Denver ? Tara VanDerveer had just walked out of a meeting room Sunday morning when she heard her assistant coach Amy Tucker scream.

Tucker wasn’t the only one. There were screams, gasps and high fives all around the sites of the NCAA women’s tournament Sunday.

Tennessee’s Candace Parker had just dunked.

She didn’t just do it once. She did it twice.

She didn’t dunk as a gimmick. She dunked in the flow of the game.

She didn’t need a clear lane and a huge windup to accomplish the feat. Her first one-handed jam was on a breakaway. On her second she rose up through traffic from the baseline.

It was historic, and ESPN milked the moments throughout the day with constant replays. While three other college women have dunked in games, no one has done it since 2000. And no one ever has done it in a tournament game.

“I was glad she got a good throwdown and it didn’t ricochet off the back of the rim,” VanDerveer said. “I think it’s great buzz. It’s great for the women’s game.”

On a weekend when a fabulous new generation of women’s basketball players is being showcased, it was an exclamation point on the change in the game.

“It’s pretty cool to bring it out in the tournament,” said Oklahoma’s Courtney Paris, who also played with Parker on junior national teams. “I remember being pumped up as a teammate when she did it. If I could do it, I’d do it all the time.”

But not everyone can do it. Though Parker’s dunks felt like earthquake tremors shaking the women’s game, in truth the landscape won’t change that much. There aren’t going to be suddenly hundreds of girls arriving in the NCAA with the hand size to palm the ball or the vertical leap to elevate above the rim.

Paris, the freshman whom some already are calling the best player in the country, last tried to dunk in her freshman year in high school. A newspaper account described her as “barely missing a dunk.”

“I left it at that,” she said. “Just a putback layup that helps my team is fine.”

So, what exactly is Paris’ vertical leap?

“Really high,” said Paris, arching her eyebrows. “We don’t want it to be scouted, so we don’t talk about it.”

The interesting subtext of Parker’s dunk is that many inside women’s basketball believe there’s a healthy competition going on between Tennessee’s Pat Summitt and Oklahoma’s Sherri Coale over who has the best freshman in the country.

Paris and Parker are both dubbed “CP3” – with identical initials and jersey numbers.

There’s some speculation that Summitt, already peeved over Tennessee being slighted with a No. 2 seed, may have unleashed Parker, a red-shirt freshman, to get the spotlight away from Paris.

If so, that’s not a bad thing. Two dominant players always are more interesting than one. And a healthy rivalry for four seasons between Paris and Parker could be a great thing for the game.

The young players here in Denver were unanimously excited about Sunday’s earthquake.

“Maybe I’m a little less old-fashioned than coach Coale,” Paris said, “but I think it’s cool.”