By MONTE DUTTON

What it mainly was on the YouTube live feed was heartwarming.

Right now, on the likely eve of destruction, Presbyterian College is proud of its women’s basketball team.

Alaura Sharp was sitting right where she always wanted to be, coaching a team in the NCAA Tournament. It’s March and madness even greater than advertised. The Blue Hose ran their way right into their promised land.

Sharp looked as if she could giggle at any time, walking the edge of ebullience. As competitors are prone to say, it must have seemed “surreal.”

The woman who never heard of Presbyterian College until shortly before she came to coach it has gone from 7-24 to 12-18 to 10-10 (Covid) to 12-18 to 13-17 to 20-14. Have you ever tried to do something – cook a pot of chili, learn how to play golf or guitar, tune an engine, drive a stick, fly a plane – and think you’ll never get the hang of it?

Then it clicks. About halfway through the Big South season, the Blue Hose clicked. With 30 points on crutches, they won eight of their last nine games and swept through the conference tournament.

Sharp is from Fredonia, Kan., and graduated from Fort Scott Community College and Southwest Minnesota State. She earned big success as a juco head coach at Garden City Community College, then was an assistant at Southern Miss and Louisiana Tech. When she visited PC, it wasn’t altogether unfamiliar.

“I knew it was a place where I could win,” she said.

Bryanna Brady is from Goodyear, Ariz. Tilda Sjokvist is from Huskvarna, Sweden. Mara Neira is from Galicia, Spain. Nuria Cunill came to Clinton from Berga, Spain. Paige Kindseth is a product of Farmington, Minn.

The women came with a liberal-arts education before they even took a class. Theirs is a great story whether PC beats Sacred Heart (24-9) on Wednesday night or not.

“When selection Sunday came down, we felt like we could put our heads down and get back to work,” Sharp said.

The surge, though, was as off the court as on, Brady said, as was the slump that preceded it. Once 8-3, the Blue Hose, from Jan. 13 through Feb. 7, lost 7/8 and plummeted to 12-13.

“It definitely brought us together,” she said. “We took a look in the mirror, and each of us tried to bring something to the table and improve on little things. We worked on it a lot in team bonding outside of basketball and trying to grow our connection.”

Sjokviist said, “Me and the team proved to ourselves that we are supposed to be here, and we’re just going to play hard. I want to lead a team and play hard and make these memories with them.

“We’re going to go out and play hard and see what we can do.”

The Blue Hose are a cohesive bunch. Sjokvist has scored one more point (422-421) than Brady, and four fewer steals (47-51) than Neira.

In High Point, N.C., at the Big South tourney, Presbyterian took off like a rocket, a streaking burn that swept away Charleston Southern, 54-51, after falling to the Bucs five days earlier by 19 points: top-seeded High Point, 59-50; and Radford, 60-37, in the finals.

The defensive task at hand is containing Sacred Heart’s star guard, Ny”Cera Pryor. She’s hitting .476 of her shots and .716 of her free throws. She has 233 rebounds, 150 assists and 108 steals.

Pryor scored 28 points against Merrimack, grabbed 13 rebounds against Central Connecticut State, distributed 10 assists against Bryant and Stonehill and made six steals against Fairleigh Dickinson, Merrimack and Wagner.

Whoever they are.

“She’s a little bit of a blend of three different really good players in the Big South,” said Sharp of Pryor. “There’s no one exactly like here, but I don’t think you can guard her with only one person. She’s too good.

“She keeps the ball in her hands so much. They’re going to dribble and try to lull us to sleep, but we’ve got to bore them right back with a great defensive stance and intensity. We have to be ready when [Pryor] decides to charge to the rim.”

Pryor, a 5-3 sophomore who has already scored well over 1,000 points and is both Player and Defensive Player of the Year in the Northeast Conference.

When South Carolina defeated Presbyterian, 99-79, on Dec. 16 of last year, Sharp recalled being asked why she would play such a game.

“I answered at the time that I wanted to prepare my team for March Madness,” she said.

PC has lots of work to do, but’s already done more than ever before.

Will work for food, but contributions would be better. They’re both good and good for me.

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