Jonathan Lintner

@JonathanLintner

Even the nation's best college basketball players would have trouble dribbling through University of Louisville guards Terry Rozier and Chris Jones for a bucket.

Patrick McSweeney, though, has already handled tougher challenges.

It's Bellarmine basketball coach Scott Davenport's plan that the 15-year-old St. Xavier High School sophomore, continuing a decade-long fight against leukemia, will suit up for the Knights on Sunday and score their opening bucket in an exhibition against U of L.

"Coach Davenport told me that for the very first play Sunday, I would be on the floor, taking the shot and getting the first points," McSweeney said. "He told me he was just as excited as me to hear the news, but I don't think that's possible.

"I just really couldn't believe it that I'd be in the Yum! Center playing against my favorite basketball team and alongside my second-favorite basketball team. It was just a complete dream to me."

McSweeney will be introduced before the 12:30 p.m. tipoff as a starter. He's listed as such on the Knights' game notes, a 5-foot-3 guard in the lineup along with veteran Jake Thelen and Josh Sewell, a Trinity graduate using the last year of his eligibility with Bellarmine this season. Davenport has already found a jersey to fit McSweeney and a pair of team shoes to wear.

With this son, Doug, a member of the U of L basketball staff, Davenport visited the McSweeney home on Wednesday night to deliver the news in person.

"He was shocked -- speechless -- and that doesn't happen very often," said Debi McSweeney, Patrick's mother, of her son's reaction. "The impression I got from his face was, he didn't think it was real."

The highlight of Patrick's basketball career, at least before this, was hitting "not a game-winning, but a game-changing" 3-point shot for his St. Margaret Mary team in the 8th grade city championship. Always a point guard, he'll again be the shortest player on the floor Sunday.

This effort was months in the making for Davenport, who devised the idea in July but first had to clear it past the NCAA and others. Convincing U of L coach Rick Pitino, who the former U of L assistant Davenport said showed "a side that nobody ever, every knows," was the easy part.

Patrick's leukemia, which has recurred three times and resulted in chemotherapy, bone marrow and leukemia T-cell transplants, needs more treatment. He's due Monday in Philadelphia, a 14-hour drive. Pitino is paying to fly the McSweeneys there instead.

Patrick was the 34th child to participate in a new Children's Hospital of Philadelphia clinical trial, his mother said, in which he has his own T-cells extracted, genetically altered and re-inserted to fight leukemia. Next week's treatment provides a "booster" of them after local doctors recently found T-cells lacking in Patrick's bloodstream.

"It's just more of a newer type of thinking that instead of chemo, which kills everything, let's target the actual cells," Debi McSweeney said. "All of the questions I ask, they don't have a lot of answers about longevity because (this treatment) hasn't been around that long."

Sunday's game will mark the second weekend in a row the college basketball world has welcomed such a story. Last Sunday, Lauren Hill, who has an inoperable form of brain cancer, scored four points in a game for Division III Mount St. Joseph of Cincinnati, where she signed out of high school.

The NCAA moved up Mount St. Joseph's opener to accommodate Hill's wish -- she wanted to play in one college game -- and the Cintas Center on Xavier University's campus quickly sold out. Patrick quickly shared an ESPN story published Thursday afternoon on his own upcoming game to his Twitter page as his story, too, made national waves.

"I thought that was really incredible what they were doing to let her play," he said.

Added Debi McSweeney: "I think it just shows the goodness in people. It seems like so much in the media is about the negative, so when there's one of these feel-good stories, it attracts that attention."

Before another round of treatment for Patrick, Davenport wants to see the St. X student's shot also drop in front of a packed Yum! Center.

"The only thing that's left is to make sure we fill the place," Davenport told ESPN. "If people have a ticket, show up. If you don't have a ticket, get one."

Jonathan Lintner can be reached at (502) 582-4199. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanLintner.