Kim Mulkey-Robertson, whose name almost is as long (18 letters) as she is tall (64 inches), fielded a call from President Bush the other night.

Congratulations, the prez told Baylor University’s women’s basketball coach, on winning the NCAA championship. And Dubya, who owns a ranch not too far from Waco, Texas — the home of the Bears — hinted about an invitation to the White House.

Later, asked about going to D.C. to meet the chief executive, Mulkey-Robertson quipped in her down-home drawl: “I would honestly just like to go to Crawford. I just feel like in a good ol’ barbecue, he would spend more time with you.”

Furthermore, said Mulkey-Robertson, “When you go to Washington, you get limited access and you have to deal with all the politicians out there.”

I’ve never met Mulkey-Robertson, but I like her already. And, hopefully, the nation will, too, because in the same breath, I’m wondering if Baylor and Mulkey-Robertson have provided a watershed moment for women’s college basketball.

Baylor’s rags-to-riches rise came in the nick of time. Women’s college basketball had been stagnating, treading water for years in large part because Tennessee and Connecticut had won eight of the last 10 NCAA titles.

Then Baylor pulled the rug on the establishment and gave us hope that women’s college basketball had turned the corner the way the men’s game did in the 1980s when schools like Kansas, Villanova and North Carolina State beat the odds and tickled the nation’s fancy.

Winning all the time was great for Tennessee and UConn, of course, but not good for a game that desperately needs to attract attention as it labors in the shadow of the immensely popular men’s game.

Even though Baylor belongs to the Big 12 Conference, one of the nation’s major leagues, the Baptist-affiliated private school is relatively small — so small, in fact, that it’s a whipping boy in the two revenue sports, football and men’s basketball.

Nobody wants to see Goliath knock off David. Folks always pull for the team with the slingshot, especially if they know and like the person packing the pebbles. That’s where Mulkey-Robertson comes in.

Just about everybody has heard of UT’s Pat Summitt and UConn’s Geno Auriemma, but no one has ever called Summitt a good ol’ girl or Auriemma a good ol’ boy. Summitt and Auriemma are intense, driven people — CEO-types in an increasingly money-driven world of college athletics.

Along comes Mulkey-Robertson. She’s cute and petite, folksy and charming. She looks like the first soccer mom ever to capture an NCAA championship.

You and I have been around long enough to know you don’t win races without horses and, if you saw Baylor play, you know Mulkey-Robertson wasn’t operating with glue-factory rejects. She had talent. Yet not a single one of her players was coveted by an elite school.

“We just won a national championship with not one kid on the roster that was recruited by the powers that be,” Mulkey-Robertson said. “And that gives hope to all of us who are trying to build a program.”

That includes Kansas University’s Bonnie Henrickson who faces basically the same rebuilding job Mulkey-Robertson did five years ago.

“We talk about maintaining and building,” Henrickson said. “Kids go to Tennessee and Connecticut to maintain. They go to Baylor and Kansas to build. That’s what we’re selling.”

Baylor’s feat has made it a seller’s market.