Tracy Harbut has earned a lot of nicknames during her Syracuse career, more than she could ever remember. When she tried to list them all, Harbut slumped her entire body against the wall of Manley Field House where she was sitting and started thinking.

And thinking.

For 15 excruciating seconds of virtual silence, the only sound came from the track runners’ feet thumping against the rubber inside the arena.

Then she started laughing uncontrollably, perhaps to break the ice, or maybe because she actually could not remember five years worth of inside jokes with the SU women’s basketball team. But either way, she started laughing.

Finally, something got her going.

‘They call me Smiley, that’s one of them,’ said Harbut, when she finally regained her composure. ‘We were lifting weights two years ago, and (strength and conditioning coach Will) Hicks came up to me and was like, ‘You’re always laughing and smiling even when you’re lifting weights. I’m going to call you Smiley.”

After remembering one, the rest came pouring out: T-Mac, Sopa, Mexi and now Pretty Ricky, the nickname this year’s squad uses, invented by sophomore forward Nicole Michael, Harbut’s roommate last season. Funny thing is, a majority of the team only knows Pretty Ricky, not the four she listed or the others lost with time.

Considering how long Harbut’s been with Syracuse, perhaps it’s not much of a surprise. She’s basically the team historian, having been involved with Syracuse basketball for three coaches’ tenures. But after suffering through four years of losing and a devastating knee injury that sidelined her all of last year, Harbut decided to put off graduation and return to the team for her fifth season.

Her reward? A chance to play for a team that has already won 18 games, equaling the win total of the last two seasons combined. In four seasons, Harbut has played in three Big East tournament games and won just one. Forget about the NCAA Tournament.

Now she could finally get that chance.

‘She’s been here for a while, and she’s seen everything,’ SU coach Quentin Hillsman said. ‘She’s been here longer than me! She’s been in every situation here, and you just hope we can end the season very positive for her and end the season with some wins and postseason play.’

After she tore the right medial collateral ligament, partially tore the posterior cruciate ligament and fractured a bone in her right knee during a practice in October 2006, Harbut redshirted her senior season. But by the end of the academic year, she had enough credits to graduate with a degree in health and exercise science. Though she had one more year of eligibility, she had to decide between returning for a fifth season and applying to graduate programs in physical therapy.

Right away, Hillsman sat down with Harbut and reassured her he wanted her to return to the team, telling her he thought she could contribute the next season.

At the time, though, not everyone thought she would actually be back.

‘The fact that she got hurt, I thought she was done,’ Michael said. ‘Thank God she was able to come back, and she’s doing great.’

Coming from a background in exercise science, Harbut said she knew immediately the injury would heal in time to play this season. When she saw Hillsman’s recruits, including Erica Morrow and Chandrea Jones, Harbut realized this would be the best team of her five seasons.

From there, the decision was easy.

‘I wanted to come back,’ Harbut said. ‘I wanted to play for Coach Q. I wanted to play my last year, and I didn’t want to end my career on the bench.’

She’s definitely not the same player this year she was two seasons ago. Harbut plays every game with a large, clunky black brace over her entire knee, and her numbers have dropped substantially from her junior year. She’s averaging only 11.4 minutes per game now and scoring 1.4 points, partially because of the talented newcomers like Morrow, Jones and freshman Tasha Harris.

But she’s playing – and Syracuse is winning.

It’s been a long road to finally reach the prospect of important games in mid-March. Harbut was recruited by Marianna Freeman, who coached SU from 1993-2003, but she never played a game for her. Freeman resigned after a 10-18 season before Harbut stepped on campus, so she played the beginning of her career for Keith Cieplicki, not the coach who convinced her to spurn an offer from Miami (Ohio) and Ohio State, among others.

Although she was suspended for part of her freshman year for violating the team’s academic policy, Harbut began to establish herself as a legitimate role player in the Big East under Cieplicki. She played approximately 20 minutes per game her first two seasons, starting 27 contests during that time frame.

In her junior year, the 2005-06 season, Harbut began to look like a late bloomer and a player that could be better than just a defensive-minded reserve forward. That year, she started all 27 games and averaged 11.3 points, 6.1 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game. She became the first Orange frontcourt player to dish 100 assists and had four double-doubles.

Just when Harbut finally seemed to find some consistency both on and off the court, she had to deal with yet another change: Cieplicki’s tumultuous resignation and the promotion of Hillsman, then an assistant coach.

‘When Q came in, everything changed right away,’ Harbut said. ‘He asked the most of us and got us to work hard always, and I’m not sure we really had that before. He’s about discipline. He does a better job of that.’

Harbut said another key reason she returned is her desire to play professionally overseas after college. After her successful junior year, she began thinking she had the opportunity to compete at the next level, but she knew she couldn’t expect a pro franchise to take a chance on someone who finished her collegiate career with a major injury.

Whether or not that’s possible is still a question. Hillsman said she believes she is talented enough to earn a contract, but Harbut would not elaborate on any solid possibilities.

Harbut is playing significantly less than she did her junior year – 25.2 fewer minutes per game – but she still may have the chance to play in the NCAA Tournament for the first time and the experience of five seasons of college basketball.

And a whole lot of nicknames that no one can take away from her.

‘She’s so clean and organized and takes so much time in the morning, I just started calling her Pretty Ricky,’ Michael said. ‘I used to go to practice without her because she would take forever. But Pretty Ricky is our role model, she’s my role model. I wouldn’t be here today without her.’

jediamon@syr.edu

Published on February 11, 2008 at 12:00 pm