Year four foray

OREM — In year four of its foray into Division I play, the Utah Valley State women's basketball team is turning heads and headed for a breakout campaign.

The Wolverines intermittently flashed vast potential in 2005-06, going 11-16 while regularly fielding a starting lineup featuring four freshmen. With two new sparkling, imported freshmen to complement the quartet of now-sophomores and round out a rotation in which the starting fifth and sixth players are all underclassmen, UVSC is 9-1 and off to its best start in school history.

Any investigation into the cause of UVSC's upstart ways needs look no further than sophomores Robyn Fairbanks and Sandy Marvin. As freshmen, the pair combined to average 28.8 points per game and finished one-two on the team in scoring. This year, the duo has upped its combined output to more than 41 points each time out.

A 6-foot-1 center from sparsely populated Raymond in Alberta, Canada, Fairbanks is thriving despite regularly facing the double- and triple-team opponents are wont to throw at her. To get an idea of how uncanny Fairbanks' athletic gifts are, picture the female equivalent of an offensive left tackle in football (not surprisingly, Fairbanks' father Lloyd played offensive line for BYU in the early '70s). Thanks to a combination of quick feet, soft hands and a deft shooting touch that is so rarely seen in a woman of her size, Fairbanks is rather deceptively making 24 points and 11 rebounds per game seem like no big deal.

"Robyn's a special player offensively — she certainly can score," Utah Valley State coach Cathy Nixon said. "I wouldn't want to have to design a defense to stop her because she's so versatile and has unbelievable hands in traffic.

"So many times I think when people put up numbers like she does offensively, they kind of close their mind to getting better. But she really has improved; if she wouldn't have, she wouldn't be putting up the numbers that she is because people are doing everything they can to stop her."

Marvin is in many ways the yin to Fairbanks' yang. The 2005 4A MVP at Payson High, the diminutive Marvin didn't have to venture far from home to become a Wolverine. And while Fairbanks at times seems apologetic after breaking the opposition's back so to speak, Marvin's all-out on-court intensity and the way she regularly hurls her body toward the basket at breakneck speed on fast breaks leave no doubt that she'd like nothing more than to stab a figurative dagger into opposing hearts.