Nikki Caldwell can motivate someone straight through a brick wall.
There’s a passion in her voice at all times, giving her words an air of intensity, even if she’s said them before. The inflection of Caldwell’s words have the power to light a fire under anyone who hears them, be they seemingly mundane mottos or rousing original speeches.
Whether it’s putting her Lady Tigers through a United States Marine Corps training regimen during the summer, attaching heart monitors to players in practice or preaching “sweat equity” will determine playing time, Caldwell spends as much time as any coach trying to instill mental toughness and an emotional edge in her team.
Before the season at women’s basketball media day in October, Caldwell told reporters she didn’t want her team hungry for success, she wanted them starving. The team fired out of the gate, but after closing the regular season losing seven of their last eight, it seemed the Lady Tigers lost their appetite.
She reiterated that point heading into the Women’s NCAA tournament, but hungry or not, No. 7 seed LSU shot the lights out in a matter-of-fact 98-78 drubbing of No. 10 seed Georgia Tech in its tournament opener.
The true test of the Lady Tigers’ desire would come two days later, in a second-round matchup against No. 2 seed West Virginia.
With starting guards Raigyne Moncrief and Jeanne Kenney lost to injury and starting forwards Theresa Plaisance and Shanece McKinney saddled on the bench with foul trouble, LSU found itself outgunned, trailing 63-56 with just over five minutes to play. At that very point, with the situation looking bleak, all of Caldwell’s work paid off.
Facing starvation, her shorthanded collection of Lady Tigers dug deep and reeled off a 20-4 run to steal a 76-67 victory, dispatching a shell-shocked Mountaineers club and securing a second-consecutive trip to the Sweet 16.
Caldwell’s greatest impact isn’t reflected in the fact LSU came back and won, but in how it came back and won.
The Lady Tigers didn’t start suddenly launching and connecting on jump shots down the stretch — any team can go on a hot-shooting streak — but by taking the ball to the hoop and battling in the paint.
The undersized Lady Tigers attacked the basket and jumped all over the glass, scratching and clawing until someone eventually willed one of the subsequent putbacks through the cylinder.
Despite Plaisance and McKinney missing chunks of game time and reserve forward Derreyal Youngblood being suspended for the game, LSU managed to pull down an eye-popping 24 offensive rebounds.
When size and sheer number of players is an issue, defense and rebounding comes down to effort and tenacity. That’s precisely how LSU won.
With 5-foot-9 guard Danielle Ballard’s 22 points and 15 rebounds leading the way, Caldwell’s Lady Tigers delivered the single gutsiest performance of any LSU team this season, bar none.
Throw in the way Caldwell rallied her troops after the loss of Kenney, the team’s emotional leader, to another injury and the comeback reads straight out of a storybook.
I can hear the ESPN “30 for 30” now: “What if I told you a team battled into the Sweet 16 with only seven players? Then, what if I told you that same team came back the next season and did it all over again with six.”
In order for the story to continue, LSU will have to leave the friendly confines and return to a building it was blown out of earlier this season. Sounds like a Disney movie to me.