In the first women’s basketball game in April in school history, which was played in front of the fifth-largest crowd in school history with a trip to Kansas’ first WNIT finals on the line, Danielle McCray was average. Well, average for her standards.

The only Kansan on a team whose roster stretches across borders to Saskatchewan and Serbia, it’s fitting the native daughter is responsible for pushing Jayhawk basketball across another threshold.

McCray scored 31 points on 10-of-18 shooting, pulled down six rebounds and blocked two shots in 40 minutes. For 95 percent of the country, that’s the game of a lifetime. For McCray, it was Wednesday.

Those points raised her WNIT scoring average by less than a tenth of a percentage point (from 30.67 to 30.75) and it’s the sixth time she’s scored at least 30 points this season.

It wasn’t easy, though. McCray had only five shot attempts at halftime.

Kansas coach Bonnie Henrickson said that’s the ugliest a team has made McCray play all season. I respectfully disagree.

McCray’s beauty isn’t in sweet jumpers or crossover dribbles, although she can do both with ease. Rather, the beauty lies in her grit and determination to overtake and out-muscle an opponent.

The Olathe East grad is at her best when she’s relentlessly attacking the defense, drawing fouls and scoring seven points in the first four minutes of the second half. The 5-foot-11 guard/forward/beast is at her best when she’s cleaning up her own mess to put her team up six with less than 40 seconds to play.

The Jayhawks were shaken by the Redbirds’ rally, but McCray’s beautifully ugly offense was the calm that kept the ship from capsizing.

After Wednesday’s game, McCray shuddered at the mere thought of her friends on other teams in the Big 12 and around the country who were already working for 2010. She realizes only two teams in the country get to end their season with a win, and on Saturday Kansas can do just that.

A championship. The thought alone brightens McCray’s eyes and draws her body into a tightly wound ball that’s ready to explode with excitement.

Saturday will be extra-special for the honorable mention All-American. It’s a chance to put her team’s championship banner in the rafters and solidify herself as one of the best to ever don a Kansas jersey.

It’s also her first championship game. Ever.

“I’ve only been a track champion,” said the former shot-putter.

Wednesday’s game, fittingly, ended with the ball in McCray’s hands as she tossed it high into the Allen Fieldhouse air and jumped into the middle of her teammates.

McCray is in the middle of everything for Kansas. And that’s exactly how she wanted it.

The junior admits she had big plans when she signed to play in her home state, even comparing her ambitions to those of Courtney Paris at Oklahoma.

“She came to Oklahoma to do something for that program, and I feel the same way,” McCray said. “I came to Kansas to be a difference-maker.”

It’s about creating a beautiful legacy, and she’ll get a chance on Saturday. All she has to do is be average.

— — Edited by Realle Roth