Hilton Coliseum on a Monday afternoon. Two old men sit next to a man much younger, all of them watching the ISU women’s basketball players run up and down the court, scrimmaging.

Reporters, too, are watching. Some clumped opposite the old and young men, others sitting alone, sprawled out, all of them giving the impression they’d rather watch practice than interview after it.

The place is quiet. When play stops, you can hear the hum Hilton emits, or maybe that’s just Hilton’s ears ringing because when 11,000 people sit between its walls it’s, well, loud.

The fans love their team and they love its leader, 6-foot-4-inch Angie Welle, Iowa State’s all-time scoring and rebounding leader, also the leader in blocked shots, attempted free throws and free throws made.

Here she is on defense this Monday afternoon in early February, playing out her senior season at center, going down as one of the greatest of all time.

She tips away the entry pass. (Defense is something she’s been working on.)

Her team picks up the loose ball and wow, look how quickly Welle can get up the court – she’s running even with the guards.

Look at her now, setting up in the post, her defender already sealed behind her.

Look at those eyes, wide and confident, asking for the ball.

She shouts for it, but the Cyclones skip it to the other wing. So Welle moves to the left block. Again, her opponent is sealed.

Give it to her.

There we go.

Look at that. Fake right, turn left. She notices the defenders arms stretched above her, so she tucks her shoulder underneath her opponent’s and heaves the ball up from her hip.

Off the glass and in.

And the place falls quiet again.

There was a time, and it was here at Iowa State, when Welle was the farthest thing from confident.

She was back home in Fargo, N.D. the summer after her freshman year, worried sick about Gintar‚ Cipinyt‚, a 6-foot-5-inch All-American out of Seward County Community College, freshly committed to Iowa State.

“We brought G in to help, not to, in any way, shape or form, replace Angie,” ISU head coach Bill Fennelly said.

But Welle didn’t know that.

Every shot at the start of her sophomore year was monumentally important; every miss proved she was a failure.

She now calls it her “mental breakdown.”

Welle was extremely frustrated, sometimes near tears, and if she’d wipe them away on the court, she’d steal a peak at the bench to see if Fennelly was about to pull her.

Sometimes he did.

At all hours of the day, and nearly every day, Welle would call her parents, Jean and Wayne, back in Fargo, or her sister, Carrie – the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year in 1997 at Creighton – in Minneapolis.

Her family is her rock. Always has been.

Angie took piano lessons and ice skated as a kid, but mostly she played basketball.

Wayne Welle grew six inches after high school graduation and when his daughters were born, the 6′-6″ Wayne spent his free moments teaching his girls the game he had once had no size for.

There they were in the backyard, Wayne, Carrie, Angie and maybe a couple of uncles – because the Welles live close to each other in Fargo – shooting, yelling, winning and losing.

And there they were behind the cabin at Big Floyd Lake, Wayne, Carrie, Angie and some uncles – because they had cabins there too – practicing, always practicing basketball.

Don’t dare let Carrie and Angie to play alone, though.

An elbow here, a more forceful one there. Soon flagrant fouls replaced sound defense.

Afterwards the girls refused to speak to one another for a couple of days.

But basketball with Dad always brought them back.

Welle played volleyball in high school and was recruited for it as well.

“I liked volleyball a lot, but I thought that I was better at basketball,” Welle says. “I knew all along I wanted to play basketball.”

Fennelly recruited her as hard as he’s recruited anyone. He needed height and the North Dakota 1997 Class A Player of the Year did nicely.

Welle was named Big 12 Conference Rookie of the Week in January 1999 and her 21-point and 10-rebound performance against Oregon in the second round of the NCAA tournament led her team to victory.

She averaged 10.9 points and 6.8 rebounds her freshman season, but this Gintar‚ Cipinyt‚ business was bothering her when she went home that summer.

Her eight-point performance against San Francisco and four points against Northwestern and three against Western Illinois didn’t help matters the following winter.

“I think I kind of just put too much pressure on myself,” Welle says.

Relax.

That’s what her parents and sister and coach kept telling her.

At Drake, four days later, she listened.

Her team lost, but Welle scored 14 points, all of them in the second half.

And thus began the second half of her career.

Never before had Fennelly seen such improvement in a player. He called it “instantaneous.”

“It was very strange,” he continues, “I think the next game she had a double-double.”

Indeed she did. Against Iowa three days later, Welle went for 21 points and 11 boards.

With herself out of the way, Welle found it easier to get by the other opponent.

She ended her sophomore season shooting 75 percent from the floor, averaging 15 points and eight rebounds a game.

Last season she averaged a double-double, (18.3 points, 10 rebounds) which was good enough for first team All-Big 12 and third team Associated Press All-American honors.

This year, her last as a Cyclone, she was selected as a preseason All-American.

And now, she has a fistful of Cyclone records.

“It’s almost like your searching for things to coach her about,” Fennelly says.

“I’ve just . learned so much,” she says.

Welle’s speech is often littered with qualifiers and caveats, especially so when asked to explain her accomplishments, as if she is hesitant to boast.

Words like “I guess” and “like” and “kind of” often find homes between phrases such as “all-time leading scorer” and so on.

The question about what she has learned is answered with this: “Just, maybe more, like mentally, I’ve kind of . I think I’ve kind of matured I guess and kind of developed more as a player.”

It sounds childlike, but Welle is not uneducated.

Last year, she was first team Academic All-Big 12; in 2000, she earned Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll fall and spring semesters; in 1999, second team Academic All-Big 12.

“I mean, I love basketball, but it’s not my entire life,” Welle says.

“She’s gonna be a great teacher,” Fennelly says.

Welle’s roommate, forward and fellow senior Tracy Gahan, can see it already in the elementary education major.

With constantly moving hands and a plethora of facial expressions, Welle exaggerates her own stories, Gahan says.

But never her accomplishments.

“What you see is what you get,” says Jean, her mother.

“I’m sure she’s proud, but . she’s still who she is away from basketball,” Gahan says.

So this all-time whatever business – it doesn’t matter to Welle.

“It doesn’t even faze me,” she says.