ESPN RISE

"M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!"

Every time Mary Nwachukwu touches the ball, the Dighton-Rehoboth faithful let her hear it. It's the first game of the Division 2 South tournament, and Nwachukwu is going to work against 10th-seeded Hopkinton.

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Laura Barisonzi

Mary Nwachukwu averaged 29.9 points last season.

She catches the rock and defenders swarm to her. Nwachukwu kicks it out to an open teammate on the perimeter who buries the wide-open trey.

"M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!"

Nwachukwu gets the ball down low, fakes the pass out and instead uses her deft touch to finish while still drawing the foul. An 80 percent free-throw shooter, she drains the and-one.

"M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!"

"She touches the ball, she scores and the kids are just chanting," Falcons coach Jon Pacheco says. "It's amazing to see this kind of athlete play, and you don't get to see it very often. She has brought a fan base to D-R with her play."

A 6-foot-2 senior, Nwachukwu (pronounced wa-choo-ku) is rated the state's top player and No. 24 forward in the nation in the ESPNU HoopGurlz 100. She averaged an EMass-best 29.9 points per game last year to go with 18.2 rebounds, 5.3 blocks, 2.4 steals and 1.8 assists per game, finishing the season just three career points short of the D-R all-time girls' record of 1,111.

She was named to the 2008 All-Scholastic Super Team by The Boston Globe and was a South Coast Conference All-Star for the second consecutive season. After being recruited by the likes of Maryland, Wake Forest and Boston College, Nwachukwu decided to stay local, committing to the Eagles in late September.

Things are looking good now, but her high school career didn't begin so swimmingly.

Nwachukwu's freshman year was marred by a broken ankle suffered 10 games into the season. More than the physical pain, the injury was a shock to her psyche.

"I didn't really get a chance to establish myself," she says. "I just got really low on myself, and I didn't know if physically I'd bounce back."

But according to Pacheco, she was a model teammate, coming to virtually every game and practice to support her teammates -- even if it meant limping around.

"She'd show up to practices on crutches just to learn the system," he says. As a sophomore, Nwachukwu started slowly but had her average up to 16 points per game by the end of the regular season. Nwachukwu and her then-senior sister, Nina, led the Falcons to a 13-7 regular season record and a playoff berth.

That postseason turned into Nwachukwu's coming-out party. She put up 28 points and 20 rebounds as D-R knocked off defending state champ Oliver Ames in the opening round, surprising even her coach.

"It was that wow factor of, 'Where did this come from?'" Pacheco says.

No one -- Pacheco included -- knew if the performance was an anomaly or a sign of things to come. Nwachukwu answered that question the very next game by leading the Falcons to the brink of an upset of top-seeded Bishop Feehan in the second round. She scored 27 points and pulled down 19 rebounds, keeping D-R close until Feehan pulled away in the final minutes.

But if people were surprised by the emergence of the Falcons' young star, the performance was very much in line with what Nwachukwu expected of herself. A talented athlete, she had devoted herself fully to basketball beginning in the eighth grade.

"I decided I really wanted to focus, better my skills and really try to get a scholarship," she says. "I felt like if I worked hard I had a chance."

Nwachukwu joined the Rhode Island Breakers AAU team and thrived despite the higher level of competition. Breakers coach Bill Coughlin says Nwachukwu has become the best player in New England by working on her mid-range jumper as much as her post game.

But her greatest strength may be her ability to make the players around her better.

"Her hands are so good, which is so rare for a young girl," Coughlin says. "Even if a guard makes a mistake, the girl throws it too high or too low, Mary's going to catch that ball."

Coughlin began working with Nwachukwu at the Taunton YMCA, where the senior standout can usually be found when she's not in school or at practice. The gym sessions are no joke. Nwachukwu will shoot around for a while before jumping in some pick-up games with the guys. Then she'll run. Then she'll lift. Then she'll shoot around again -- you know, to cool down.

"I always made sacrifices to work out," she says. "When other people would go out to parties, I'd go to the gym."

Nwachukwu was named a team captain before her junior season and led the Falcons from the jump both on and off the court. She dominated games and began acting like a floor general in her own soft-spoken way.

"She understands the game so well it's like having another coach on the floor," Pacheco says. "She is one of those kids who will go over to teammates and say, 'Listen, this is what we need to do to be successful.' I would take the timeout, and by the time I got to the huddle she's already going over things with them."

Nwachukwu reached the 1,000-point milestone on an 18-footer in a game against Bourne last February. Play was stopped to recognize the accomplishment, much to Nwachukwu's chagrin.

"She said, 'Do we even have to do that? Can we just continue with the game?'" Pacheco recalls. "She wanted to get the picture and just get it over with."

A week later came the game against Hopkinton. D-R had cruised through the regular season at 16-4, earning the No. 7 seed and a home playoff game. A couple hundred fans show up and Nwachukwu doesn't disappoint, putting her entire game on display for the crowd. She breaks out her patented step-back move, elevating to release a jump shot with perfect form -- the product of thousands upon thousands of repetitions -- from 16 feet.

Nothing but net.

"M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!"

This goes on all night, or at least until the game is in hand and Nwachukwu can get a breather. The Falcons prevail, 51-40, and she finishes with 23 points and 20 rebounds -- a typical stat line for her.

MVP indeed.

Lucas O'Neill covers high school sports for ESPN RISE.