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.”