Craig Smith shines for Clips

They sat in different corners of the Los Angeles Clippers’ tiny visitors locker room last night at the Garden, two professional basketball players who in earlier, simpler times passed through Massachusetts on their way to the big time.

One of them, a fellow named Marcus Camby, once took UMass to an appearance in the Final Four that was wiped off the books just as John Calipari was getting the last bus out of Amherst.

The other, Craig Smith, finished his Boston College days second on the Eagles career scoring list, trailing only Troy Bell.

Camby, of course, is much better known. A onetime first-round draft pick by the Toronto Raptors, Camby is a defensive whiz who is in the 14th season of what has been a distinguished NBA career.

Yet by the time last night’s game was in the books, the Celtics [team stats] emerging with a 95-89 victory, it was the 26-year-old Smith, not the soon-to-be 36-year-old Camby, who enjoyed this trip down Memory Lane.

Camby, both knees strapped in ice, his feet dunked in a bucket filled with more ice, was coming off a game in which he had scored three points and collected 14 rebounds in 26 minutes.

Smith, coming off the bench, lit it up in the fourth quarter, scoring 11 straight points for the Clippers, finishing the night with 13. It was easily the best effort he has had against the Celtics in his three years in the NBA. Going into last night’s game, he had played a combined 19 minutes in seven career games against the Celtics.

“The times I’ve been here since I’ve been in the NBA, I haven’t really had good games,” he said. “But I told myself early on tonight that I need to have a good game - not for me, but for the team. So I just tried to assert myself in this game to be aggressive.

“I was trying to turn it up a little bit more. I felt at the beginning of the fourth that the Celtics were being real aggressive, so I took it upon myself to also be aggressive. . . . If I got the ball, just take it to them or make a play of some kind.”

Smith, born in Inglewood, Calif., is now playing for his hometown Clippers. But don’t for one second think that Boston merely was a stop-over on his way to the NBA.

“I look at Boston this way: I came here as a child and I left here as a man,” he said. “Boston will forever be in my heart, and to see the Celtics get back to the top in the East is pretty big. But for me, I just have to see it as a regular, ordinary game.”

Except that last night was anything but ordinary.

“He’s been great, scoring a lot for us coming off the bench,” Camby said. “I know he’s excited about being back in the area, having gone to BC.”

Because Boston is such a lousy college sports town, we have a habit of overlooking the great young players who pass through. We had one of the nation’s best college quarterbacks when Matt Ryan was playing up at The Heights. As for college hockey, we get to see some of the best players in the country. We even get the occasional college baseball star who makes it to the big leagues, Northeastern’s Carlos Pena and Boston College’s Chris Lambert being two recent examples.

And from 2002-06, we had a chance to see Craig Smith light it up for the Eagles.

“I had a lot of friends from Boston College here tonight,” Smith said. “I still follow BC. They had a tough one down in Blacksburg (against Virginia Tech) the other night, but they have a big one (tonight) at home against Clemson, so hopefully they can pull it off and start winning some games.”

Funny how it works: It took a visit by the Los Angeles Clippers - the Clippers! - to remind us that, despite our reputation of being a hardcore big league sports town, we really do send the occasional college boy to the big time.