It was the end of last school year, and center Chinyere Ibekwe
was at the pre-party for her high school senior prom when she
received a surprise visit. Senior guard Lisa Willis, basking in her
new role as a veteran leader, showed up to her new teammate’s
house to welcome her to the team. Ibekwe signed late in the process
with UCLA and Willis wanted to make sure that the she felt
comfortable leaving her old family for her new one. It might have
seemed like a simple gesture but it marked Willis’ ascension
to greatness. “When she did that we started to get the
feeling like Lisa had matured and was poised for big things in the
upcoming season,” coach Kathy Olivier said. After her first
two years at UCLA, Willis was thought of as only a piece to the
puzzle. She is no longer merely the long range shooter who filled
out “the Triple Threat”, the vaunted guard trio of
Willis, senior Nikki Blue, and junior Noelle Quinn. Now in the
midst of her final year as a Bruin, Willis has become her own
player. As she has rounded out her game to become a complete
player, opposing coaches have had difficulties coming up with a
game plan to contain her. With only eight conference games
remaining for the UCLA women’s basketball team, Willis is on
the verge of leaving the program not as a role player but a
bonafide star. She has set a Pac-10 record in career steals, and
she will leave UCLA as one of the 10 most prolific scorers in
school history. She even has created her own signature move. One on
one with her defender, Willis creates separation with her crossover
dribble and stepback three. By the time the defender regains her
footing, the ball is likely droppping in the back of the net.
“People always ask me where that came from and I have no
idea,” Willis said. “I really don’t. It stems
from the fact that I like to shoot threes, so I want to fake you
out but then I still coming back to shoot a three. Then Willis
offers a quick amendment. “I am not just a shooter. Thank you
for all the compliments on my range, but I cannot just shoot from
threes. That makes me too easy to cover” Willis wants to make
it clear to anyone willing to listen that she takes pride in all
aspects of her game, as she has heard the murmurs that she is
merely the three-point shooter on the “triple threat”.
But this year nobody has any notions of her as just a complimentary
player on the perimeter. “It’s been great to see Lisa
get all the credit she deserves,” Quinn said. “She has
been producing ever since I got here, so I am happy that people
around the country are now realizing just how good she is.”
Willis’ bandwagon seems to be growing at an exponential rate
these days, whether it is opposing players or coaches or
professional scouts. For her, the corner was turned at the end of
the 2004-2005 season when UCLA failed to make the NCAA tournament.
That sinking feeling ignited a fire in Willis. “As soon as
the season ended I got to work,” Willis said.
“It’s still fresh how bad it was that we didn’t
make the tournament. So I took the offseason and just focused on
taking my play to the next level.”
On the national stage Willis represented Team
USA in the World University Games in Turkey this past summer. The
process of trying out for the national squad and eventually making
it gave her a confident boost that she has carried with her ever
since. Just making the team, knowing that she was one of the
premier 15 players in the nation to be selected to represent her
country, left no doubt in her mind that she was an elite player.
“The way I performed internationally, and even just making
the team, let me know where I am as a player,” Willis said.
“In fact, I only knew how good I was when I was missing my
shots and everyone was telling me to keep shooting. I
thought,’ wow, if they have that much confidence in me, then
I should have it in myself.” Willis had to adapt to her role
on Team USA, as she went from being one of the most talented
players on the court to one of a number of solid athletes. She came
off the bench, filling a role as the perimeter shooter and
defensive specialist. But her attitude and willingness to take on
the complimentary role impressed her teammates and coaching staff.
“She was very coachable,” said Harvard and Team USA
coach Kathy Delaney-Smith. “Whatever I asked her to do she
was more than happy to step in and do it. When you have an all-star
team not everyone is comfortable with that.” More than her
3-point shooting abilities or ball hawking defense, Willis opened
up the national team to her sense of humor and goofy sensibilities.
At the first mention of Willis, coach Delaney-Smith just giggled
and thought of a number of times the senior guard made everyone a
little bit more comfortable during long stretches overseas.
“When I think of Lisa Willis I think of a genuinely warm and
funny person who just loosened everybody up,” Delaney-Smith
said. “I could talk about her game, but the true testament to
Lisa is her personality and her makeup off the court.”
“She’s got an infectious personality.” Upon
returning from Turkey with a gold medal to show for her effort,
Willis immediately began to conceptualize what the experience meant
to her growth as a player, but also as a 21-year-old woman who had
yet to finish college. The answers have yet to come completely into
focus, which Willis attributes to the overwhelming nature of
representing one’s nation on the global stage. “When
you earn a Gold Medal, it’s hard to put into words how it
was,” Willis said. “It might take a while to understand
the value of that.” Aside from watching the nation’s
top players share the ball and the spotlight, Willis vividly
remembers the feeling of playing basketball for a living. And she
loved it. “I woke up, ate, played basketball, rested a bit,
played basketball some more, and then ate again and went to
bed,” she said. “I was just in heaven. I knew then that
I wanted to play professional basketball.”
Seeing stars When Willis was eight-years-old
and in the second grade, all of the girls were getting cabbage
patch dolls for Christmas. It was the hot item for little kids
playing house. Robert Willis asked his daughter, the youngest of
five children, if she also wanted a doll for the holidays. Her
answer surprised her dad. “She said no,” Robert Willis
said. “She wanted a basketball.” Robert Willis had no
idea that his little girl was such a fan of the game he coached to
club teams and high schoolers. But he found out soon enough what he
had to work with. “I told Lisa to go through her legs with
the ball.” She did. “Go behind your back.” She
did that with ease. “Do a crossover.” She did it
without breaking a sweat. Robert Willis was downright giddy.
“I had a basketball player, finally.” For the past 14
years, Willis has been working her way through one conditioning or
another to realize the potential she displayed as a precocious
second grader. Her father would sometimes form club teams just so
she would be able to play on a team. Willis, a Long Beach native,
attended local Narbonne High School and competed for one of the
elite prep teams in Southern California. Always surrounded by
talent on her team, Willis didn’t garner the same hype that
most All-American caliber players do. She played sound defense and
made her outside shots ““ not always the flashy playmaking
that scouts salivate over. “Coming out of high school, Lisa
was a really solid all around player but wasn’t the flashiest
one on the court,” coach Kathy Olivier said. “She just
improved each year by working. She is the perfect example of
someone who ascended to that elite status by using her basketball
IQ.” Recruited by UConn and Tennessee, Willis chose UCLA
because of the value of her diploma. Taking her game to the next
level this season, rumors have swirled about Willis’ status
as a pro prospect. WNBA scouts are at nearly every UCLA home game
to study the play of Willis, Blue, and Quinn. “Lisa knows all
about the mock drafts out there on the internet,” Blue said.
“She’s bringing them to me to show where people think
the two of us are going to end up.” “Lisa and I have
talked about how cool it would be if we were both drafted by the
same team and then Noelle could join us next year.”
It’s uncertain where Willis will land next season, or how
long her WNBA career will last. In fact, she has expressed interest
in playing in Europe, where the salaries for women’s
basketball players are considerably higher. “Everyone at the
pro level has talent,” Olivier said. “Lisa is going to
distinguish herself with her understanding of the game. She is
always thinking on the court, and finds the opponent’s
weakness by just paying attention. “The jump to the next
level will be a big one, but Lisa is so smart that she can adapt to
her surroundings and do what is needed of her.”
Life after basketball Willis has wanted to
become a lawyer well before she had perfect her step back
three-pointer that is now her signature shot. At the age of seven,
Willis would run into her living on Saturday and Sunday mornings
and turn on the television to watch “Matlock”. Willis
would wake up as early as 7 o’clock just to watch the law
drama and find out whether or not Matlock would be able to get his
client off the hook. Of course, Matlock always seemed to defend
someone who was thoroughly innocent and needed a great lawyer to
shed light on the truth. “He did lose one case because he
knew the guy was guilty,” Willis said. “But other than
that, he always won. He was the man.” As Willis matured, so
did her ideas about the law profession. Her mother, Sandra, who
used to run a nonprofit organization for inner-city youth, has
became the figure she would most like to emulate. Willis, too,
would like to open up a nonprofit organization, although she
envisions it being for athletes. Because the WNBA season takes
place during the summer, Willis is eyeing the possibility of going
to paying her way through law school during the basketball season
and attending class the rest of the year. “I have no regrets,
the reason I came to UCLA was for the degree,” Willis said.
“Hopefully I will go on to play professionally in the WNBA or
overseas.” Willis talks about graduating from UCLA with a
reserved excitement. She notes the “unfinished
business” UCLA has and her desire to make it back to the NCAA
tournament. But she is also content with time at the university and
is ready to move on to the next stage of her life ““ whether
it be the WNBA or an LSAT seminar. “This is definitely a
dream life that I’m living,” she said.
“It’s weird. I always feel like, “˜what if I am
dreaming?’ It always happens when I am in the
shower.”