For Immaculata's Smith, a 'surreal' experience

Right after the game, back in the locker room with the flat screen and the long couch - the finest locker room she had ever called home - Sara Smith picked up her phone and saw the texts flying in, a lot with a variation of the same photo, from family members who had been in the stands and had their phones out.

Their photos depicted Smith at the foul line. What made it special: Behind her on the big overhead scoreboard at Madison Square Garden, there Smith was again, larger than life.

Under her image were the vital facts: G, 33, Sara Smith, 5-foot-7, Senior, Glenolden, Pa.

Smith's Immaculata University teammates also were on the board with all their statistics, the same as if they were Knicks or something. Look for that to be Smith's profile picture for a while.

"It was kind of surreal," Smith said, recalling how she and her teammates walked out of the tunnel and kept telling each other, "Soak it all in." They looked at the banners high above the court. Even when the five players went out for the tip, she said, they repeated, "Soak it in."

"To play on the same court as Michael Jordan and all the other great players was something special," Smith said this week.

Little Division III schools from Pennsylvania aren't afforded the chance to play at the Garden - but Immaculata is like no other little Division III school from anywhere.

"Every women's basketball player should know the history of Immaculata," Smith said, and she wasn't just talking about those who play at her school.

Queens and Immaculata had played in the first women's college game at the Garden in 1975, so the two schools were invited back to open the Maggie Dixon Classic doubleheader on Sunday, with Connecticut and St. John's following. That was kind of appropriate, being the opener, since in '75 Immaculata and Queens had been the sparsely attended opening act before a men's game.

The UConn players, the current titans of the sport, came out to watch a bit of the second half of Immaculata's game since their own coach, Norristown-raised Geno Auriemma, knows all the history.

Before there was NCAA women's basketball, the college in Chester County had come from nowhere and won a national title, the first of three, a feat worthy of Hollywood, which eventually took interest and began production. Smith knew that history before she left grade school since Our Lady of Fatima in Secane, Delaware County, wasn't just her school but also had been where an Immaculata star, Theresa Grentz, had gone to grade school. Smith met Grentz at the school, she said, when she was in sixth grade.

Smith also shared a high school, Archbishop Prendergast, with another Immaculata great, Marianne Stanley, and still has her signature. She also met other Prendie players who had gone on to play for the Mighty Macs. Smith had grown up practically at the epicenter of the whole phenomenon.

What was most striking when they got out on the Garden court, Smith said, was how everything felt brand new, "the balls, the rims, the nets." The court was like a stage, she said, lit so brightly, with the stands in the darkened background. When her first jump shot left her hand, it felt like it was traveling through the dark until it fell through the net. Then it mostly felt like a normal game again.

Like Immaculata, Queens doesn't play in the big time anymore, but Queens is Division II, a level up, with scholarship players. The Immaculata girls knew their opponents were bigger and faster.

"We could outhustle them," Smith said. "There was no reason why we couldn't."

They were within a point at halftime, although Queens eventually won, 76-60. After the two teams shook hands they were asked to stay out there and join with UConn and St. John's as the national anthem was played before the main event.

Or maybe it wasn't the main event. UConn plays in the big arenas all the time. The Huskies probably have a big flat screen in their locker room in Storrs. This doubleheader was unique and memorable because of the schools that took the court first, honoring their own rich legacy, which showed schools such as UConn the possibilities.

It was after the first game, not the second, when a senior guard from Glenolden finished up a formal news conference in the MSG press toom by saying, "This is the best experience I've had in my whole life."