Parker enjoying time before it's back to work

"Winning the championship is a pretty amazing feeling. I definitely want to feel it again."

Candace Parker, University of Tennessee basketball star

Candace Parker doesn't have much use for an alarm clock this summer.

The University of Tennessee women's basketball star will try to lead the Lady Vols to an NCAA title repeat, earn a spot on the Olympic team, and eventually embark on a career in the WNBA.

But chances are good she's sleeping in this morning.

A recent day had Parker awaking well past noon, thanks in part to her two dogs -- Neno, a Pug she has had since she was 8, and Sendi, a St. Bernard mix.

"They're on my schedule, so they didn't wake me up until 1:30," said Parker, who is in Atlanta with her fiance, NBA player Shelden Williams.

That isn't to say Parker's success has made the 21-year-old soft. The motivated marquee player of the college game is just taking advantage of her time off in the summer to catch up on her sleep. She's still working out, but late at night. That day she arrived home from one of her nocturnal workouts at 2 a.m.

"I don't like getting up early, and during the day I do stuff, so I just go at night," she said. "I just like it. It works for me."

Parker needs to get her rest now before she begins a long stretch of basketball playing.

Tennessee's fall semester starts one week from today, but then Parker will rejoin the USA Basketball women's senior national team Sept. 7 in New York. She will miss Tennessee's trip to the White House on Sept. 21 if she sticks with the USA squad as it tries to win an Olympic berth Sept. 26-30 in Valdivia, Chile.

Parker's goal is to play in the Olympics next summer in Beijing.

"It's something I've watched ever since I was a little girl, and something I've always wanted to be a part of," she said.

Parker is focused on doing whatever it takes to make the team to the point where she isn't aware of when the final cut for the Olympics will happen.

"I don't even know," she said. "I'm just going along with the flow and whatever they tell me to do."

Once Parker's latest stint with the U.S. team ends, she will return to Tennessee to begin the Lady Vols' quest to repeat.

"You can never have too much jewelry, so we definitely want to get another ring on our finger," Parker said. "But the goal of everybody in the NCAA is to win a national championship. I think it's definitely really hard to repeat, and that's what made Florida's run this year (in the men's tourney) so special."

When it was suggested that it can be tough for a championship team to stay hungry, a change in Parker's tone of voice made it clear she's not ready to concede her hunger won't be the same.

"Winning the championship is a pretty amazing feeling," she said insistently. "I definitely want to feel it again."

The local hero is looking forward to Tennessee's Jan. 2 game at DePaul. It'll be the first time Parker plays in the Chicago area since graduating from Naperville Central.

"I'm so excited," she said. "I'm really looking forward to it. And we go to South Bend (to play Notre Dame on Jan. 5), so it should be a lot of fun."

Since she sat out her first year at Tennessee because of knee surgery, Parker will be a redshirt junior in the 2007-08 season. While she's on schedule to graduate in the spring with a sports management major and a psychology minor (she currently owns a 3.4 grade-point average), she will be eligible to play a fourth season for the Lady Vols in 2008-09.

She also will be eligible to enter the WNBA draft next April.

While it shouldn't surprise anyone if Parker leaves Tennessee after the season to test her mettle against the pros, Parker said she hasn't decided what she will do.

"To be honest with you, I think it'll be just a gut feeling," she said. "Here's my thought process: I'm going to make my pros-and-cons list and talk about it with my coaches and my family and make a decision from there, but the whole part of college is to get your education and to graduate.

"Obviously, Tennessee is the mecca of women's basketball. It's a great place to play and I would gain a lot by coming back, and I would probably gain a lot by leaving as well, but I'm not going to make that decision until I sit down with my family and friends."

Whenever Parker enters the WNBA draft, would she like to return home to play for the Chicago Sky?

"Shoot," she said, "I would want to play for any team that drafts me."

Despite her busy schedule, Parker finds time to follow the WNBA.

"I do actually keep up with it," she said. "I'm really excited about it. It's a process, and everybody must remember that it is a process. The NBA went through the same growing pains.

"But overall people are starting to respect it a lot more, this year especially with the amount of players that have really stepped up and done very well."

For now, though, Parker is taking advantage of some valued time off from school and basketball. She has recently got into cooking with her fiance, has been playing so much Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo DS that her thumb is sore, and enjoys taking her dogs to the park … whenever she happens to wake up.

"Oh, I love it," Parker said. "This is my down time."