LINCOLN — Creighton Athletic Director Bruce Rasmussen gets a courtside seat Sunday night in Minneapolis to see a couple of his disciples on sideline patrol.

The first-round meeting between Nebraska and Northern Iowa in the NCAA women's basketball tournament matches NU coach Connie Yori against UNI coach Tanya Warren, who teamed under Rasmussen's coaching in the Creighton backcourts of the mid-1980s.

Rasmussen, schedule permitting, wants to see this in person.

“I would rather that they weren't matched up,” he said. “That way they could both advance.”

Despite the Panthers' one-point win over CU on Sunday in the Missouri Valley tournament final, Rasmussen plays the role this week of proud mentor. He stays especially close to Warren, the 44-year-old former Creighton assistant and Omaha high school coach in her third season at UNI.

“She's like a daughter to me,” Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen said he has known Warren since she was “the size of a basketball.” Warren's father brought her to camps in Iowa at which Rasmussen taught when she was a fifth-grader. They were for high school players only, but coaches let Warren stay when they saw her skills.

She was the best one there, Rasmussen said.

Warren and Yori remain the only women's players in CU history with retired numbers.

“I don't think there's any question they were the two best players in Creighton women's basketball history,” Rasmussen said. “People look at the game on five levels, and they were level-five players. It doesn't surprise me that they're outstanding coaches.

“They were coaches before they came to me.”

Warren said she felt like the victim of a joke upon learning Monday that No. 16-seed Northern Iowa would face the top-seeded Huskers and Yori in the Panthers' first NCAA tournament game ever.

“But then I thought it was very fitting,” Warren said. “There's so much history there.”

She and Yori teamed in AAU ball when Warren was a seventh-grader in Des Moines and Yori an eighth-grader in Ankeny, Iowa. Warren and Yori also met in softball, and Yori's presence factored into Warren's decision to attend Creighton in 1983.

Warren played point guard, and Yori roamed elsewhere, Rasmussen said. The former coach had seven scholarships, no assistant coaches and no conference to call home. Still, with Warren and Yori, the Jays thrived.

“Connie was so far ahead of the game in terms of how she played,” Warren said. “She would have fit well with today's female athlete, because she was so athletic. She could shoot it. She could post. She could score in a variety of ways.”

Those Creighton teams played two-thirds of their games on the road, Rasmussen said, but won enough to deserve a spot in the NCAA tournament.

They never made it, though, without a conference affiliation.

Yori succeeded Rasmussen as CU coach in 1992 after the Jays' first NCAA bid. She stayed for 11 years and made two more tournament trips before leaving for Nebraska.

This marks the third NCAA appearance for the 46-year-old Yori in eight seasons at Nebraska — but it's her first as a favorite to advance through the first week of play. The Huskers are 30-1 and finished 16-0 in the Big 12.

“I have a lot of respect for Connie as a coach,” Warren said, “and she's a friend for life.”

Contact the writer:

402-444-1031, mitch.sherman@owh.com

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