The women’s college basketball season is underway as many teams got their first tests of the 2007-08 campaign in exhibition games against teams filled with former college players and a handful of WNBA players. One of the best matchups of the week came Thursday night when Minnesota Lynx point guard Noelle Quinn led Team Concept into her old stomping grounds at Pauley Pavilion to take on UCLA.

Along with “Q,” Team Concept also has Washington Mystics guard Nikki Blue (UCLA) and Los Angeles Sparks forward Jessica Moore (UConn) on the roster. The stellar trio shines atop a roster that also includes former UCLA standout Natalie Jarrett, Aja Parham (Boston College), Alexis Kendrick (Georgia), Ashlee Dunlap (Loyola Marymount), Jackie Woods (Loyola Marymount), and Anita Rivera (Oregon State).

The talent on that roster proved to be a tough test for UCLA, as the Bruins escaped the exhibition with a 94-82 win. Sophomore guard Erica Tukiainen led four Bruins in double figures with a 19-point effort. Senior forward and WNBA prospect Lindsey Pluimer registered a double-double with 15 points and a game-high total of 12 rebounds.

Q, however, proved to be the star of the night, showing why her future in the WNBA is among the brightest for the rookies of 2007. Q recorded a triple-double, scoring 13 points, grabbing 11 rebounds, and dishing out 10 assists in 34 minutes of play in front of the very friendly faithful at Pauley Pavilion.

A day after her stellar performance, Q checked in with Lynxbasketball.com to talk about her first game in over two months and how it felt to play her former teammates at UCLA.

“I have to tell you that it was good just to be back at UCLA and playing in Pauley Pavilion. It’s always great to be welcomed back by your fans. I’ve been working with the new team at UCLA a lot over the last few weeks just working out and helping them to prepare for the new season. It was strange to play against them. You don’t want to play against your school, but it was all very fun.

It was strange to be in Pauley in a different uniform and getting ready in the visiting locker room. I kind of felt like walking past the door and heading to the UCLA locker room, like I’ve been so used to doing over the last four years.

But with (former UCLA alumnae) Nikki Blue and Natalie Jarrett on Team Concept with me, it still felt a bit like we were still with UCLA. The fans were cheering for us. We got a great introduction and the band, which usually picks on the opponent, was great to us. They were happy to see me. My mom, sister and nieces were there too to see me. It was a lot of fun.

And then, to go out there on the floor where I had so much individual success (editor’s note: 1,829 points, 794 rebounds and 450 assists) and put together a triple-double was exciting. Actually, it was good just to be out there playing basketball. And, I started out the game passing a lot. But towards the end I thought that I needed to start shooting more. I didn’t even know the stats until I saw the score sheet at the end of the game.

I could have shot the ball a lot better. I was only 6-for-16, but a couple of them were in and out and a couple were no-calls that were clearly fouls. It wasn’t rust because I’ve been working out and shooting here with UCLA, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t work on my shot some more.

What was hard was we didn’t practice, so there was a lot of freelancing and making stuff up during the game, on offense anyway because you can’t make up defense. And a lot of the players on this team haven’t played in a while. That showed on the court. We got outrebounded by a lot (52-37) and we didn’t shoot well as a team (27-for-71, 38.0 percent), but somehow we still managed to keep it close. We fell behind by a lot (75-52 with 10:30 left) but we fought back and made a game of it.

I’ve got games against Loyola Marymount on Saturday and Long Beach State on Monday. It feels so good to be out there playing again. It’s better than sitting at home not doing anything at all. I know Loyola has good shooters. I don’t know too much about Long Beach State.

After these next two games, I’ll be putting on a few clinics here in Los Angeles. Hopefully, I’ll be coming back to Minneapolis in a few weeks.

I’ll check in again after Monday’s game. Hopefully we can pull out a win or two. I hope the fans in Minneapolis are doing well and are keeping an eye on all of us while we are working in the offseason. I know we are all working hard on coming back better than ever to help get the Lynx in the playoffs in the 10th Anniversary season in 2008.”