When she walks on the court, other than her height, she looks pretty much like any other high school basketball player. In warm ups an uninitiated observer can see that she has some talent, but not necessarily anything special. But then the game starts and Jordan Madden comes alive.

Almost instantly it becomes clear that Madden is indeed something special, however. In fact, in the huge majority of games she has played in during her career at EPC, she has looked like she belonged at the next level of play. At times, it seems almost cruel to put her up against some of the competition she has seen this year.

Not that Madden is the only player on the team, far from it. Basketball is a team sport and this team has gone 26-2 through the 3A-3 district final at Corning last Friday night. Their second loss came at the hands of the Lady Mustangs who avenged two previous losses this season to the Lady Warriors by hitting a last-second shot for a 56-53 victory.

But even in defeat, Madden led both teams with 27 points. And it is this type of talent and play which has made Madden one of the hottest future properties in high school basketball.

Just a junior, Madden's coach Bobby Lewallen has been contacted by, among others, Texas A&M, Florida, Arkansas, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Louisiana Tech and Arkansas State. It was Baylor, however, who seemed to take the cat-bird seat recently when Madden made a verbal commitment to play for coach Kim Mulkey's Lady Bears.

Mulkey took Baylor to a national championship in 2005 and was recently ranked as high as #6 in the nation. The coach came to the ASU Convocation Center in December after Christmas during the NEA tournament to watch her recruit.

Unknown to most people, Madden had already made an unofficial visit to the Baylor campus before Christmas.

"She came back and said she really enjoyed it," Lewallen said of his star last week. "She said she wanted to go ahead and verbally commit, but I told her to think about it a couple of weeks before she made it official."

Madden who is basically a very quite young lady, did as Lewallen suggested and mulled it over for two weeks. But at the end of that time, the decision was the same. So without further delay, Madden made it official Wednesday, Jan. 23.

When asked what the commitment meant overall, Lewallen said one of the main things is that other teams which had been contacting the school have now backed off respecting the decision Madden made.

"Now she can relax a little and concentrate of the last part of this season and competing next year," said Lewallen.

Madden, ranked the 30th best junior overall in the country by some rating services, will be joining what Lewallen calls a fantastic 2009 recruiting class which Mulkey has amassed. Besides his star, Madden will be joined by the #2 player in the country, 6-8 Brittney Griner of Houston.

"Jordan and Brittney will be playing for the same AAU team in Dallas-Fort Worth this summer," Lewallen added. "They will get to know each other before they get to Baylor."

Lewallen went on to say he fully expected to see his, by then, former player helping the Lady Bears compete for the national championship in a couple of years.

For right now, though, Madden and the rest of her Lady Warrior teammates are getting ready for the regional tournament in Marmaduke. Both they and the Warriors will be playing their first game Thursday with the Lady Warriors opening with Yellville-Summit, third place finishers in the 3A-1E.

And like she has done her entire basketball career, Madden will do whatever it takes to help her team go as far as it can the remainder of this season.