If you follow women's basketball (and no doubt you do if you have found your way to this site), you are bound to be familiar with the names of most, if not all, of the players who will step forward over the next few weeks to accept their share of the annual post-season accolades. The players of the year, the All-Conference team players--they know who they are and so do we.
We'd like to take a moment in the midst of all the fanfare to honor a different set of players. You may not recognize many of them. And that is precisely the point.
These players are low-maintenance. They rarely appear in game stories. They may not show often in the box score. They may not start many games. But few teams can survive without what Pitt Coach Agnus Beranato calls the “lunch-pail, hard-hat” players: Those who come to practice early, work tirelessly, give maximum effort during their time on the court, rarely make mistakes, and contribute in important ways, all without the glory.
Coaches know who they are. St. John’s Coach Kim Barnes-Arico believes that “every team needs at least one player like that – “the high-energy player, the one who is always doing the little things to make the team succeed,” Barnes-Arico continued, “ the one who will take a charge, dive for loose ball, never take a play off.”
We are proud to announce below the players of the SEC on whom we bestow the first annual Full Court Press Golden Lunch Bucket, in an attempt to give these players at least some of the credit they so richly deserve.
| Danielle Taylor, 6'1", Senior, Forward, Georgia |
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| Georgia's Danielle Taylor (4) tries to swat a rebound away from Florida's Sharielle Smith (24) in a regular season game earlier this week. Taylor's coach and teammates value her hard work and leadership. |
A wing forced to play the post, Danielle Taylor appreciates her teammates on the defensive end. “All day against bigger players, I’m always calling for help. Thank goodness Angel [Robinson] and Poscha [Phillips] are so good at helping.”
Despite the mismatches, Coach Andy Landers keeps Taylor on the floor an average of eighteen minutes a game for her leadership and timely scoring. “She’s instant offense on the floor,” Landers said this week. “As an undersized post, she is very creative in how to score.” Taylor has contributed 7.3 points in eighteen minutes per game.
Landers’ values the leadership of his lone senior more than anything. “She just gets it,” Landers marvelled. “Danielle understands maybe better than anyone on our team when business is business, and it’s time to go to work.” Her true value as a leader is that “she’s smart enough to listen, and she brings others into that understanding."
"As a coach,” Landers continued, “you talk about tweaking things or making adjustments, and some players are just lost. [Taylor] jumps on the page with you, and if someone else is not paying attention, she might nudge them and encourage them to work with the tweak.”
Taylor herself sees vocal leadership as a responsibility that goes with her election as captain. “Last year, I was always yelling and trying to motivate my teammates,” she recalled. “When they chose me as co-captain, I realized I had to be doing that every day.”
Taylor’s success goes beyond the basketball court. She is the first member of her family to attend college, and will graduate with a Social Work degree next May, following a year-long internship.
| Alex Fuller, 6'3", Senior, Center, Tennessee |
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| Tennessee guard Alex Fuller, left, battles for control of a rebound last week with Louisiana State forward Kristen Morris. She has provided consistency and leadership in a challenging year. |
At first glance, Alex Fuller doesn’t seem to fit in this group: She is a starter who has averaged eleven points, eight rebounds and over 30 minutes a game in her senior season. But somehow, Fuller quietly does her work in the background for one of the most visible teams in the nation.
She labored for three years in the shadow of Candace Parker and Alexis Hornbuckle. Suddenly, last summer, she was the only senior on a very young team.
“What Alex has done for us, is stepped up her leadership, and not just by an example,” Coach Pat Summitt explained this week.
Fuller instituted tape-scouting sessions without the coaches, to force the youngsters to analyze games themselves. She has been responsible for scouting reports on future opponents, reporting to her teammates on every player.
“There’s no way to fast-forward the learning process,” Coach Summitt says, “ but Alex has given another voice to what we are teaching. Sometimes I think she’s more stressed by this process than the coaches – and, believe me, the coaches are pretty stressed.”
The Fuller of previous years was “soft-spoken and quiet naturally,” her coach recalled, “but she has definitely turned up her voice. We have seen a different side of Alex, but in a good way: She’s willing to challenge her peers, and take ownership for our success or failure.”
Of course, there’s also those eleven-and-eight a night-- consistency for an inconsistent team.
| Trevesha Jackson, 6'0", Senior, Forward, Auburn |
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| Auburn's Trevesha Jackson, left, is not one to give up easily. Shown here battling for the ball with Mississippi's Alliesha Easley (32) And Auburn's Reneisha Hobbs. |
Trevesha Jackson joined Auburn as a sophomore after a preparatory year at Gulf Coast Community College, and became all but invisible, despite logging over 20 minutes per game. While the basketball world extolled the considerable skills of SEC Player of the Year DeWanna Bonner and super point guard Whitney Boddie, Jackson settled into the paint as an undersized post player.
Like most of those on this list, she sees her role as “getting my teammates the ball, getting on every loose ball, and grabbing all the rebounds I can."
As the “center” on a four-guard offense, Jackson knows that “I’ve just got to lay my body on the line. I get bruised every single game,” she admits, “but it’s what I need to do, and when I set my mind to doing something, I’m going to get it done.”
Coach Nell Fortner agrees with that assessment. “Trevesha is just such a blue collar worker,” Fortner said. “She’s just a warrior, and when those lights come on, she just turns it on.”
Jackson succeeds, not on exceptional quickness, Fortner opined, “but because she has a dogged determination not to get beat.”
Jackson now splits the post duties with freshman Chantel Hilliard, who is only slightly taller. Jackson tries to instill in her younger teammate the fact that “it’s a tough game in the SEC, you’re gonna get banged,” and that only constant hard work will make survival possible. At times, as she is pounded by larger centers, Jackson may regret the 20 pounds she lost as a freshman, but she is content to take her bruises for one of the most successful teams in the country.
| Tamara Williams, 6'0", Junior, Guard, Alabama |
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| An "energy bug" for her team, Alabama's Tamara Williams, right, lays so intense "D" on Georgia guard Angela Puleo. |
“I try to be an energy-bug for my team,” says Tamara Williams of Alabama. Playing just 10 minutes a game in conference, the guard “tries to get everybody going” when her number is called, as it has been in 22 of 29 games this year.
Williams has just 221 points, 251 rebounds, and 53 steals in just 1200 minutes of play over her three seasons, but first-year Alabama Coach Wendell Hudson considers her an essential part of his team, even though he uses her sparingly.
“She will always pick us up from an energy viewpoint,” he said with a chuckle. “She’ll take a charge, make a defensive play, then drop back and help a teammate. . . . You gotta have people you know you can always count on to give you maximum effort no matter how much they play,” Hudson continued, “Tamara is that kind of player.”
Stayed Tuned for More in our Lunch Bucket Series
Every successful team has these “hard-hat” players. They play the game with intensity and in relative obscurity, but their value is not lost on those who follow and understand the game. Many of them act as player-coaches, either on the bench or in the locker room. And their real coaches appreciate their contributions as much as they do those of the leading scorer. Teammates seek out their advice, and treasure their friendship Not one of them misses the spotlight, and each of them is happy with her college basketball career. How much better than that can it get?
Stayed tuned for more in our Golden Lunch Bucket series, as we turn the spotlight on some terrific players who see it all too rarely. And go to our message boards to nominate your own candidates for future Lunch Bucket awards.
Jim Clark is a career prosecutor in the New Haven Connecticut State’s Attorney’s Office, and an adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT. He has tried 35 murder cases, and dozens of other felonies. A life-long student of the game, and a regular correspondent for Full Court PressWomen's Basketball Magazine, Jim officiates high school volleyball and basketball, and will ride 100 miles around Lake Tahoe in the “World’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride” in June to raise funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.