Just about every basketball team runs sprints at one point or another, but there is something a little bit different when the UCLA women’s team does it.
If you pop into Pauley Pavilion toward the end of practice, you might see the Bruins’ 6-foot-4-inch center, Chinyere Ibekwe, sprinting with her team.
Or, more accurately, sprinting out in front of her team.
“There have been times in practice, where we are running our transition drills, and she is about as fast down the floor as our guard plays,” coach Nikki Caldwell said. “There are times when we run sprints, and she’ll have a tendency to look back and mess with her teammates in a joking manner.”
That is Ibekwe in a nutshell. She is naturally gifted athletically, and she has enough personality and passion to turn and mess with her teammates in a fun way as she runs by.
She has always been talented, but she has not always utilized her skill. She’s always been charismatic, but her outgoing, outspoken nature has not always been helpful.
In fact, she had not really been put to the test, mentally or athletically, when it came to basketball.
That is until this year ““ a year in which it all is coming together for the senior.
“I’ve never been challenged this hard in my life, to be that player and be that person,” Ibekwe said. “Honestly, I’ve taken some long strides. You ask people, I’ve taken a lot of strides, and it wasn’t easy, and I didn’t do it alone.”
Cruising along
Many basketball players who dream of a college career start playing the day they learn how to walk.
Not Ibekwe.
She played organized basketball for the first time the summer before her freshman year of high school.
“I never really got the opportunity to be coached or to learn the game of basketball,” Ibekwe said. “I just went out there and played.”
Brothers who played basketball, a 6-inch growth spurt and the natural ability to run and jump faster and higher than most made Ibekwe a four-year starter on her varsity team at Carson High School in Los Angeles.
And while Ibekwe said that stepping into organized basketball was a struggle, she glided through her pre-college years on pure athleticism. She learned the game in a mere four years.
“I never knew how athletic I was until I came to college,” she said. “I wasn’t really up to that challenge yet. No one had really challenged me yet.”
But it didn’t take long for Ibekwe to realize her gifts once at UCLA. At one of her first workouts at a freshman summer program in the Wooden Center, she was scared, not sure if she could keep up with the other great players around her.
Then the team did running, and, like she does today, she kept up and even passed a few people. It was at that point she knew she belonged.
“My freshman year, I came in as a spark player,” Ibekwe said. “I was a fan favorite, just out there doing everything I could to help my team. I was definitely a key player in the Pac-10 Tournament and that win against Stanford. Sophomore year, I was obviously one of those players to step up and be a starter. I had some good games.”
That she did. During her sophomore campaign, Ibekwe started all 32 games, was first on the team in rebounding, second on the team in blocks, and averaging 7.7 points per contest. Her pure athletic ability allowed her to excel, and she looked primed for an even stronger junior season.
But then the challenges began.
A rough patch
The first roadblock came in the form of decreased playing time.
Ibekwe’s junior season turned out to be nothing like what she had hoped. She would start only three games her third year, and her numbers plummeted.
She scored only 2.7 points per game, averaged fewer than four boards per contest and averaged less than 10 minutes of playing time.
“Junior year, I know there was an issue where I was late to an event,” Ibekwe said. “Junior year, I knew I should have been on the court, but I wasn’t. Junior year was a very, very difficult year for me. It was a very testing year, a very trying year. Junior year, I think I could have helped my team more. But I can only control what I can control. I can only control my effort. When it comes down to it, whoever is the boss is the boss; she will put me in the game.”
For Ibekwe, a player who had essentially started and been integral to her team’s success every game since her freshman year in high school, being less involved in the game was trying.
“It was really hard for me,” she said. “Really difficult. … All I want to do is play basketball, and if someone is keeping that from me, it’s very difficult.”
But Ibekwe would make it through the year, only to run into another potential difficulty.
After the Bruins’ exit from the postseason, the coach who recruited her, Kathy Oliver, resigned from her position as the women’s basketball coach.
After dealing with the initial shock that a UCLA mainstay would no longer be in Westwood, Ibekwe again had to move on.
Her natural athletic gifts had failed to earn her automatic playing time on the court. Her coach, one of the staples of Ibekwe’s life, had been removed, and no high jumps or fast sprints could bring her back.
Ibekwe was being truly challenged, both mentally and athletically. Now the question was what to do about an uncertain senior year.
Enter coach Nikki Caldwell.
A great senior year
Even before Ibekwe stepped on the court for Caldwell, she had a feeling about her new coach.
“When it was announced that Nikki was our coach, even before I met her, there was something that drew me to her,” Ibekwe said. “When you meet people, you’re either all in or all out, and I was all in with her.”
That is when things started turning around. By deciding she was “in,” Ibekwe committed herself to facing the adversity of her junior year and learning from it.
“(Ibekwe’s success) started with her mental attitude about wanting to have a great senior year. … She’s somebody who has taken that to heart,” Caldwell said. “I think she has taken pride in wanting to be that go-to player inside. But I think it started with a change in her mindset.”
Under Caldwell, Ibekwe quickly realized it would no longer be enough to coast on her athleticism alone. Caldwell pushed her to bring fire, aggressiveness and discipline every day. She is being pushed to her athletic limits as never before.
“You have to make up your mind every day on what type of leader you want to be when you step on the floor,” Caldwell said. “There are days when she’s done that and days when she needed the help of her teammates to get it done. But she is doing it more than she has probably ever done in the past.”
The numbers verify what Caldwell says. Ibekwe has eclipsed her sophomore statistics and leads the team both in rebounding and blocked shots by quite a bit in Caldwell’s system that preaches board play and defense.
And Ibekwe appreciates everything Caldwell has done for her as a senior.
“I feel (Caldwell) had the choice to not deal with me and focus on her younger classmen, but she has really embraced me, asked me to be a leader, and I’m doing as much as I can to help her,” Ibekwe said.
But perhaps most importantly, Ibekwe is at a point now where she has gotten past the struggles of junior year and learned a great deal from them. Nothing comes easily anymore.
“My junior year really just helped me to be more patient,” she said. “And not taking things for granted ““ even my starting position. I didn’t start the Oregon State game; I didn’t start the Oregon game. I have to play this game like it’s my last.”
Even as a person, Ibekwe said she has matured. Once a closed-off freshman with a big personality, Ibekwe as a senior has harnessed some of her passion and opened up.
“I’m more calm, I’m more open,” she said of her senior self. “Coming in as a freshman, I had this strong personality, and I wasn’t approachable, I don’t think. It was my persona. … There are people out there that want to help me. Me as a freshman ““ I had attitude. I’ve learned to work with people. I’ve learned people aren’t all out there to get me.”
Yet despite all the growth, Ibekwe still does have one tangible thing she wants to accomplish by season’s end.
“One of my goals was to be the first girl to dunk in Pauley,” she said.
When asked when she plans to try a dunk, Ibekwe said the answer was that obviously it would need to come on a fast break.
It’s a good thing she can sprint as fast as she does.