She must do everything but exhale, her instinct dictates. You can pick a moment, almost any moment, from Agnus Berenato's life, and it attests to the demands of her job. The Pitt Panthers hired her three years ago to coach the women's basketball team, a program without an NCAA tournament trip in its history.

The progress that has followed -- last season, Berenato guided the young Panthers to the WNIT semifinals and 22 wins, tied for most in team history -- has become a blur.

The morning before an early March practice at the Petersen Events Center, Berenato had grabbed a flight back from Newark, N.J., where she had watched a high school recruit the night before, dashed to a hotel, tried (unsuccessfully) to force a few hours of sleep and pulled herself out of bed before the alarm clock hit 5 a.m. By the time she made it back to Pittsburgh, she greeted her team and kept them for seven hours -- practicing, watching film, training in the fitness room.

What about the recent Easter weekend? Nope, Berenato was again jumping into a car, then a plane bound for North Carolina, her eyes on another recruit who might help the Panthers, no longer the punch-line program she inherited.

For the results borne from her dedication to that turnaround, Berenato earned the Dapper Dan's annual Sportswoman of the Year award. She had arrived in Pittsburgh after 15 years at Georgia Tech, knowing only that the Pitt women's basketball team lacked the talent it needed. "When I came to Pittsburgh, nothing was in place. No belief," she said.

The possibilities intrigued her, though. The team played in a sparkling arena and a powerful conference. Athletic department officials desperately wanted an improved women's team and sought Berenato for the job. (She never applied for the position.) Still, when she signed a seven-year contract in March 2003, one acquaintance quipped that she would need all seven years to turn things around.

Not so. In 2005-06, despite low preseason expectations, Pitt enjoyed its finest season. It won nine of 16 Big East games, finishing sixth in the 16-team league. It won three consecutive games in the postseason, largely overwriting the disappointment of an NCAA snub. Better yet, entering 2006-07, the Panthers return four starters, including stars Marcedes Walker, a center, and Mallorie Winn, a guard.

"I have such a belief that we can be prominent on the national scene," Berenato said. "But we're in a league with programs that have made it. So you have to make a leap. So who are you going to leap over?"

Left unsaid is her belief that attitude powers the leap. That attitude reaches beyond the peripatetic recruiting schedule, the heavy practice schedule, the cluttered desk; that's part of any coaching job. Thing is, others finish the tasks and retreat -- they find a comfortable chair, an hour with the television, a dinner with the family. Berenato, though, calls herself "very demanding and very hands on." All her career, she has heard others marvel about her bottomless well of energy.

She asks aloud about the donor responsible for the women's basketball office, then calls her up and later attends a social function to see her. She proofreads the team's media guide and demands that it be among the best in the nation. She creates her own Pitt stationary, picking the photo (a close-up shot of a panther's eyes) and the typeface ("not just gold color, but foil").

On Easter Sunday, when she arrived back in Pittsburgh, she called the six Pitt players still in town and invited them to dinner at her house, fighting back the logic that told her to take a rest. She cooked pasta with shrimp, creating a separate pasta-and-pesto dish for Winn, a vegetarian. By the time her dining room filled with players, Berenato also had a peach pie and a platter of fruit. The players stayed past 11 p.m., just talking.

"I'm a big believer that you reap what you sow," Berenato said. "I tell the team that all the time. I don't think luck just happens. I think people create their own good fortune."