Three Amigos Nearing End Of Road At Robert Morris
Donnelly, Greco and Tusick Gain Lasting Friendship
By Scott Koskosi

If they had it their way, their friendship would have been over five years ago. That's when they were high school seniors, with graduation and out-of-town college basketball scholarships dangling in front of them.

Yet here they are, still together, only this time ready to graduate from college, and awfully glad things worked out the way they did.

For Robert Morris women's basketball seniors Cristin Greco, Melissa Tusick and Lauren Donnelly, life (or, at least the last five years) has come full circle. All three Pittsburgh-area natives have known each other since their pre-teen AAU days, having grown up not far from each other.

Today, the "Three Amigos" lead the Colonials for the final time and hope to return to the Northeast Conference (NEC) Tournament one last time before hanging up their jerseys for good.

Talking to them (when you can get a word in, that is) easily reveals their familiarity with each other. The group has a certain rhythm, a certain dynamic. Greco finishes Tusick's sentences, Tusick finishes Greco's sentences and Donnelly usually ends up laughing in mid-sentence. A typical conversation starts with one topic, moves rapidly to several others then finally returns to the original subject.

Kind of like the path these three athletes have traveled over the years.

Greco and Donnelly, at age 10, began playing for the AAU's Pittsburgh Bruins. Tusick joined the team soon after and the three developed an instant camaraderie. Even while playing for separate high schools (Greco at Woodland Hills, Donnelly at North Catholic and Tusick up the river at Monaca), the three followed each other's careers closely and rooted for each other ... except when they played head-to-head.

"I established myself as All-City when I crushed Cristin the first time in high school," quips a joking Donnelly. "She was no match for my moves."

"Whatever," Greco blurts out, laughing. "The next time we played, you were defenseless, remember?"

Competition was indeed intense in the scholastic ranks and all three players earned numerous accolades. Donnelly was voted to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Fabulous Five, Greco named the paper's "Unsung Hero" winner and Tusick earned Beaver County Player of the Year honors in 1997.

But all three had dreams of starting new lives outside Pittsburgh after graduation. Each entertained offers from out-of-area schools and was ready to leave behind the Golden Triangle for other golden lands.

In the end, however, none strayed from the 'Burgh and they all settled on Robert Morris, choosing to remain close to family who could see them play at home.

"It's weird, in a way," said Tusick. "We knew each other so well growing up and ended up at the same college, even though none of us came (to Robert Morris) because someone else was. We just wanted to stay close to our families."

Originally, there were five freshmen on then-coach Kim Basick's Colonials in 1997-98, but one quit the team less than a week into preseason camp and the other lasted most of the season before calling it a career. That left the Three Amigos as the lone bottom-rung players at RMC.

"We were terrified of the upperclassmen," laughs Greco (which, as always, elicits laughter from Donnelly and Tusick). "We knew our place as rookies, which meant carrying a lot of water bottles and doing grunt work."

And watching one of the Colonials' best all-time players at work. Elise James, who was just a budding sophomore when Tusick, Greco and Donnelly joined the Colonials, took the young rookies under her wing and taught them a lot about life - both on and off the court. The chance to watch James, a virtual scoring and rebound machine, would pay big dividends later in each woman's RMC career.

After seeing limited playing time her first two seasons, the 6-1 Donnelly started 17 of 23 games as a junior and averaged 4.6 points per night. Her shooting is among the most accurate on the Colonials' roster (41.3 percent for her career). This season, she is a fixture in the starting lineup and continues to demonstrate both scoring and rebounding ability.

Tusick, meanwhile, has a "streetball" flair to her game, as she can both slash and find the open man in a heartbeat. Entering her senior season, Tusick has started 80 percent of her games and averaged 7.9 points per game. That number likely will rise, though since she had picked up her scoring pace this season, averaging better than 11 points per game in the early-going.

Greco, the RMC point guard who describes herself as hard-working, stubborn and a perfectionist, has rebounded nicely after missing half her sophomore season with a knee injury. One of the best ball-handlers on the team, Greco has started a majority of the time and ranks in the top 10 among Colonial career assists leaders.

As the "games played" list rapidly outnumbers the "games to play" list, all three RMC seniors dream of a perfect ending to their careers: a victory against St. Francis (Pa.) in the wide-open Northeast Conference championship. The Red Flash are five-time defending champions of the NEC but lost two top players to graduation, making the NEC anybody's conference in 2000-2001.

Then what? Tusick will be back at Robert Morris next fall, completing academic work and most likely giving a new sport a try: soccer. Donnelly is a world-travel nut who envisions landing in Europe for graduate school, while Greco will also stay at RMC to begin work on a master's degree and prepare to wed Dan Sargo, a Robert Morris senior computer science major.

But all three realize that no matter where life takes them, a lasting friendship is inevitable, even fated.

"Let's not forget, we've already tried to go our separate ways," Donnelly said. "I think we'll be friends forever."