The words slipped innocently from Ashleigh Newman's mouth, just an offhanded comment during a film session about what she and her Maryland basketball teammates would do "once they had their natty."
Brenda Frese noticed, however, and quickly processed that her players — none of the starters older than a junior — were speaking in matter-of-fact teenage slang about seizing a national championship.
Frese, herself a brash young coach who'd never led a team past the second round of the tournament, loved it.
"They were fearless," she says, reflecting 10 years later. "They didn't know any better, and that was the gift of all of that season.