CLEVELAND — She leads without playing, and brings her own definition to the term.

Sakima Walker averages two minutes a game. She has not hit the floor since the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Her role as the 10th player on this 37-0 roster with 10 players — one playing for a National Championship Sunday at 3 p.m. against Iowa — is firmly entrenched.

In Friday’s semifinal win over NC State, Walker was the only Gamecock who did not step on the court. It is like that most nights, and not because of her own doing or faults. The wealth of talent this team has down low is so stacked and packed in front of her, carving out even a few minutes every night is a struggle.

But she is an integral part of this group, and it starts in the locker room.

“People consider me to be the mother because I have a pretty solid relationship with everyone,” Walker said. “ I’m that one everyone can come and talk to, ask for advice, whatever.”

MiLaysia Fulwiley, a transcendently talented true freshman point guard who has played nearly three times as many minutes as Walker this season, struggled in the Elite Eight win over Oregon State. She only scored seven points and had three assists to one turnover.

One of those inevitable days, even for the great ones.

This is where Walker swoops in and makes her impact, just as Fulwiley does on her dazzling drives to the basket or any of the coaches do with an in-game adjustment. Not just on this one rough afternoon in Albany, but in the grand scheme of a season.

Steady heartbeat, thoughtful answers, eagerness to help.

“Lay was a little upset,” Walker remembered. “So I asked Raven to switch spots with her on the bench and I talked to her, and she listened to me. For the most part, everyone listens to me. I just talk to them in a calm voice in the way they would want someone to talk to them, so I think it helps.”

Being a fourth-year college player puts her in a limited club on this roster, joining just two others. Of those other three, she is the only one who has played at more than one level of college basketball, dipping to JUCO for one season after starting her career at Rutgers.

And she has run the one part of this race even a team chalked full of McDonald’s All-Americans, program-record holders and future WNBA stars has not sprinted through yet. The smallest spec on the microscope, a one-game season where nothing before or after matters.

She won a National Championship when Northwest Florida State won a 66-63 thriller in last season’s NJCAA title game. She has been through the emotional ringer of having every dream for the season within touching distance, and ultimately pushing past the Rigor Mortis Bend of college basketball to burst through the finishing tape.

“It was a really good experience,” Walker said. “We definitely played some really tough games. I remember one game we were down at least 20. I was the oldest one on the team, so I had to be that leader to speak up about it and let them know we’ve never been down this much before, but the game’s not over.”

Undoubtedly, there will be turbulence Sunday. A wire-to-wire win in a National Championship Game is not realistic, nor is it even an expectation.

When the bumps happen, Walker will probably not be on the floor. But she will be in her usual spot on the bench — unless one player elsewhere needs a little extra attention — guiding this group through their final day of basketball together this season. This youthful, eccentric, at times uncontrollable “daycare” as Dawn Staley calls it will try to graduate into champions tomorrow.

“I am not in the daycare,” Walker said. “I think I am the teacher of the daycare.”

Here comes her final exam.

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