut, the top college program in the country, and return home to Delaware to play for the humble Blue Hens.

That decision - so controversial at the time - has so clearly blossomed into the right one.

Delaware is 27-1 and ranked No. 8 in the nation. Elena is arguably the country's top player, averaging 28.2 points a game. She has a 3.6 grade-point average and was named a first-team academic all-American and academic all-American player of the year for NCAA Division I women's basketball. She goes home one or two nights a week to see her sister and of course brings her laundry, but her mother swears Elena does it herself, saying, "she's good about that."

Ernie and Joan Delle Donne, who live just outside of Wilmington, have three children: Lizzie, 27, Elena 22, and Gene, 25. Gene, who was a first-team, all-state quarterback at Salesianum School in Wilmington, played tight end at Middle Tennessee State University and is now back home, working for his father, a developer. But this story is really about the striking contrasts, and connection, between the sisters.

Lizzie cannot see, hear, walk, or talk. A virus attacked her in the womb, her parents were told, and impeded development. She recognizes her family by smell and touch. She can communicate by hand only the most basic needs - eat, sleep, hug. With the mental capacity of a child, her greatest joy in life, her family says, is riding around on the family's 35 acres in a golf cart with Elena, wind blowing in her hair, smells all around.

Elena, 22, who stands 6-foot-5, was named the nation's top high school basketball player in 2008. She once hit 80 free throws in a row. Brian Agler, head coach of the Seattle Storm of the WNBA, who was scouting Delle Donne a week ago, compared her story with basketball immortal Larry Bird's - a gifted player going back home to a smaller school, elevating it to greatness. With the NCAA tournament nearing, that is still to be determined.

Elena is Delaware's crown jewel, one family friend said. Fans love that she came back home. She signs dozens of autographs after every game. After a strong performance a few weeks ago, she tweeted, "@GovernorMarkel thank you!" and "@SenatorCarper thank you so much!" Vice President Biden watched her play earlier this season.

Elena was a great athlete with remarkable drive from the get-go. She found a wrench and removed her own training wheels at age 3, her father says, just because Gene was riding without them. Her father said she learned to juggle in second grade.

She played football in the backyard with Gene and all his buddies.

"She used to play wide receiver and I would be the quarterback," said Gene. "I used to call her Randy Moss. She was always the deep threat. My buddies were like high school D-backs, and she'd go over them and catch it."

Elena's spectacular skills were evident at Ursuline Academy, where she was the presumed top recruit in her class in the country. In fact, Sylvia Hatchell, the head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina, had offered her a scholarship when she was 12, just out of seventh grade, Elena has said.

But Lizzie always made Elena understand basketball was only a game. Lizzie has had more than 30 surgeries. She spent her childhood in and out of hospitals, and has always needed to be toileted and fed. These realities, the importance of family, of supporting one another, tempered the ups and downs of wins and losses.

Everyone who followed basketball assumed Elena would go to one of the top college programs, to Connecticut or Tennessee.

Elena understood it herself after that first scholarship offer.

"I knew that one day I would have to leave home," Elena said. "I didn't like the idea right then that basketball was going to rip me from my family, from Lizzie." But the path was inevitable. The nation's best high school player had to go to the nation's best college program. National championships were her destiny. Elena signed with powerful Connecticut.

The night before she left home, the last night in her own bed, she panicked. "I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm not going to be back here,' " Elena said. But she kept quiet. Who could fight fate? Her parents dropped her off at college. But about midnight that first day, Elena called a friend from home to come get her. When her father came down to breakfast in the kitchen at 8 a.m., Elena was sitting there.

The pressure and stress were almost unbearable.

Her father still tears up when he recalls. "So many people, coaches, people that know everything about basketball, not realizing it was about so much more than basketball, said that by not going to UConn, she'll never be in the Olympics, she'll never be a good player, never be a national champion - all that stuff goes away. And that made it so difficult for the poor thing. Because Elena knew. She's no dummy."

Elena didn't even realize herself exactly what she was feeling. She thought she was just burned out on basketball.

But in time she has come to understand. Her sister and family had pulled her back. "If I'm not physically with Lizzie, I can't have any contact," Elena said. "It's not like we can e-mail, or Skype."

She enrolled at Delaware, and wasn't allowed to play basketball for a year because she was transferring from UConn - NCAA rules. She might have been able to get a waiver, but never tried. "Since she had no intention at all of playing," said her father, "it was a moot issue."

So Elena played volleyball for one year.

After a year away from basketball, Elena approached the Delaware coach and asked if she could join the team. The coach, Tina Martin, had summoned all the strength in her being to stay away from Elena - and ordered her players not to pressure her, either. And the strategy worked.

Elena is now in her third year of basketball at Delaware. It was a slow start. She suffered from injuries and rust her first year, and was hit hard by Lyme disease last year.

This season everything has come together.

The team is winning, she is flourishing, and she is happy. As she tweeted Feb. 17: "Nothing better than the feeling of going home to a home-cooked mom special."

Elena says leaving Connecticut "was the best decision of my life." She adds: "I was too young to realize that I could form my own path, and thank God I did." Her father feels she has grown so much because of it - making a decision that was so unpopular, so criticized, and seeing now that it was the right one.

When she can, Elena accompanies her mother to the Mary Campbell Center in Wilmington, where Lizzie goes during the day. Joan volunteers there two days a week.

Residents from the Mary Campbell Center came to the home game against Old Dominion on Feb. 9. Lizzie has no concept of basketball, or that she was at a game, but Elena knew.

"It means a ton having Lizzie here and supporting me," she said after the game. "It's just a different feeling when she's in the gym. I can feel it. It's weird. I just feel her presence, and I know she's with me, and it's kind of like a calming presence. And she also puts that fighter in me. When she's here, I can never give up."

Elena scored 27 points that night in a victory.

After the game was over, after 9 p.m., residents from the center were lined up in their wheelchairs behind a basket. The arena was empty except for Elena's family and friends and the media. Elena did a short news conference on the floor, and after it was over she greeted each of the residents. Down low and close. She knew them all. "Hey, how are you? Did you have a good time?"

She worked her way to the end of the line, to her sister.

She scooped Lizzie out of the chair, a big, enormously loving, swallowing scoop, and soon Lizzie was high in Elena's arms. Lizzie knew Elena immediately by smell and touch. The nation's leading scorer - who will fearlessly fight off three defenders to take a shot - whispered tenderly to her sister, "You had a long one, huh?" She kissed Lizzie several times. "You going to sleep?"

Elena hugged and kissed Lizzie a few more times before saying goodbye.

Elena Delle Donne will come back to Delaware for one more year and one more season of basketball. Then she will play professionally. But it is unlikely she will ever be away for too long.