Lady Bears Ready to Rock and Roll
11/9/2000 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Nov. 9, 2000
Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Dave Campbell appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.
First of all, there is the "name" question to decide and get out of the way. The Baylor Lady Bears are about to begin their first season of the Kim Mulkey-Robertson era, which means there are going to be numerous references in the coming days to the new Baylor women's basketball coach.
So how should we refer to her? What name does she prefer?
That was the first question I sent her way in an interview last week. Her reply: She was Kim Mulkey as a child, she was Kim Mulkey in her playing days as a standout Little Leaguer, as a four-year prep All-America selection at Hammond High in Louisiana, and as a super star on Louisiana Tech's national championship teams, as a member of a gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic women's team. She is Kim Mulkey on her social security card. She is totally at home with Kim Mulkey.
Yes, she is Kim Mulkey-Robertson in everyday life, as the wife of former Louisiana Tech quarterback Randy Robertson and as the mother of their two children, "and I feel very secure in my marriage," she said. But she knows "Mulkey-Robertson" is a long name to be trying to fit into headlines and put into stories. And thus, she said, in writing about her, just make it Kim Mulkey.
"That's fine with me," she said.
In all truth, the entire question is of passing interest only. The proper name for the new coach of Lady Bear basketball was established years ago.
You call her winner.
ONLY THING IS, this first season at Baylor is likely to provide a severe test of her winner's sure touch. She inherited several players with some talent and a lot of want-to, yes. She augmented her inheritance by bringing in a couple of other capable players. And maybe a couple of the true freshmen who had already been signed before she got here can play helpful roles.
But the Big 12 is a tough league for women's basketball, and it's getting tougher. And Baylor Lady Bear basketball at the moment certainly is not to be confused with Louisiana Tech women's basketball or Tennessee basketball or Connecticut basketball, which is Kim's measuring rod.
This is a Lady Bear team ready to reach for the stars, yes. But this season its reach is likely to exceed its grasp.
Even so, Kim is excited and so are her pupils.
"It's here, it's here," she smiled last week, referring to the Nov. 8 (Wednesday) exhibition against the Houston Jaguars that will provide fans their first opportunity to see what Kim hath wrought. That game tips off at 7 p.m.
The following Monday (Nov. 13) the Lady Bears will play another exhibition on the same floor against the Basketball Travelers. That game also tips off at 7 p.m.
And then Baylor partisans will have to wait until Nov. 28 to see the Lady Bears in action again, and that time against college competition. In the interval, they will be in Boston taking part in the Boston University Tournament (Nov. 18-19) and at Louisiana-Lafayette on Nov. 26 taking on that team in a Sunday game (2 p.m. tipoff). Then they will return home to meet Bethune-Cookman at the Ferrell Center in that Nov. 28 game.
SAID MULKEY LAST WEEK: "I think the kids are ready to play against somebody other than themselves. They're eager for this first game.
"And I think we're getting closer to knowing who are top eight or nine players are," she continued. "Things are surfacing. It's becoming more obvious who we are going to have to play. It's an everyday process."
But in that developing process, only at a couple of positions is somebody head and shoulders above the others. So fans can expect to see a number of interesting combinations on the floor at various times and in different situations.
"There may be situations when we have three point guards in the lineup at the same time. Whatever it takes," Mulkey said. "I don't like that. But that's the way it is. That's kind of where we are right now."
So instead of calling them point guards, shooting guards or small forwards (the one, two or three players), "I tend to call them perimeter players, and I tell them they'd better learn all three positions," she said.
What that means is that Kim's most acclaimed player, juco transfer Sheila Lambert, who already has been chosen by Big 12 coaches in their pre-season poll as the league's "Newcomer of the Year," will be playing all three positions and it will be something of a surprise if she also doesn't show up at the four and five spots (power forward and post) or maybe even outside selling popcorn, and never mind that she is just 5-7.
Lambert simply is something special, that's all.
As for the more conventional four and five position players, senior Monica Arnold, 6-2 and already the winner of three letters at Baylor, is strictly a post.
And the player most Baylor fans would regard as the prize of those players who were already here, 6-2 junior Danielle Crockrom, will be used at both the power forward and post positions, and maybe even at the three (small forward).
Junior Nicole Collins, 5-3, is a point guard who is having to learn those other perimeter positions. So is guard Brittany Bruns, a 5-10 junior. Sophomores Hilary Akromis (6-1) and Stasha Richards (5-10) will be making their presence felt mainly at the three and four positions. Junior Eboni Hammond (5-9) will have her role to play.
As for the newcomers other than Lambert -- and those are Grayson County juco transfer Brooke McCormack (6-2 post) and true freshmen Kelly Sords (6-3 post), Jessika Stratton (5-9 guard), Chanelle Fox (5-11 guard) and Heather Burrow (6-0 guard) -- several of them will need to step forward quickly, but the jury is still out as to when or at what position that will be.
"THESE ARE WONDERFUL kids. I like my team," said Mulkey. "They respond to criticism, they respond to pats on the back. And when you do that, good things are going to happen.
"I will say we're practicing at an intensity level that I don't think any of these girls thought they could reach."
Her approach has always been that defense must come first. You win with defense. What has been the progress of her pupils defensively?
"Every practice we spend 20 to 30 minutes on nothing but defense," Mulkey responded. "What we have to do is learn to be smart defensively. We're going to play some zone defense this first year. I lean more to a man-to-man, but we have to put them in a defense that they can execute."
To be successful, the Lady Bears are going to have to get strong rebounding not only from their inside people but also their perimeter players, she said.
"I've told them that we can't give all 14 players as many minutes as they'd like. What they have to understand is that when opportunity knocks -- one minute, two minutes, 12 minutes, whatever -- they have to produce. And I don't mean scoring points. They have to understand their roles."
IN THEIR PRE-SEASON poll, Big 12 coaches picked the Lady Bears to finish tenth, trailing all conference teams other than Oklahoma State and A&M. (Iowa State was picked to finish first ahead of Oklahoma and Texas Tech.) Mulkey's thoughts on being chosen for a tenth-place finish, lower than she has ever finished before?
"We have proven nothing," she said. "Tenth is probably higher than we deserve based on what we did last year. You can't put a lot of stock in it until you get out there and play the game."
On the other hand, she has not changed her mind at all about how high the Lady Bear program ultimately can go. "I still believe Baylor is a place just waiting to explode," she said. "You can see so much progress. And where our own program is concerned, we have had nothing but positive feedback both from our current players and in recruiting."
Mulkey can say little specifically about recruiting, of course. NCAA rules strongly limit what coaches can say about recruiting until names actually go on the dotted line. But she does confirm that, at this stage of the recruiting game, the Lady Bears are doing much better than she had anticipated.
The proof will be in the pudding on Nov. 8 (Wednesday) when verbal pledges are turned into signatures.
MEANWHILE, HERE ARE more Mulkey comments about some of her players as they approach this season's starting line:
"Monica Arnold is capable of having a very good senior year. She's in the best condition of her life. We have to make sure Monica understands that if she shoots a brick, she has to forget about it and go on to the next phase. She has to think positively. She has to realize that she is one of the only two seniors we have, and she has to understand just how important she is to our success. She can't be picking up silly fouls.
"Monica has worked extremely hard on her shooting. She is having to learn how to do something with the ball after the perimeter players get her the ball -- to catch and finish. And she has to get better at the foul line (in her shooting of free throws)."
Concerning Danielle Crockrom, "It's time for Danielle to be held accountable," Mulkey said. "It's now up to her to get it done. She is too good an athlete and has too much to offer the game not to get it done. It's up to her. She's our leading returning scorer. She needs to score and, yeah, she can score. Also, she has to improve her defense dramatically. It takes work, it takes effort."
And Nicole Collins? "We want her to put a lot of pressure on the ball, and she has the speed and skills to do that," said Mulkey. "She's excited. She's a lot in the mold of being what you want, a coach on the floor."
Concerning not just the Lady Bear guards but all the players, "their assist to turnover ratio has to be two to one," she declared.
MULKEY WAS ASKED to provide an update on what she thinks heralded transfer Sheila Lambert can do, now that she has seen her in practice for several weeks.
"Sheila is a very good basketball player and in what she has to offer," said the coach. "She's fun to play with. She makes the players around her better. She is very, very competitive. She will quickly tell a teammate where she screwed up, but she also will just as quickly tell them that she screwed up. And she doesn't have a selfish bone in her body.
"Sheila is the first player that people will address (concentrate on) when they play us. And we have to understand that she has a lot of talent."
Sheila Monique Lambert (nickname is "She-She") is a native of Seattle, Wash., and so gifted that the Seattle Times named her to their All-Century Team. According to that newspaper, "Lambert is considered among the top three girls (Joyce Walker, a former Globetrotter, and Kate Starbird, current WNBA player and Stanford standout are the others) ever to play high school basketball in Washington."
The just-published Baylor women's basketball media guide spotlights her as "the most heralded player to play for the Lady Bears." She was a two-time All-America choice in junior college (Grayson County) and last year averaged 23.2 points, 6.1 rebounds and 7.9 assists per game. Grayson County had a won-lost record of 68-2 during her two seasons at that school.
CONCERNING SEVERAL of the other Lady Bears, Mulkey said Hilary Akromis "is very competitive. She can shoot the basketball. She has to learn to move away from the ball, to come off screens and shoot more intelligently. Stasha Richards is behind on her conditioning but she can shoot the basketball from the perimeter. Defensively, she has to get better. She doesn't have blazing speed so she needs to learn to anticipate better on the defensive end.
"Brittany Bruns is someone who has game experience and that's very valuable, and she's competitive enough to go into games and make things happen."
As for several of the newcomers, "Brooke McCormack (6-2 Grayson County transfer) plays the game very intelligently. She's a good passer, she can feed other post players. She probably understands the game better than any post player I have. She can shoot the mid-range jumper pretty well and she covers up her weaknesses well.
"Sords has good size (6-3 post from Austin Westlake), and of all our post players she probably has the nicest shot from the high post. She's had trouble lately with shin splints, and remember, she's a freshman having to learn a new system." And that is also true where Jessika Stratton is concerned. She is a product of Colorado Springs, Colo., who won prep honorable mention All-America as a guard both as a junior and senior.
The other senior on the team (other than Monica Arnold) is 6-2 post Michelle Neely, a former junior college transfer herself who averaged 14.7 minutes, 2.7 points and 2.4 rebounds per game last season. Mulkey will not look to Neely for scoring but rather for other contributions in designated moments.
Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Dave Campbell appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.
