CLEVELAND -- North Carolina All-American point guard Ivory Latta vividly remembers the first time she faced a much taller player in a competitive situation.

She was a 10-year-old AAU player looking up at an opponent who appeared to be 6 feet.

"I got posted up by this big ol' girl," Latta said. "I thought, 'Oh, man, what am I going to do?' "

She figured it out in a flash.

"I just tried to spin around her," Latta said. "And I stole the ball.

"I was so happy about stealing the ball, I just stood there. My dad was like, 'Go, go.' "

There's no longer any hesitation once Latta gets the best of a bigger opponent. She knows what to do with a basketball as well as anyone in the women's game.

You saw that again Sunday afternoon when Latta made a driving basket with under three seconds to play to beat Purdue in the Cleveland regional of the NCAA tournament.

You saw something else, too. Latta doesn't hide her feelings.

Before she came down from her game-winning shot, she suffered a leg cramp. She hit the floor, grabbed her knee and grimaced in pain. You couldn't help but think the worst.

It wasn't the worst injury. It was merely the worst cramp -- "the worst cramp ever," Latta emphasized before her team began practicing for tonight's game against Tennessee.

"I was in the air thinking, 'How am I going to come down?' " Latta said. "I just fell. I grabbed my knee because if I had grabbed my calf, I would have cried even worse."

Latta laughed about the pain Monday. In fact, she laughed about a lot of things.

She's a 5-foot-6 point guard with a 6-5 smile and an enthusiasm for the day-to-day business of college basketball that has no apparent ceiling. Thirty-three games into the season, she's even enthusiastic about interviews. And neither repetitious nor silly questions stifle her enthusiasm.

"How would you describe yourself?" asked a journalist on the cutting edge.

Latta laughed. Then she said, "I'm just a happy person."

She's so happy she can even enjoy the company of sportswriters. Either that, or she's a great actress.

Latta's joy isn't always apparent on the court. She has a concerned, almost frantic, look that -- when accentuated by her big eyes -- makes you think the world is about to come to an end if she doesn't doing something fast.

She usually does.

The junior from McConnells, S.C., ranks first in the Atlantic Coast Conference in free-throw shooting (85.6 percent), second in scoring (18.5 points per game) and fourth in assists (5.0). She's also an absolute pest on defense, whether she's hounding the opposing point guard or stripping a post player of the ball.

She would be a star in any system, but she's the perfect catalyst for coach Sylvia Hatchell's full-court pressing defense and an offense that has two speeds -- fast and faster.

Latta prefers "faster," driven perhaps by the conviction that her opponent will wear down long before she does.

Her boundless energy contradicts her early years. As an infant, just breathing was an ordeal; she was hospitalized repeatedly -- sometimes for weeks at a time -- with severe asthmatic attacks.

Latta outgrew asthma at 8. Shortly thereafter, she began her love affair with basketball.

"I love playing basketball," she says with great conviction.

Her favorite player is Allen Iverson, another smallish guard who has overcame a disadvantage in size. She's also a fan of Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James with whom she became acquainted during a McDonald's All-Star game.

Hopeful that James might attend tonight's game, Latta widened her smile and said, "I've got a ticket for him."

Another star will command her attention this evening. UT 6-5 freshman Candace Parker is just as talented as Latta, almost a foot taller and quite capable of playing point guard.

"That's the biggest point guard I've seen," Latta said. "And to be honest, she's doing a great job.

"She's a great player, don't get me wrong. But I'm up for the challenge."

That won't be Latta's only big challenge. UT often employs 6-4 Nicky Anosike to defend opposing point guards.

"I've had a lot of tall girls on me this season, and I did pretty well," Latta said.

And why not? She became accustomed to it long before this season.

Latta was the youngest of seven children. Her older and bigger siblings did their best to exploit her lack of size on the basketball court.

Despite being the baby of the family, Latta said her parents didn't take up for her.

"Absolutely not," she said. "No, no, no. I think my dad was probably the hardest on me.

"I guess he saw something in me and wanted to push me to my limits."

What he saw couldn't be measured in inches.