Former Vanderbilt standout Ashley McElhiney is the first woman named head coach of a men's pro hoops team. AP

A year ago, Ashley McElhiney was finishing up a standout four-year career as Vanderbilt's point guard. A few months ago, she was working for a Nashville catering company. This week, the 22-year-old became the first woman to take over the helm of a men's pro basketball team when she was named head coach of the American Basketball Association's Nashville Rhythm.

In other words, McElhiney (MAC-ill-hay-nee) smashed through the women-coaching-men's basketball glass ceiling faster than Charlie and his grandfather exited the chocolate factory at the end of Willy Wonka.

McElhiney was approached for the job a few months ago by team co-owner Sally Anthony, a singer who has toured with James Taylor. Anthony was determined to hire a woman coach for the expansion franchise that opens play in November. At first McElhiney passed. She was all set to take a job as a videographer for the Ohio State women's team under her first college coach, Jim Foster, when she had a change of heart two weeks ago.

"Everyone has dreams," says McElhiney. "You can't go through life regretting the chances you didn't take."

In some ways, of course, the Rhythm are merely taking a well-calculated risk. Hiring McElhiney is at the very least a masterful public relations move. Frankly, how many of you even knew that the ABA was back in business?

That being said, McElhiney does have game. Considering her hoops pedigree, it would be unwise to bet against her. She was considered a borderline Division I talent coming out of tiny Gleason High in west Tennessee. Gleason is so small it doesn't have a traffic light, though to be fair, there are two intersections with four-way stop signs.

Even McElhiney's coach her senior year at Vanderbilt, Melanie Balcomb, once offered this assessment of her point guard: "She's small, and she's not really quick." (Balcomb actually meant it as testament to McElhinney's grit.)

Despite her unprepossessing physical skills, McElhinney set a Commodore record for assists (by a man or woman), with 673. She played the full 40 minutes 38 times during her college career and earned the team's award as top defensive player three years running.

"I've heard I was too small and too slow from the time I played in high school," McElhiney says. "Everyone doubted I could play Division I basketball, especially in the SEC. I proved everyone wrong. You don't have to be athletic to play basketball, you just have to be smart."

Those smarts will certainly be put to the test with the Rhythm. For one thing, McElhiney doesn't turn 23 until July, and has no coaching experience at all.

Then there's the matter of telling grown men, or at least very tall men, what to do on and off the floor. McElhiney is 5-foot-5 in modest heels. Nets coach Lawrence Frank could post her up.

It's also no secret that many men don't like taking orders from a woman. That seems doubly true for professional athletes, who generally don't want to hear much more from women than their phone numbers.

McElhiney hasn't exactly been surrounded by men thus far in her young life. She has an older sister but no brothers. She hasn't yet grappled with the peculiar complexities of being a woman leading men.

For example, there is McElhiney's penchant for bare shoulders. She'll even roll up the sleeves of a tank top because she can't stand being that covered up. On the court, she tucked her jersey under her sports bra, and she plans to sport the same bare-shouldered look on the bench.

Is she worried her players may be distracted by so much skin?

"No, they should be totally focused on the game," she says. Then she pauses a moment. "I hadn't even thought about that. This has all just happened."

Still, McElhiney is eager for the team's free-agent camp to start June 26, so she can start blowing a whistle in anger.

"The first thing I said to her was the biggest opposition you're going to face is the guys are not going to want to listen to you," says co-owner Anthony. "That was probably her biggest worry, as well. She's still going to face that opposition, but she's going to learn how to deal with it. She's a little fireball."

That goes for Anthony as well, who might be the most interesting owner in sports since a slender Delta Burke manned the owner's box for the California Bulls in HBO's 1st & Ten back in the '80s.

Anthony could sell an oceanfront condo on the Bering Strait to an Eskimo. She certainly had this scribe tied in knots. Consider the following exchange on the phone this week:

Anthony: "All of us women are really smart, smarter than you all think."

Me: "I'm not doubting that at all."

Anthony: "Do you have a wife?"

Me: "I do not. But I'm sure she'd be smarter than me." [Or, as my grammar-stickler female editor pointed out to me: She'd be smarter than I am.]

Anthony has hoops cred as well. She played some high school ball at Heritage Christian High in Indianapolis. Her uncle was a boys' high school coach in the hoops-mad state. Anthony even bought a piece of the floor from Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse -- a memento from when tiny Milan High won the state title in 1954 and inspired the film Hoosiers.

The Rhythm players had better not think they can complain to management about their Gene Hackman-type coach when things get testy, because this is one united front office.

Anthony owns the team with her husband and manager, Tony Bucher, and his business partner, Justin Christian. The G.M. is Anthony's brother-in-law Dan Bucher, a former college basketball player.

"We're keeping it in the family," says Anthony. "You only trust family, right?"

That's basically what Tony Soprano said to his cousin Tony Blundetto last month, though that doesn't seem to be working out too well. Here's betting that this partnership ends better. At the very least, everyone should get out alive.