W. basketball: Selling point

Don’t laugh when Tia Jackson talks about bringing a
championship to Westwood. Nikki Blue didn’t. Not even after a
pair of 20-loss seasons that had some outside the UCLA
women’s basketball community questioning the program’s
direction.

Jackson, the Bruins’ top assistant coach and one of the
leading recruiters in the sport, has helped engineer a turnaround
that has UCLA perched on the precipice of long-term success. Thanks
in part to Jackson’s mastery of recruiting, UCLA has inked a
pair of top-10 classes and assembled a collection of talent that
rivals even some of the nation’s perennial powers.

Parade All-Americans Blue and Noelle Quinn each credit
Jackson’s influence as a major reason they rebuffed some of
the sport’s most established programs to don the blue and
gold.

“I asked them both if they wanted to be a pioneer here and
bring a championship to the new millennium,” Jackson said.
“It takes a special kind of kid to say, “˜you know what,
I’m ready for that challenge.'”

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Jackson attacks the recruiting trail with the same ferocity that
she once attacked opposing defenders before a slew of injuries cut
her playing career short.

A prep All-American herself, the Maryland-native Jackson led
Iowa to four top-25 finishes and a berth in the 1993 Final Four
during her illustrious collegiate career. She averaged 10.8 points
per game, but it was not her scoring that endeared her to her
Hawkeye teammates or coach Vivian Stringer.

Instead, it was her determination.

A hundred sit-ups? She did 150. A devastating knee injury? She
played through it.

“She forced everyone to step up their intensity,”
Stringer said. “I would see that look in her eyes that said
we were not going to lose, and I’d know we were going to be
OK.”

Jackson’s resolve was on full display in the final game of
her career ““ a Big-10 quarterfinal clash against Penn State
in 1995. After tearing ligaments in her knee just days prior to the
start of the season, she returned five months later to lead Iowa to
a first-round victory, setting up a match-up with the heavily
favored Nittany Lions.

Essentially playing on one leg, Jackson scored 23 points and
nearly willed her team to victory despite taking a blow to the head
that knocked her unconscious early in the second half.

“She gave the performance of a lifetime,” Stringer
said. “She played so hard she passed out in the middle of the
game, and it was those few minutes without her that cost us the
victory.”

Five knee surgeries and a severe shoulder injury ultimately
forced her from the game after one season with the WNBA’s
Phoenix Mercury, but Jackson has no regrets.

“The next best thing to playing was coaching,” she
said. “If I couldn’t play, I wanted to be around the
game in some capacity.”

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After breaking into the coaching profession with a three-year
stint as a graduate assistant at Virginia Commonwealth, Jackson
moved to the West Coast for the first time to work under the
legendary Tara Vanderveer at Stanford.

She had been there for about 11 months when UCLA coach Kathy
Olivier contacted her about an opening on the Bruin staff after the
1999-2000 season.

“I had a couple of people recommend her,” Olivier
said. “Vivian (Stringer) told me I couldn’t go wrong.
She said, “˜there’s some people that you have to tell to
giddyap to get them going, and there are others that you have to
tell them whoa to bring them back.’ That’s Tia. She
works her tail off.”

Jackson felt comfortable in Westwood almost immediately, but it
took time for her to jump start UCLA’s recruiting
efforts.

Just two years removed from an Elite Eight appearance in
1998-1999, the UCLA program was a shell of its former self, having
been ravaged by injuries, transfers and graduation. The Bruins lost
43 games in Jackson’s first two years with the program, and
the talent pool ““ aside from the often-injured Michelle Greco
““ was woefully shallow.

But in the months leading up to the 2001-2002 season,
Jackson’s attention turned almost exclusively to Nikki Blue,
then one of the nation’s top senior guards and one of a
select few players who the coaching staff believed was capable of
rejuvenating the program.

It came down to a decision between UCLA and Connecticut for
Blue, and the Bakersfield product shocked everyone ““ to some
extent including even Jackson herself ““ by choosing to become
a Bruin.

“We were coming off of two very shaky years, and we were
all thinking, “˜How are we going to get this
kid?'” Jackson said. “We told her, “˜you can
go somewhere and just be one of the others, or you can come here
and start it off.’ It took some serious long days and nights
talking to her and her family but it paid off.”

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Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Tia Jackson’s
efforts as UCLA’s recruiting coordinator is not that she
enticed one top-notch player to become a Bruin.

It’s that she convinced a host of others to follow.

Since Blue announced her decision in fall 2001, UCLA has
committed a number of highly coveted local products, including
current players Quinn, Lisa Willis and Amanda Livingston as well as
future Bruins Lindsay Pluimer and Ashlee Trebilcock.

“Selling Kathy (Olivier) has been huge,” Jackson
said. “Getting those kids to spend time on the phone with her
and understand the direction that we’re headed. It’s
been a huge challenge, but I like where we’re
headed.”

But perhaps the most important coup of all for Jackson could
come today at 2:30 p.m. when San Diego High School standout Charde
Houston announces her college decision at a press conference after
school.

Houston, a consensus top-10 recruit in the class of 2004, has
pared her list of schools down to UCLA, Connecticut and Texas, and
has indicated that Jackson’s presence is a huge reason why
she is still considering the Bruins.

“Tia Jackson is someone I admire on and off the
court,” Houston said during her official visit to UCLA on
Saturday. “She has played a major role in my recruiting. She
understands where I’m coming from, and she’s able to tell me
what it means to be able to come to this school.”

If the 6-foot-2 Houston does commit to UCLA today, it would
likely give the Bruins the interior post presence they need to get
back to the heights the program achieved in 1999.

At least one prominent coach isn’t betting against
them.

“Trust me ““ It’s very hard to recruit against
Tia,” said Stringer, who herself was recruiting Houston
before the senior dropped Rutgers from her list. “She’s
just never satisfied with “˜no.'”

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At some point Jackson will inevitably leave Westwood to become a
head coach.

“She has to,” Stringer said.

Jackson has had offers from other schools before, but is still
waiting for the right opportunity. Until that happens, she is more
than content sitting in her office in the Morgan Center, amid
stacks of recruiting charts and video tapes, helping to assemble a
team that could soon be among the best in the nation.

“There’s been nothing worthy of me investing all
this time into these young ladies just to up and leave,”
Jackson said.

“We’ve got them realizing they can bring a
championship to Los Angeles playing at UCLA,” she continued.
“There’s no way I’d leave right now.”