SIS BOOM BAH!
SISTER JEAN & THE MIRACLES EYE UPSET OF MIGHTY MICHIGAN
SAN ANTONIO — She is the 98year-old belle of the Final Four ball, the sweet, smiling face of March Madness, a college basketball godsend at a time when a scandalshrouded game so desperately needs one.
Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt will be in her wheelchair Saturday night inside the Alamodome, proudly wearing her maroon and gold, this forever young team chaplain cheering on her Cinderella Loyola Chicago Ramblers against Michigan in the sunshine of her life.
“Even in the morning, I wake up and say, ‘Is this real or is it a dream?’ ” Sister Jean said Friday.
It is real — a dream old lady and her Dream Team, 40 minutes from a shot at the national championship.
And she didn’t come here to lose. Apparently Vince Lombardi wasn’t the only one who believed, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” No way was Sister Jean about to reveal any pregame advice.
“I’m afraid you’re going to tell Michigan what we’re going to do and I don’t want that to happen,” she said before a throng of media Friday. “We’re going to pray to God, ask God to help us. And we’re going to tell God that we’ll be there, too, and do our part.”
Sister Jean will provide her personal scouting report to the players moments before the game.
“They’re very helpful,” freshman guard Lucas Williamson told The Post. “She’s always like, ‘You gotta watch out for this guy,’ and that guy’ll be the best player on the team,’ and I’m like, ‘ OK, she kinda knows what she’s talking about.’ ”
Are they different from the head coach Porter Moser’s scouting report?
“They’re usually always the same, which is kinda weird because I know they don’t talk to each other about the scouting, so that’s kinda weird,” Williamson said.
On game day, when she delivers her scouting report beforehand, she is more Bill Belichick than Mother Teresa.
“She hasn’t been doing it out loud, because there’s been so many cameras on her when she’s saying the prayer before the game, but she’s been writing it on a little piece of paper, her little scouting report, and handing it to one of us so that we can take it into the locker room before the game,” guard Clayton Custer said.
Sister Jean will send uplifting emails to the Loyola Chicago players regarding their play the day after a game.
“The most memorable emails that she sent me come after games where I don’t necessarily play well,” Custer said. “She keeps it positive, she lifts my spirits and just says, ‘We all know what you can do and we all believe in you, and the next game you’re gonna play better.’ ”
She remembers watching the Ramblers win it all in 1963 on an 11-inch black-and-white television.
“I always ask God to be sure that the scoreboard indicates that the Ramblers have the big ‘W,’ ” Sister Jean said. “And then sometimes the opponents say, ‘We noticed that you gave Loyola a little more attention than you gave us.’ And I say, ‘Well, if you wore maroon and gold, you would, too.’”
Someone asked if she thought God was a basketball fan.
“He probably is, and he’s probably a basketball fan more of the NCAA than the NBA,” Sister Jean said, laughing. “I’ll wager that your viewer audience is very large and that if you compare it to the NBA when they’re playing, it will be different. And I say that because these young people are playing with their hearts and not for any financial assistance.”
No one had the heart or the inclination to inform her of FBI wiretaps and unethical agents and disgraced coaches and the tainted amateur model.
It was probably better that former Fab Fiver Jalen Rose’s 100-year-old grandmother, Mary Belle Hicks, who recorded a warning to Sister Jean that Loyola Chicago would fall, won’t be at the game.
“I saw it on Facebook the other day,” Sister Jean said. “I also heard she’s out to get me, so we’ll see. Somebody said, ‘Maybe you need a pair of boxing gloves,’ and I said, ‘Well, we’ll see what happens.’ens. ”
The room filled with laughter time and again. Sister Jean’s face is all over the internet — on shirts, on socks and she has her own bobblehead.
“It’s overwhelming to me. … I think the company could retire when they’re finished making these bobbleheads,” she said with a laugh.
She obviously packed for more than a couple of days.
“We’re having a university Mass together on Easter Sunday — you know I said Easter Sunday because we hope to stay,” Sister Jean said, “and we’re confident enough we will.”
She turned to moderator Mark Fratto and told him, “I could stay for an hour,” when the session was called to an end.
“This is the most fun I had in my life, it is,” Sister Jean said. “And I almost didn’t get here, but I fought hard enough to do that because I wanted to be with the guys.”
One Shining Moment for Sister Jean, and no one deserves it more.