Minium: Nikki McCray Made Voting For Conference USA Coach of the Year An Easy Task

By Harry Minium

FRISCO, Texas

When Nikki McCray-Penson was named Old Dominion's women's basketball coach in 2017, the cupboard was bare. Transfers, other defections and the lack of solid recruiting before she arrived laid waste to the Monarchs' lineup.

I was a Virginian-Pilot reporter at the time and ODU officials acknowledged privately it would take three years at a minimum before the Monarchs were competitive enough to compete for the NCAA tournament.

Her first season bore out that sentiment. ODU finished 8-23 and the depth was so thin and the talent so depleted, I honestly thought she deserved consideration for Conference USA Coach of the Year for winning eight games.

But what McCray has done in the 2 ½ years since she was hired made voting for this year's Conference USA Coach of the Year award no-brainer.

Her Monarchs are 24-6, are a missed layup and turnover away from  winning the regular-season title and are seeded No. 2 in the C-USA tournament. They open tournament play Thursday at 2:30 against UTEP.

ODU would clinch an NCAA tournament bid by winning the tournament, but if not, the Monarchs appear likely to get an at-large bid.

Wednesday morning, to no one's surprise, she was named the C-USA Coach of the Year. I hope the vote was unanimous, because it should have been.

It's a shame the two most important women in McCray's life are no longer here to share her joy. But surely Sally Coleman and Pat Summitt are smiling down upon the young woman upon whom they had so much

McCray says Sally Coleman, her Mom, was her role model. Coleman was fervently religious, had a strong work ethic, was family oriented and demanded her kids work hard.

McCray played for the legendary Pat Summitt at Tennessee and her outlook on basketball, her principles and her style of coaching all resemble Summitt.

Eight years ago, McCray was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her treatment was long and painful, but she survived cancer free.

McCray was then coaching at the University of South Carolina. Her Mom was back home in suburban Memphis, but spent a majority of her time in Columbia, S.C., taking care of her daughter.

Coleman knew what her daughter was going through because she was a breast cancer survivor.

"She was my rock," McCray said during a 2018 interview. "She knew what I was going through. She kept my spirits up. It was so good to have her there."

Then, in the summer of 2018, it was McCray's time to be a caregiver. Her Mom had a relapse of cancer and was fading fast. It was a key time for acclimating her first recruiting class to ODU, but athletic director Wood Selig told her to go home and take care of her Mom.

It was painful watching her Mom slip away, but McCray doesn't regret it for a second.

"She was such a hard worker," McCray said. "She was my hero. I got so much of my strength from her. She was a wonderful, wonderful human being.

"At her funeral, church members talked about her spirit, when they were around her how good she made them feel. If my mom was mad, you never knew it."

Summitt had died two years earlier from complications of early onset dementia. She did so with perhaps the most splendid college basketball coaching resume of all-time.
She won eight national titles and didn't have a losing season in her 38 seasons in Knoxville. When she prematurely retired in 2011, she did so with more victories than any coach before her, male or female.

Summitt was as intense a coach as there is. She was famous for "The Stare." That's when she was upset with a player or a ref and stared with steely-blue eyes.

McCray was one of her best players ever. She was a two-time SEC Player of the Year and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist. But she, too, caught the stare.

McCray spoke at length about Summitt after a recent home game in which the Monarchs paid homage to her old coach.  

"Pat was an amazing person, an amazing mentor, an amazing coach and friend, sister, daughter," McCray said. "She was fierce in every way, in her relationship with players, in how she addressed the media, in how she made people feel."

I asked how much of her coaching style comes from Summitt.

"A lot of it," she replied. "I was very fortunate to start my career at the University of Tennessee. I learned a lot about myself. I learned how to be a great teammate I learned how to play with others. I learned that it's not all about me because when you're in high school it's all about you.

"It's really good to just be in a place where you're doing it the right way, where when you work hard, great things happen. I learned discipline, my work ethic at Tennessee."

She acknowledged that no one can coach today the way Summitt did 10 or 15 years ago.

"I can't coach these kids the way Pat coached me," "This generation is different. I have to kind of navigate in a different way. But when you have a relationship with your players and they understand who you are and that you care about them, you're able to coach them."

She also paid homage to those players, including junior guard Victoria Morris, who played during that difficult 2017-2018 season.

"Our first year, our players really worked hard," she said. "They helped us get to this point.

"We're slowly but surely getting to where we want to be. And they helped lay the foundation."

Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu