Who needs a One Shining Moment video when you’ve got Sister Jean?
The 98-year-old nun who has become the face of this most-inspiring NCAA Tournament held court on Good Friday in one of the best-attended news conferences ever held at the Final Four.
Hundreds of reporters and cameramen jammed in, elbow-to-elbow, in an interview room that would normally draw two dozen journalists for a player.
Photo: AFP
“I walked by, and I thought it looked like Tom Brady at the Super Bowl,” Loyola-Chicago coach Porter Moser said.
It was more monumental than that. This was the No. 1 fan of Moser and the Ramblers — the 11th-seeded team whose magical, miraculous run to the cusp of the title would have made for great theater, even without a nun.
Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt has added a completely new, unexpected and, yes, wonderful twist to the proceedings. Her 15-minute question-and-answer session on the eve of Loyola’s game against Michigan illustrated precisely why.
She fielded questions about everything from whether God cares about basketball — “more the NCAA than the NBA” — some light trash talk with former Michigan star Jalen Rose’s 100-year-old grandma — “Somebody said, ‘Maybe you need a pair of boxing gloves’ and I said, ‘Well, we’ll see what happens’” — and what it takes to really have your prayer heard — “God always hears, but maybe He thinks it’s better for us to do the ‘L’ instead of the ‘W,’ and we have to accept that.”
A lot has changed, Sister Jean said, since the Ramblers last made history — back in 1963 when they completed an equally unexpected run by knocking off Cincinnati for the national championship.
“I watched it on a little 11-inch black-and-white TV, and the game was [tape] delayed,” she said. “And then everybody got out of the house and walked down the line on Sheridan Road, men and women together.”
Sister Jean has been on a whirlwind since the Ramblers started this unexpected return to the college basketball promised land.
That this is all happening on Easter weekend makes it that much more hectic, but, as she has shown time and again over the past three weeks, sports and religion really can mix, so long as everything is kept in perspective.
Not that this mix of sports and religion is particularly groundbreaking. Players thank God all the time, and more often than not, their prayers and thanks go largely ignored by the mainstream media and the fans.
However, college basketball is going through some rough times these days, filled with dirty coaches and agents, payoffs to players and an FBI investigation that has unmasked corruption in many corners of the game.
Sister Jean’s presence has reminded everyone that the game is about more than slam dunks, busted brackets, big money and the glossy One Shining Moment video that wraps things up at the end.
“It’s just cool that everybody in the world knows who she is now, and they’re starting to get to see how cool she is and how amazing she is,” Ramblers guard Clayton Custer said.
“I could stay for an hour,” she said.
Spending an hour talking hoops with a nun? Nary a soul objected.
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