Conference finals week transformed Ironbrook into something Rae had never quite seen the town become — banners hung from every lamppost along Main Street, the local diner running a "Wolves Finals Special" on its menu board, strangers stopping her on the sidewalk to wish her luck with a familiarity that still occasionally caught her off guard, eight months after arriving as an unknown walk-on nobody expected to make the roster at all.
"It's wild," she said to Priya, the two of them walking back from campus on Wednesday evening, three days before the first game of the series against Kestrel University, the top seed in the conference and Ironbrook's toughest possible opponent. "I used to walk through this town completely invisible. Now I can't get a coffee without someone asking about my kne
