LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Nearly two decades ago, when he was informed that Andrea Hudy had been hired to oversee his team's strength and conditioning program, Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun placed a call to his wife.

"Guess what," Calhoun told her. "We've got a female strength coach. This will last about two weeks."

Bill Self was even more pessimistic in 2004, when then-Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins suggested he tap Hudy for the same position with the Jayhawks. Self flew in four other candidates before finally granting Hudy an interview.

"I didn't want to hire her," Self said. "Lew would say, 'If you just meet her once, you're going to love her.' But I kept saying, 'I don't want to hire a woman to be a men's strength coach. Who does that?'"

Kansas strength coach Andrea Hudy has made quite the impact on the Jayhawks' basketball team. Jeff Jacobsen, Kansas Athletic

Self eventually caved.

Eight Big 12 championships and two Final Fours later, he says adding Division I basketball's only female strength coach to his staff was one of the best decisions he's ever made.

"I don't know where we'd be without her," Self said.

Indeed, just as she did at Connecticut -- where she helped the Huskies win a collective seven NCAA men's and women's basketball titles -- Hudy has made a mammoth imprint on Kansas' program. The Jayhawks won the national championship in 2008 and reached the title game this past season. In the past six seasons, no team in America has averaged more victories (33) than KU.

Hudy, players say, is one of the main reasons.

Center Jeff Withey labeled Hudy as Kansas' "secret weapon" during this past season's Final Four run. Marcus Morris, an All-American in 2011, said she was the main reason he became an NBA lottery pick last spring. Former point guard Sherron Collins even referred to Hudy as a "second mom."

The comments couldn't be more uplifting to Hudy, who has helped produce more than two dozen NBA players at Kansas and Connecticut, where she worked from 1995-2004.

"I think I have something to teach people," Hudy, 39, said. "If there's an athlete who is willing to work, I'll work with them. With me it's all about, 'Who wants to get better? Who wants to compete?'"

As an elementary school quarterback growing up in Huntingdon, Pa., Tom Hudy knew exactly what to do when he felt pressure from an opposing defense.

Hand the ball off to his sister.

Up until the sixth grade, Hudy was one of the stars of her pee wee football team in Huntingdon, a town of about 7,000 nearly 100 miles west of Harrisburg. Her father, Richard, made her give up the sport before junior high school, but that did nothing to squelch Andrea's competitive nature.

Hudy was so irked that her dad wouldn't allow her to wrestle competitively that she threw Tom into the family Christmas tree when he taunted her with one of his medals.

Countless afternoons during Hudy's childhood were spent running timed races -- sometimes through self-designed obstacle courses -- against her four older siblings. The loser had to either take off their shoes and socks and jog across a gravel driveway or subject themselves to being thrown into a "jagger bush."

"Our parents would look at us like, 'What are you guys doing?'" said Tom, who played football at the University of Delaware. "I don't think Andrea has ever looked at anything as, 'Boys have to do this. Girls have to do that.' She never cared who she was competing against. She wanted to get the fastest time."

Center Jeff Withey said Hudy was Kansas' "secret weapon" during this past season's Final Four run. Jeff Jacobsen, Kansas Athletics

With no upscale workout facility in town, Richard built a makeshift weight room under the patio at their home. Squat rack, bench press, pullup bar, the works.

When her brothers' friends would come over to train, Hudy would work out right along with them. It was then that Hudy began to develop a passion for strength and conditioning. By the time she graduated from the University of Maryland -- where she was a member of the Terrapins' volleyball squad -- Hudy knew she wanted to turn it into a profession.

Things didn't go smoothly at first.

"I tried to go into corporate fitness," Hudy said. "I was basically training people who were getting insurance deductions because they were working out. They'd start sweating and stop. I'd say, 'No, now is the time you've got to push harder.'

"I thought everyone was like me. I thought everyone wanted to exercise. There are very few people, in the grand scheme of things, that actually enjoy exercise."

Convinced that working with college athletes would be a better fit, Hudy was hired at the University of Connecticut, where she quickly made an impression on strength and conditioning coach Gerard Martin.

"She had an intensity that rivaled all strength coaches," Martin said. "The athletes she worked with forgot about the fact that she's a female and said, 'This is our strength coach. She's strong, she's in shape, and she can probably kick our asses if we get out of line.'"

Connecticut's athletes can attest to that.

Former Huskies football star Dan Orlovsky, the program's all-time leading passer, said players feared Hudy's "punishment workouts." They also prayed they'd stay injury-free, because players who were unable to practice spent their afternoons with Hudy in the weight room.

"Her workouts were harder than anything we did on the football field," said Orlovsky, who now plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. "I definitely think there was resistance at first. In my own head there was. As a young, 17-year-old, immature kid, I thought I should be taught how I should be working out and training and eating by a guy.

"But then you realize, 'This woman is stronger than I am and in better shape than I'm in.' You gain a competitive appreciation for her. I quickly came to accept that she didn't play around."