Nikki Caldwell’s impact on the UCLA women’s basketball team is clear as senior guards Darxia Morris and Doreena Campbell lead the team to their final NCAA Tournament
UCLA women’s basketball coach Nikki Caldwell speaks to the media at the postgame press conference after the Pac-10 championship game Saturday.
Women's basketball
No. 14 Montana
Saturday
Spokane, Wash.
ESPN2
UCLA enters the NCAA Tournament as a No. 3 seed, a 5-spot improvement from a year ago. No. 1 Stanford tops the region.
By Chris Chen
March 14, 2011 11:59 p.m.
It wasn’t the final home game against Washington State where Nikki Caldwell showed some of her soft side.
No, not even after the Bruins put together their best regular season in school history.
During the postgame conference following a loss to Stanford in the conference tournament, Caldwell expressed just a little bit of sentimentality for a duo that has been there from the beginning of her tenure at UCLA.
The duo, Darxia Morris and Doreena Campbell, have become much like Caldwell: vocal, intuitive and tough-minded.
It’s hard not to imagine why Caldwell felt a bit of nostalgia. Perhaps it’s the feeling that things are ending.
“This journey is short,” she said. “I know it’s a joyful sorrow with these two though.”
Sorrow, not when the seconds ticked down as the Bruins let a nine-point halftime lead slip away to Stanford.
Sorrow came with an understanding that the NCAA Tournament was approaching, and each game bears the hefty weight of possible finality.
For UCLA (27-4), that weight serves as fuel to battle through perhaps six more games.
As the No. 3 seed in the Spokane Region, the Bruins will first face No. 14 Montana on Saturday evening in Washington.
If the Bruins were to advance, they would face the winner of Iowa and Gonzaga the following Monday or Tuesday.
Yet one name still looms large in that region: No. 1 Stanford.
“You look at Stanford and (see) them beat Connecticut early on,” Caldwell said. “I think that’s a great indicator of the 1’s and 2’s (seeds) out there. “¦ It’s going to be a great battle. I think we have been prepped enough in our conference to help ourselves.”
Just as prepared as the Bruins are in turning opponents over, there is also an urge to take care of their own possession.
“We still need to take care of the ball,” Caldwell said. “Turnovers lead to easy transition buckets (on the other end).”
As much havoc as UCLA could cause in the tournament, coupled with the unpredictability they call “madness,” it’s still a harrowing thought to know that there will be just one team remaining in April.
But there are tools that both Stanford and UCLA have obtained through the rigorous conference season and tournament.
“(The conference has) the players, the discipline, and the competitive drive, and most importantly the spirit,” Caldwell had said.
And from the moment the towering figure that is Nikki Caldwell stepped into her introductory press conference and was ushered in as the new coach at UCLA, a distinct spirit was injected into a team that previously had no identity.
“When Coach Nikki first came in, it was kind of intimidating. She came from a top-notch school and coaching with Pat Summitt,” Morris said. “But when she came here, she came here with a drive, and intensity, she came in and instilled in us that hard work we can do anything,” Morris said.
It’s this mirror image that Caldwell is reluctant to let go.
“We come out saying, “˜Don’t look at the score, don’t look at the time,'” Campbell said. “Go for 40 minutes and put in everything you’ve got.”
Campbell is described as a soft-spoken leader-by-example.
Morris is portrayed as the amiable leader through her intensity and energy ““ a rapper in another life.
“It’s just them as people,” Caldwell said. “These two have meant so much, just taking on so much responsibility for the success of this program.”
It’s their success that Caldwell finds so hard to bid farewell to, regardless the outcome in the following madness.
