TOWSON, Md.-- Smiles are perhaps the most versatile form of expression we have, for they can mask a feeling as well as amplify one.The smile on Delaware forward Elena Delle Donne's face last Thursday did double duty, functioning as a sign of happiness and a cover for pain.
The Blue Hens gritted out a 64-52 win over lowly Towson in a Colonial Athletic Association game in which Delaware shot 40 percent from the floor and were outrebounded on the offensive glass, 22-14.
And Delle Donne was the key to Delaware's success, with a game-high 21 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks. The scoring was off a bit from her 25.5 points per game average, but then, you try pouring in points when your back is in spasm for most of the game, as it was then.
The SI joint in Delle Donne's back went out late in the first half and her left leg was shorter than her right. She played the entire second half in excruciating pain, managing seven points and six rebounds after intermission.
"It's just a pain," Delle Donne said. "I can't catch a break this year. But we got the win. It was an ugly win, but that's all that matters."
The ailing back is just the latest misfortune to befall Delle Donne, a 6-foot-5 sophomore, who was third in the nation in scoring last year. She said she hasn't had a pain-free game since the second game of the season, a win over Villanova.
That's when Delle Donne started to feel overly tired all the time, certainly well before the rigors of a new season should take hold.
"I was feeling exhausted in that game and it was almost like I couldn't push through it," Delle Donne said in an interview before the Towson game. "At halftime, I felt like I was going to fall asleep during the coach's halftime speech. I was just a mess."
During the first four games of the season, Delle Donne poured in 36, 34, 41 and 26 points, respectively, and played in all but five minutes of those contests. In other words, if her game was impacted, it wasn't showing, but Delle Donne said she knew something was wrong and told her parents as much.
She played just six minutes in the fifth game against La Salle, going scoreless, then missed the next game entirely. Delle Donne played in two other early December games, against Navy and Penn State, before shutting it down for 11 games, while she and her parents went from doctor to doctor to figure out why she was so gassed.
"I just wanted the answer to what was wrong with me because I knew I didn't feel right," said Delle Donne, who added that people around her were telling her that her problems stemmed from issues in her arms or legs or even her spine.
"All I wanted to do was get back on the court. I didn't care how many doctors I had to see, how much blood work I had to get done. As long as someone was able to get me better, I was willing to find that person and get back on the court."
-- Elena Delle Donne
"None of that seemed right. I knew I was sick. None of the doctors knew what was going on. All I wanted to do was get back on the court. I didn't care how many doctors I had to see, how much blood work I had to get done. As long as someone was able to get me better, I was willing to find that person and get back on the court."
Finally in the middle of last month, a specialist correctly diagnosed the problem: a recurrence of Lyme disease, which Delle Donne contracted in 2008, with the culprit likely being a tick from one of her two dogs.
She returned to practice January 25, and came off the bench in a loss to Hofstra, with 28 points in 34 minutes. Though she's averaging 24.8 points a game in the five contests since, including 33 points in an overtime win Sunday at William & Mary, Delle Donne has been trying to build up her strength and pace herself.
It didn't take long after Delle Donne began to miss time for the Internet rumor mill to start up talk that perhaps she had lost her love for the game.
"Yeah, I was hearing that a lot," Delle Donne said. "People were worried that I was burned out and that my body was burned out. I was just really frustrated with people trying to tell me that because I knew that wasn't the case and I knew I was just sick."
Given Delle Donne's history, the questions about burn out weren't totally far-fetched.
Twice, she has walked away from basketball because of burnout. The first time was before her senior year of high school, with the second -- most prominently -- coming in the summer of 2008, just as she was about to begin summer course work at Connecticut.
The stars were seemingly aligned for Delle Donne, the nation's most highly sought after high school recruit that year, to be the next Huskie star to hang another national championship banner on the wall at Gampel Pavilion.
Instead, Delle Donne left Connecticut, saying she had wearied of basketball. She transferred out of perhaps the mecca of her sport to head home to Delaware to play volleyball for a year, then joined the Blue Hens basketball team last season.
Delaware went 21-12 last season, reaching the Women's NIT. Along the way, Delle Donne, 21, regained her passion for basketball, saying she feels about the game the way she did when she was 10.
"The fact that I was too sick to play was extremely upsetting, because now that I want to play so badly, I had an illness holding me back. And before, when I didn't want to play, I was fine. It was frustrating," Delle Donne said.
"When I first came (to Delaware), I thought it was because I was close to my family, which is a huge part of it. But my team is incredible. They've become my family now. I love my coaches and the fans here are just so welcoming to me. I love everything about it."
And her teammates have welcomed Delle Donne as one of the family, albeit a supremely gifted member of the clan.
"She's Elena Delle Donne. She's not a superstar, not to us anyway. She's our teammate. We do anything to help her and support her. We have her back."
-- Danielle Parker
"She's Elena Delle Donne," sophomore forward Danielle Parker said. "She's not a superstar, not to us anyway. She's our teammate. We do anything to help her and support her. We have her back. We're definitely very mature and very grown up about what we do about Elena. We play as a team and win games. That's that."
Delle Donne has kept an eye on the recent goings-on at Connecticut, from the two national titles to the record 90-game winning streak and all the attendant hoopla.
But life at UConn, for however brief a period it lasted, is to her, a lifetime ago.
"They (Connecticut) are doing phenomenal and they've made history and I'm really proud of them," Delle Donne said. "But I wouldn't trade what I'm doing for anything. I really have no regrets. People find that hard to believe, but I love what I'm doing and I love being at Delaware and I wouldn't change that for anything."
Ironically, if she hadn't missed so many games, it would be Delle Donne, who's averaging 25.5 points a game, and not Connecticut's Maya Moore that would be leading the nation in scoring.
Delle Donne has the height of a center or power forward in the women's game, yet her skill set includes the ability to bring the ball up and initiate the offense, and she is shooting over 40 percent from 3-point range for her Delaware career.
Delle Donne passed the 1,000-point mark in her 38th collegiate game, making her the fastest player in school and CAA history and the second-fastest in women's NCAA history to reach that plateau.
It's because she's such a hybrid, on the order that the women's game hasn't seen since perhaps the days of Hall of Famer Cheryl Miller some 25 years ago that Delle Donne takes a regular beating, one her coach, Tina Martin, doesn't think she should be subjected to.
"I love it how (people say) 'Well, she can take it,' said Martin, in her 15th season at Delaware. "She's just like everybody else. A foul is a foul. If they're hanging on her, obviously they (the officials) are calling it and rightfully so. She gets held a lot. She gets pushed a lot. And so her body's going to take a pounding. She's just got to be tough enough to withstand that and take that."
The Blue Hens are stuck in fifth place in the CAA, a conference that might get one at-large NCAA tournament berth next month, which means Delaware will probably have to win the league tournament in Upper Marlboro, Md., to get into the field.
That would surely make Elena Delle Donne happy, but even if the basketball gods keep Delaware out the next three years, while her former UConn teammates hang three more national title banners, that won't be enough to knock the smile off her face.
It's there for good, through pain and through good times.
"It's not even about that (making the tournament)," Delle Donne said. "It's just about having fun and loving my team and my coaches and just having such a great experience."
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