During her Hall of Fame playing career, Cynthia Cooper-Dyke always seemed to make the toughest moves look easy - and she's doing the same thing as a coach.
In her first season at North Carolina-Wilmington, she has the Seahawks on the verge of setting a school record for victories. They've won 20 for just the third time in program history, and she's got them believing they can earn the school's first NCAA tournament berth - if not this year, then soon.
''It's been a great experience to play for a Hall of Famer,'' senior Brittany Blackwell said. ''Just being dominant in the league, it's just another state of mind and feeling. You've kind of got swag with you, and I think we're gaining the respect of our league for once, which has not been the case.''
And it hasn't taken the Seahawks long to begin reflecting their new coach's intense personality, with Cooper-Dyke's influence obvious during the team's 21-6 start. After Thursday night's win at Towson, their third in a row, they're one victory away from tying the mark of 22 set in 1984 and matched in 2003.
''The one thing that I wanted to give this team was my passion for the game of women's basketball,'' Cooper-Dyke said. ''I'm very serious about women's basketball and the growth of women's basketball. I love women's basketball. So I play it with passion, I coach it with passion, I teach it with passion. And they understand now what they need to bring to every single practice, every single game.''
Because of that, Cooper-Dyke is developing a reputation as a program-builder.
She spent five seasons at Prairie View A&M - which had lost at least 20 games 12 times in the 15 years before her arrival - and won or shared three straight Southwestern Athletic Conference regular-season titles while taking the Panthers to NCAA tournaments in 2007 and '09.
''I felt like, being in the SWAC, no matter what we did, no matter who we played in the (nonconference schedule), we were always going to get that 16th seed and always be seeded against a No. 1,'' she said. ''Because our RPI is so good (in the Colonial Athletic Association), I really felt like being in the CAA would give us an opportunity to legitimately fight for a title.''
So Cooper-Dyke left Prairie View after last season to take over at UNC Wilmington for Ann Hancock, whose contract wasn't renewed. That came roughly a month after Cooper-Dyke was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame after a storied playing career for Southern California, the U.S. national team and the WNBA's Houston Comets.
She won two NCAA tournament titles at USC in the 1980s, a gold medal at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, and two WNBA MVP awards and the league's first four championships with the Comets before retiring in 2003.
Cooper-Dyke's UNC Wilmington team practices much like she played - uptempo, with lots of motion, instruction and attention to detail.
Instead of barking from the sideline, the Hall of Famer routinely jumps into drills with her players - sometimes hustling downcourt to uncork behind-the-back passes, or spinning the ball on her finger before handing it to her point guard. During a recent practice, she took an outlet pass, dribbled across midcourt and effortlessly fired a perfect no-look pass to the wing.
At one point as she sprinted upcourt during a drill, the 47-year-old cracked, ''I ain't as quick as I used to be.''
Maybe not, but she is still just as intense.
''I just love being around her,'' Blackwell said. ''She brings a lot of intensity and enthusiasm. We get things done, but we also have fun. We get better and we have fun at the same time. It's not like a stiff practice. It's like, come in, be focused and get stuff done, and get out.''
But of course, the workouts aren't always fun and games. The emphasis, as always, is on executing the system Cooper-Dyke said she has tweaked to match her players' strengths.
''We try to match her intensity, and that's what makes us who we are,'' senior Kristen Hanzer said.
But the credit for the Seahawks' success doesn't belong to the coach, Cooper-Dyke said.
''I think it's the players - they've bought into our system,'' she said. ''I've played with a lot of intensity. I coach with a lot of intensity. I won't accept from the players any less than their best, and maybe in the past they haven't been giving 100 percent. But they've learned, right from the beginning, to give 100 percent, and they do it day in and day out. It's really the players that have come in and made me look like a good coach.''
