Prahalis was a skinny, 5-foot-6 kid from the burbs - Commack, out on Long Island. She may as well have landed from Mars. She came to the Exodus NYC club team with high recommendations, but, frankly, torching Long Island even on a daily basis hardly generated a scintilla of street cred and certainly wasn't an automatic ticket into the alpha-dog world of New York City basketball.

"I wanted to know how tough she was," he says, "and she showed that she was backing down to nobody."

Backing down never has been an option for Prahalis, who will compete at the USA Basketball Youth Development Festival in Colorado Springs this week. As Paschall discovered, she plays with a New York state of mind - whether you're 5-6 or 6-5, a single defender or a group, she's coming at you. She may look unassuming, but she can go from 0 to 60 with the ball faster than anyone in the country and can explode into any defense's no-fly zone, hang and figure out ways to finish. And she does all without hesitation.

If Prahalis' forays into enemy territory with a basketball remind you of, say, a running back in football, stay with that picture. Fans of the "Rosie O'Donnell Show" might remember little Sammy Prahalis, the girl who played football with the boys. Yeah, that's this Sam Prahalis. She played running back and middle linebacker for the Commack Youth Football Association team until she was 11, when "I grew out of it," according to Prahalis.

Playing football didn't seem that out of the ordinary to Prahalis. After all, her brother, Michael, 23, and her father, John, both were all-state football players. And a lot of time was spent following the Jets.

Maybe it's no coincidence, then, that the two schools Prahalis says are leading for her commitment are Ohio State, the current gold standard in college football, and Rutgers, which has a resurgent program. Some of the other schools on her list - Notre Dame, Connecticut, Georgia Tech, Florida and Vanderbilt - also play a little football.

It's important to note Sammy Prahalis' athletic makeover from the girl who played football with the boys to The Entertainer. On a team brimming with long, explosive Division I prospects, Prahalis is the one from which you cannot wrest your eyes. Blink or look away, and you might miss something magical.

For starters, Prahalis may be the most skilled and creative high-school ballhandler in the country. Besides possessing that quick first step, she excels at staying low and combining her moves. She might dead-leg, machine-gun dribble the ball between her legs, go behind her back, then execute her trademark inside-out move and go, leaving her defender to collect her wits as well as her shorts. Further, she sees and executes any pass, and almost never looks at her intended receiver. Finally, she can create any shot on the court, and will, even sometimes to her detriment.

"She's the energy source," Paschall says. "I can deal with her sometimes throwing the ball away because she'll make that one exciting play and pick up the whole team."

Samantha Prahalis could be an even more telltale sign of the growth spurt in the girl's game than, say, dunking Candace Parker or the burgeoning ranks of 6-4 wing players. Hers is not a tale of physical evolution, but of breaking the longtime barrier between girls and a certain derring-do on the court. Many coaches will tell you that girls are more circumspect in the acquisition of skills than boys. They'll also say that girls are far more reluctant to try new things in public, for fear of "looking stupid." Not trying, in their world, equals not failing, which seems a safer place to be.

"Look," Powell says, "if I called her right now and said, 'do you want to work out,' she'd be here in five minutes. She wants to be the best. She's very headstrong and very tough. She gets mad, really mad, when I can't work out her. She wants to come every day."

When Prahalis walked into Powell's Long Island gym for the first time during the summer before her ninth-grade year, Powell says she was "good, but real text book and sharp." But New York point guards, the ones who make the McDonald's All-American Game and get Reebok commercials, are more Stephon Marbury than John Stockton. So Powell introduced Prahalis to street moves and And1 mix tapes. "It was like taking a piece of meat," Powell explains. "I put some seasoning on her game."

Salt, pepper, garlic, nutmeg - it's all there. Prahalis plays the game with passion and style. And now she believes both are essential parts of her game, to the point that, if a high-powered college program offers her a scholarship with the proviso that she had to tone down her style of play, she would pass. Paschall says, "I know she wouldn't want to do it, but I think that she could." However, Prahalis says, flatly, "I wouldn't go."

"I don't want to go somewhere they'd make me play a different game," she adds. "If I'm having fun on the court, I'm a better player. If I'm having more fun, more people are going to watch me play."

That's entertainment. And that's how a player like Samantha Prahalis has upped the ante in girl's basketball, hasn't it?

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