Kelsey Plum and University of Washington coach Mike Neighbors have a tight bond. The latter was Plumās lead recruiter, and it was his ascension as UWās head coach four years ago that convinced the highly-decorated 5-foot-8 Plum to spurn the decorated high-major legacy programs and enroll as a Huskyāthe move, at the time, was akin to LeBron James actually committing to Akron.
Neighbors has never tested Plumās decision: he pitched Washington as a place where she would receive the very best in skill development, and even she acknowledges she wouldnāt be on the precipice of breaking the all-time NCAA womenās scoring recordāa decades-old markāwithout Neighborsā tutelage.
But when Plum got the first look at the 2017 UW schedule during the summer before her senior season, she was, in Neighborās words, āvery upset.ā The reason? Neighbors hadnāt scheduled enough east coast games. āI tried,ā he says. āMost teams donāt want a return game out here, and it was hard to get games with who we had coming back.ā
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Fresh off the programās first Final Four run, Washington might be the most intriguing team in womenās basketball this season: a west coast outlier amidst the sportās pseudo east coast bias. That rise is wholly due to Plum, who bypassed the WNBA for one more chance to win a national title. And if she breaks a record that had largely been deemed to be unbreakable, well then, sheās fine with that too.
āTo be honest, I havenāt thought of the record at all,ā says Plum, referring to Jackie Stilesā NCAA-record 3,393 points. āItās an honor, and itās probably something I should relish a bit more, but thatās not where I want to spend my time. Right now, I donāt really care.ā
āTo be honest, I havenāt thought of the record at all.ā
Which is why she was so hard on Neighbors when she viewed UWās upcoming slate. Other than the preseason NIT, a tournament in which Washington reached the finals before dropping the title game to Notre Dame, the Huskies havenāt played an opponent located in the Eastern Time zone all season. If Washington is going to contend like Plum believes it can, the squad needed those high-profile games. For many, womenās college basketball starts in Storrs and Knoxville with brief detours to South Bend and Palo Alto, but itās hard to ignore Plumās scoring prowess and offensive brilliance (even it means staying up a bit later to catch a UW game).
āKelsey keeps telling me, āCoach, if we win enough games, people will notice,āā says Neighbors. āWe donāt talk about her being overshadowed because I donāt think she needs to be motivated by that. Motivation has never been an issue with Kelsey.ā
Plum grew up in an uber competitive familyāher parents and siblings were all college athletesāand that environment clearly influenced not only her personality (the morning of this interview, she raced her teammates through the streets of Seattle to the UW bookstore) but her playing style.
The left-handed Plum has a streamlined game that was built after countless early morning hours spent in gyms throughout her entire life. Her jump shot doesnāt appear unstoppable, starting near her face and barely rising from her hand before a defender closes out, but she is equipped with a sneaky quick release and a classically perfected form. What transforms Plum into a truly transcendent talent is identifying holesāhowever briefly they appearāon the floor and then attacking, often drawing a foul in the process. Her speed isnāt blazing, but it is steady; once she gets an edge on a defender, she keeps the player on her hip for as long as possible before launching into the air, seeking out contact while still making the layup.
She is a nightmare to defend off the bounce in isolation because even when she is executing a seemingly simple move, she has so many different counters. āShe is so good at making the defense wrong,ā says Neighbors, who enhanced Plumās already robust film study with clips of James Harden and Chris Paul. āIcing the ball screen became more popular in the womenās game about two years ago, so we wanted her to attack in a manner similar to Harden or Paul,ā says Neighbors.
āShe is so good at making the defense wrong.ā
During a mid-January win against Arizona, a team coached by former UW assistant Adia Barnes, Plum faced a gamut of ever-changing defenses, including at least eight different types of screen coverage, zone flooding, and shading. Plum wasnāt fazed, dropping 36 points and handing out 5 assists, a performance that prompted Neighbors to describe as a āa 40-minute microcosm of Kelsey doing whatever she needed to do to make the defense wrong.ā
Itās rare that Plum doesnāt score 30 or more points a game (that includes the four times sheās scored 40-plus). And though she is one of the gameās most electric talents in recent memory, Plum had outlined goals that even the headiest of womenās players might find challenging to reach. But as Neighbors adds, āKelsey is laser focused.ā
There really wasnāt a reason for Plum to come back for her senior season. The guard was nearly perfectāthat was enough to warrant a lottery pick in the WNBA draftābut life in the Plum household, coupled with early childhood experiences, formed an unshakable concept of how the āreal worldā could sink someone unprepared to be challenged.
Despite all those accolades and praise from idols like Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, Plumās shoulder will always have a chip. āI remember going to a USA tryout, and my mom telling me, āThere are five other really good point guards here, so donāt get discouraged if you donāt make the team,āā she says. āWhen I was younger, Iād ask, āMom, why canāt you just tell me Iām amazing?ā But she was always realistic and honest with me, and Iām grateful for it now.ā
Without that mentality, Plum doesnāt tell Neighbors āwithin a secondā last spring that sheāll return for her senior year. It also explains why she innately understood that improvements had to be made to her game. According to both Plum and her coach, there has been a marked difference between her junior and senior seasons, which is astounding since Plum scored nearly 1,000 points in 2016.
āI could have gone pro, but my game wasnāt as refined as it could have been.ā
For the first time since she arrived at the Pac-12 school, Plum rarely left UWās campus for the summer. Typically, Plum would spend a few weeks at her southern California home, but she realized that by leaving the school, sheād forego an opportunity to fix the holes that only Plum sees in her game. āI felt like I could get more consistent and more efficient,ā she says. āDuring my junior year, there were a lot of shots I didnāt make that I should have, and once I get to the WNBA, the window is a bit smaller to get my shot off.ā
She continues, āI could have gone pro, but my game wasnāt as refined as it could have been, and I want to be as ready and prepared as possible.ā Her summer goals were multi-tieredāshe needed to add range to her jump shot; elevate her shooting off the dribble; and, perhaps most crucially, improve her conditioning, which included training her heart rate to remain balanced (even after series and series of sprints) and her diet. āI donāt necessarily eat bad,ā she says, ābut I didnāt pay attention to all the sour creams, cheeses, and butter I ate.ā
She played pickup at local runs several times a week with former NBA guard Nate Robinson and possible future top pick Michael Porter Jr, honing her skills against what might just be the most talented collection of practice players. āYou have to be a lot more decisive when you are playing against grown men,ā she says. āIād dribble into the paint, and Michael is unlike anyone Iāve played against, with his size and skill. Iād dribble right back out.ā
But Robinson, himself an undersized guard, dropped knowledge throughout their workouts. āHeād spray little tidbit stuff,ā explains Plum, such as raising her form against certain players to get a shot off quicker or seeking out the body more often.
The change in her offseason routine has been transformative. Only one other high-major guard converts more of her attempts from the field than Plum (52 percent) in 2017, and she is just a few made free throws away from registering a 50/40/90 stat lineāso farāfor the entire season. Whatās been most interesting, though, is how the growth of the UW program has benefitted her performance.
Washington isnāt just Plum; Chantel Osahor is making nearly 40 percent of her 3-pointers, and since transferring from Nebraska, Natalie Romeo has helped complete a triumvirate of scoring options that UW can depend on every possession. āItās not a goal for me to play 40 minutes anymore,ā says Plum. āI can play 32, and get out of there. Thatāll maybe change when we get to the postseason, but I can take a break and watch the young guys get in the action.ā
The added bonus of all that help has alleviated the defensive attention paid to Plum. As Neighbors explains, āAs a freshman and sophomore, we needed her to create some shots no one in the country made more than 20 percent from. With Chantel and Natalie, she gets more open shots per game than she ever did before, so weāve had to work on what exactly does she do when she is open. Does she catch-and-shoot? Does she work on pausing?ā Sheās even played off the ball and in the post to open more areas of the court for her to create from.
So while everyone around the Husky program fully stresses the ultimate end goal is getting back to the Final Four, itās hard to dismiss the profound accomplishment should Plum break Stilesā all-time scoring mark. She doesnāt often talk about what would have happened if she bypassed UW for a more established high-major program. āI do know I wouldnāt have had a green light like I do, and I wouldnāt have been able to be as creative as I have become,ā she says.
She continues, āIām very open about what I think I need to work on, and how much further I need to go. In order to grow as a player, you have to be able to recognize youāre not perfect.ā