LINCOLN, Neb.—Their best player is an Alaskan with a medical history as long as a basketball court and who almost quit the sport in high school.
Their coach came up playing the antiquated six-on-six game before setting records at a midmajor and embarking on a coaching career that leaves her down the list of recognizable names in the Big 12, never mind nationally.
Yet here are the Nebraska Cornhuskers, 15-0 and living large with their highest ranking ever at No. 11.
If they beat No. 9 Baylor on the road Sunday, the Huskers will surpass last season’s win total and clear a big obstacle in their bid for their first conference championship in 22 years.
Connie Yori only could have imagined a season unfolding like this when she took over a moribund program eight years ago.
Until now, success has been sporadic for Husker women’s hoops. One player, Kelsey Griffin, has made all the difference.
When she wasn’t beset by injuries the previous four years, Griffin was overshadowed in the Big 12 by Oklahoma star Courtney Paris.
Paris is gone now, and Griffin is the only player in the conference averaging a double-double, at 19.2 points and 10.2 rebounds.
“She’s probably one of the best players in the country who people have probably never heard of,” Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly said. “I don’t think it’s an accident that Nebraska’s team from last year to this year is totally different.”
The 6-foot-2 Griffin has scored 25 points or more in seven games despite getting double- and triple-teamed regularly. She can mix it up inside. She has a soft touch from the perimeter. She leads the team in steals. She blocks shots.
Griffin is relishing everything about this season. She had mononucleosis as a freshman, a breathing problem that flummoxed doctors her sophomore season, a cracked rib when she was a junior and an ankle injury that required two surgeries and kept her out of action the entire 2008-09 season.
She also had to deal with the mental stress from her father’s battle with head and neck cancer. He’s cancer-free now.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever play another season of basketball that’s been this fun,” Griffin said. “People ask about the WNBA. I’m just loving what I’m doing now, and I don’t want it to end.”
Griffin grew up in Eagle River, Alaska, playing soccer and volleyball and basketball on the side. When she went through the Chugiak High basketball tryouts as a freshman, the varsity coach recommended that Griffin play on the C team.
Upon hearing the news, Griffin was ready to quit and turn her attention to competitive club volleyball.
Tracy Adams, the junior varsity basketball coach at the time, intervened and insisted that Griffin play for him on the JV.
“I saw a lot of potential. She had some size, though she was a little gangly then,” Adams said. “But she had a good stroke from the perimeter and very good footwork.”
Alaska, of course, is well off the recruiting trail. Griffin’s break came the summer before her senior year when Cindy Fisher, then a Nebraska assistant, spotted her at a summer AAU tournament in Washington, D.C., and encouraged Yori to pursue her.
Michigan State and Arizona State also expressed interest, but Nebraska was the only school to offer a scholarship.
“I don’t know that many people had heard of Kelsey when she came from Alaska. She’s not Sarah Palin,” Iowa State’s Fennelly said. “Alaska has two famous females, and I think Kelsey is having a better year.”
Yori said Griffin was more than just a recruiting steal.
“It was a felony, what we did,” the coach said.
Recruiting, of course, is never easy for a lesser-known program such as Nebraska, which has produced just one first-team All-American (Karen Jennings in 1993).
The 46-year-old Yori, true to her Midwestern roots, has always taken pride in her work ethic.
She scored more than 3,000 points during her prep career in Ankeny, Iowa. She came up playing the obsolete six-on-six game, where three girls played offense and three played defense, and no one could cross the halfcourt line.
She made an easy transition to five-on-five and averaged better than 20 points a game during her career at Creighton University in Omaha.
Yori’s first head coaching job was at Division III Loras in Iowa, and then it was back to Creighton for 10 years before Nebraska came calling in 2002.
Her first team, after defections and injuries, had five scholarship players and finished 8-20 and last in the Big 12 at 1-15.
“That first year was nothing less than a nightmare,” Yori said.
Now the Huskers are working on a dream season. Griffin is surrounded by a talented supporting cast. The 3-point shooting of Cory Montgomery and Yvonne Turner creates space for Griffin down low, and Dominique Kelley is a slasher who can get to the basket or pass to the perimeter.
“Connie is just a coach that is always going to have her teams well prepared,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. “Her teams have always been physical, and they play very good defense. She takes players and makes them better.”
Yori is committed to recruiting only high school seniors, placing a premium on good character.
Her favorite statistic is that every senior she has coached in 19 years has graduated.
“She might not always recruit the most athletic person or the most talented, but she recruits people who work hard and will buy into the system,” Griffin said. “I’m not calling other coaches sellouts, but there are those who go find players who just scrape by in school just so they can produce on the court. Connie doesn’t want that. She wants to set you up for life.”
