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In the middle of all the cheers and what sounded like the entire state of Connecticut singing the praises of Kemba Walker, a petite, youthful-looking woman stood behind the basket after UConn 69, Louisville 66 and smiled from here to Storrs when they started chanting “MVP, MVP, MVP” for her son the phenom.

He was the MVP of the Big East tournament, and coach Jim Calhoun won’t fight you if you believed it meant MVP of all of college basketball.

“Today just feels like I gave birth to him all over again,” Walker mother, Andrea, said.

Finally, all those pressure-packed minutes when his teammates needed him to carry them, after all those big-time shots and all that relentless Louisville pressure, Kemba Walker sagged. Fatigue makes cowards of us all. Five games in five nights make cowards of us all, even if you have 20-year-old legs and felt like Superman and have played like Michael Jordan inside a place that is every Bronx kid’s dream playground.

For the first time in the tournament, Kemba Walker appeared human. He had sat most of the last seven minutes of the first half with two fouls. He had gone 23:21 without a field goal. He had missed a pair of free throws in the second half.

“I was gassed,” he said. “But I just wanted to win the game so bad that my heart took over.”

Fortunately for UConn, It is as big a heart as there is in college basketball.

“He’ll smile at the referee and smile at the opponent, and then run you over,” Calhoun said. “That’s who he is.”

That’s who UConn needed when Preston Knowles shot Louisville to within a minute of the championship.

That’s when Walker saw a tiny opening and exploded through it and while in the air, as 6-foot-9 Terence Jennings stood between him and the hoop, Walker whipped a pass to the left side of the basket and Jeremy Lamb had a layup and UConn had the lead back with 33 seconds left.

“I drew the big man up and Jeremy was smart enough to cut and I got him the ball,” Walker said.

Then Lamb deflected a Mike Marra inbounds pass and Walker wound up on the foul line with 16.4 ticks left.

Good.

But then Walker fouled Marra in the act of shooting a desperation three with 3.9 seconds left.

“I was so mad at myself because Coach said ‘stay down’ and I’m telling everybody ‘stay down’ and I’m the one that jumped,” Walker said.

Not good.

Marra made the first, missed the second and unintentionally sank the third.

Good.

UConn 67-66.

Shabazz Napier sank a pair of free throws with 3.3 seconds left, Noles missed a desperation three at the buzzer.

“I thought it was going in, but God [had] a plan for us,” Walker said.

Now it looked and sounded like Kemba Square Garden.

“We did the impossible!” Walker kept saying through the roars.

HE did the impossible, a record 130 points for the tournament, carrying his team on his back, making everyone around him better. Once upon a time, they called it Ben Garden at UConn when Ben Gordon terrorized the place, and Calhoun couldn’t resist needling Kemba Walker about that on those occasions when the mecca would torment him.

Those days are over. This is a more versatile Allen Iverson with a fearsome killer instinct. UConn’s smiling assassin.

These five days have been a resume for his greatness, a transcendent audition for the NBA scouts, and even his hero, Carmelo Anthony, who wanted to see for himself last night what made this kid tick. He even unnerved the great Rick Pitino, because when Walker got the benefit of an early foul call, the Louisville coach shouted at the official: “He’s not Michael Jordan.”

Walker smiled at the press conference when he was asked about that and said quietly: “If the refs call it, it’s a foul. I’m not Michael Jordan. I’m Kemba Walker.”

He finished with 19 points, and played just 12 minutes of the first half.

“I knew he was just studying the game, trying to see what he was gonna do when he got back in,” Andrea Walker said. “He has a 1000 point IQ of this game.”

Kemba Walker is haunting evidence why St. John’s has been lost in the NCAA wilderness for nearly a decade, the kind of homegrown star that coach Steve Lavin must keep.

“For me, it’s special,” Walker said, “because I’m home, playing in front of the greatest fans in the world, my family, my friends, and words can’t describe it.”