Elena Delle Donne steps away from basketball

Elena Delle Donne's decision to step away from playing basketball for one of the nation's top powerhouses stunned most people.

But when you think about it, maybe it's even more surprising that there haven't been more situations like Delle Donne's. There just aren't a lot of prep players who appeared headed for great college careers but went an altogether different path.

The fact is that most of the high school players who have been projected as the best in the country have indeed gone on to play four years in college. Some aren't as good as projected, and some have transferred. But the vast majority do finish their college basketball careers.

Elena's story

Elena Delle Donne sits down for an interview with Mark Schwarz on "Outside the Lines" (9 a.m. ET Sunday, ESPN). Watch preview

What has happened with Delle Donne -- not playing college hoops at all, although the option is still open if she chooses it -- is so rare that even the most well-known comparisons to her are notably different.

If you asked devoted women's hoops followers to name prep stars whose college experiences never came close to matching what was expected, two names likely would come up first: Nicole Kaczmarski and Nina Smith. And in a strange coincidence, they both graduated from high school in 1999.

"Kaz" -- as everyone referred to her -- was a Long Island scoring wizard featured in Leandra Reilly Lardner's film "Running Down a Dream," which chronicled the recruiting process Kaz and her father, Pete, went through.

Kaz, a standout guard at Sachem High School, chose UCLA -- much to her father's dismay. She played for the Bruins for one season, then took the next fall off because of injury, illness and an ongoing strained relationship with her family back in New York.

"She came to a place her father didn't want her to go to, and it was a huge transition," said Kathy Olivier, formerly the coach at UCLA and now at UNLV. "Her dad kept telling her, 'Leave.'"

Kaczmarski did indeed do that, transferring to Georgia. But she never played for that program. She went back to New York and attended Stony Brook, although she didn't play basketball there, either.

She was drafted by the New York Liberty in 2003 but didn't make the roster. She played overseas and had another shot at the WNBA, with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2005. But that didn't work out, either.

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