‘Fighter’ on and off basketball court
Mississippi State women’s basketball coach Mccray-penson is known as a winner who also beat breast cancer
Call Nikki Mccray-penson what you want.
A two-time SEC Player of the Year and a three-time SEC Champion with Tennessee. A two-time Olympic gold medalist with Team USA and a three-time WNBA All-star.
A winner of four SEC championships and a national title as an assistant at South Carolina. A Conference USA Coach of the Year at Old Dominion. A member of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. The new coach at Mississippi State.
You may use any of those accolades to define Mccraypenson, but LSU coach Nikki Fargas doesn't. A former Lady Vols teammate of Mccray-penson, Fargas goes beyond basketball to describe her life-long friend.
"One word to me that sums up Nikki Mccray is a fighter," Fargas told the Clarion Ledger. "We're going to battle for loose balls, we're going to battle on the court and all that stuff, but to be able to see her battle and come through what she's been through, it's pretty inspiring."
Mccray-penson was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2013. She beat the odds and is the coach she is today because she won that battle.
She wouldn't be the coach she is today, however, without the people who shaped her during every step of her basketball journey to make her a champion and fighter.
Playing for Pat
Mccray-penson and Fargas showed up in Knoxville a year apart with striking similarities that almost made the duo indistinguishable.
“We had a chance to go to a program with the same mission and the same goal," Fargas said. "We were like-minded people, we weren't scared of hard work, we were in shape, we were very coachable. Those are all the qualities that we carried with each other. At the end of the day, we were trying to win a national championship."
Fargas accomplished that in her freshman season. Mccray-penson, who arrived the next season, never did. Uconn beat Tennessee 70-64 to claim the national title in the final game of Mccray-penson's college career.
The Tennessee teams Mccray-penson played on were 43-1 in SEC regular season games and set the foundation for the Lady Vols to win three-straight national titles from 1996-98.
Winning it all would have been the cherry on top of Mccray-penson's time at Tennessee, but playing for Pat Summitt, who won eight national titles, was the consolation prize of a lifetime.
"My four years at Tennessee were some of the best years of my life," Mccray-penson said. "I went from my family to a new family. Their faith in me was as strong as the faith my own family had in me. Those four years were critical. The foundation started there. My life was shaped by Pat. I'm so thankful I was surrounded by someone that cared, treated people with respect, that understood how to be a winner on and off the floor."
'The first thing I saw was her heart'
Jody Adams-birch couldn't get by her.
Also a year older than Mccray-penson, Adams-birch was one of the freshmen that helped Tennessee win the national title in 1991. When Mccray-penson arrived on campus, the sophomore was stumped by her disruptive defense.
Adams-birch resorted to asking Mccray-penson what her strength was on offense.
"She said your stop and go," Adams said. "So I had to stop and go more to get away and create space because of my size and the speed and length difference that she had."
Adams-birch said Mccray-penson also had a difference concerning intangibles.
"The first thing I saw was her heart," Adams-birch said. "We're all competitors, extreme competitors. That's one of the things that's a given when you see the Tennessee uniform. But the one thing you don't always get with every player is a big heart. Nikki has one."
'Nope, that's not my job'
Sometimes, it was too much heart. During one of her first games as a member of Team USA, Mccray-penson wore herself out guarding the opposing team's point guard in the first quarter. She asked Dawn Staley, her elder teammate, to take over the task for a possession.
Staley scowled.
"Her tongue would be wagging out her mouth and I'd be like, 'Nope, that's not my job,' " Staley said.
"It made me tougher," Mccray-penson said. "When you're trying to win a gold medal, you don't have time to rest. You just have to get the job done. It was a way of her getting me to see the big picture."
Staley served as Mccray-penson's mentor long before the two connected as coaches at South Carolina in 2008. The duo thrived as backcourt teammates on Team USA.
Staley had to get it through Mccraypenson's head that she was the fourth or fifth option in USA'S stacked lineup. Mccray-penson would force a back cut, and Staley, the point guard, would shake her head and look for another option.
Those are the moments that matured Mccray-penson.
"Dawn the player and the coach, she's one in the same," Mccray-penson said. "The people that are around her, you just play at a different level because that's the expectation. She's for you and puts you in a position to be successful."
'She really set the tone for our defense'
Mccray-penson's coaches at Team USA had hands in her growth too.
First it was Tara Vanderveer, the longtime Stanford head coach who coached Team USA on and off throughout the 1990s. Vanderveer thought about cutting Mccray-penson from the roster of a world championship qualifier, but one of her assistants thought better of it.
"Do not leave the country without Nikki Mccray," the assistant said.
The team breezed through the qualifier with Mccray-penson, but she couldn't play in the 1994 World Championships because she was in summer school at Tennessee preparing for her senior season.
USA took third. Two years later at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, the Americans won it all with Mccray-penson back on the roster. Vanderveer credited her for being a piece that tied everything together.
If someone on the other side needed to be shut down, Mccray-penson did it.
"She really set the tone for our defense," Vanderveer said.
Nell Fortner, the former SEC Coach of the Year at Auburn in 2009 who's now at Georgia Tech, was the coach of USA Basketball from 1997-2000.
Fortner said Mccray-penson only knew one speed: 100 miles per hour. She said she never had any issues coaching her. She didn't make Mccray-penson out to be a future coach back in the 1990s, but she should have.
"At the end of the day when you go back and evaluate coaches that are great, accountability is a huge part of success," Fortner said. "And when you can hold your kids accountable to a high level of play and practice, then you're going to succeed. Nikki, there's no question she held herself accountable to a very high level of effort and competitiveness on the court, and I'm sure that's carried over to the teams she's coached."
'Nikki took it to another level'
Mccray-penson had only been an assistant at Western Kentucky for two seasons when Staley approached her at the 2008 Final Four. Staley was set to become the next coach at South Carolina, and she wanted to bring Mccraypenson with her.
Mccray-penson felt she had some obligations left at Western Kentucky before accepting the offer.
"Nobody's got time for that, Nikki," she said. "Tell them that you've got to go. We have things to do."
It included winning the 2017 national championship.
"Coach Mccray had a huge factor in making sure we didn't have to think about anything other than playing our game," said A'JA Wilson, a senior on the 2017 team and a three-time SEC Player of the Year. "She worked so, so hard to make sure we understood the scouting, make sure we had everything we needed and everything was good and planned out."
"We asked her for a scouting report during tournament time, and I can remember this vividly, she sent me that scouting report and I basically said, 'This chick is crazy!' " Staley added. "I'm like, 'What is this?' Nikki took it to another level. There wasn't anything that got by us. She knew people's systems better than them."
'The sky is the limit for her at Mississippi State'
That's the level mentors and peers expect Mccray-penson to take it to at Mississippi State.
The optimism is endless. First from her teammates at Tennessee.
"She's definitely going to be able to get that team and that program to that national championship because that's what's always driven her, and that's what's always driven all of us, is to strive for excellence and to achieve greatness," Fargas said. "That's something we learned from Coach Summitt."
"I think it's a perfect fit," Adamsbirch said. "The type of person Nikki is, wherever she's at she's going to make it a perfect fit."
Second, her coaches at Team USA. "I think the players will thoroughly enjoy playing for Nikki," Vanderveer said. "They'll respond. I think Mississippi State is bringing in the best person they could."
"She's just so highly competitive," Fortner said. "Incredible competitor. Her work ethic is incredible. This is a kid that is a self-made hard-worker on the basketball court and in this coaching profession. She's going to do a really good job at Mississippi State."
And of course, her friends now turned foes from South Carolina.
"She is very organized, she's a thinker, she has a vision of how she wants to see it, and she puts the work in behind that vision," Staley said. "I know she'll do the same there at Mississippi State."
"The sky is the limit for her at Mississippi State," Wilson said.
Contact Tyler Horka at thorka@gannett.com. Follow @tbhorka on Twitter. To read more of Tyler's work, subscribe to the Clarion Ledger today!