Dominique Kelley has played a big role in Nebraska's two NCAA tournament wins despite not being the Cornhuskers' first or second option on offense.
Big 12 player of the year Kelsey Griffin attracts the fanfare for her prolific scoring. Yvonne Turner has a well-earned reputation for her 3-point shooting. Cory Montgomery is the inside-outside threat. Lindsey Moore is the dependable point guard.
Kelley? She just does what needs to be done, when it needs to be done.
``With our balance, 'Neek' is someone who gets overshadowed by some other players,'' coach Connie Yori said Friday. ``She's a very capable scorer, and there are certain times we need her to be aggressive. Our focal point is Kelsey, but that means everybody else's defensive focal point is Kelsey, so we need other kids to step up. She's been more than willing to do that.''
Kelley goes into Sunday's regional semifinal game against fourth-seeded Kentucky (27-7) coming off a career-high 22-point game in an 83-70 win over UCLA.
Kelley made 6 of 7 shots and 9 of 12 free throws in possibly her best game of the season. It came at the right time for a top-seeded Nebraska team (32-1) that struggled early against the Bruins. She hit a big 3 to give Nebraska a lead late in the first half, and then scored eight straight points after UCLA had pulled within 10 points with nine minutes left.
``The things I can bring to the team are my energy and emotion,'' Kelley said. ``I just kind of got going the other day. I was real excited, and I want to play hard for people like Kelsey, Cory and 'Vonnie' who put in a lot of time to this program.''
Kelley scored 11 points in the Huskers' 83-44 rout of Northern Iowa in the first round. The Huskers let UNI stay close for 15 minutes before they wore down the Panthers.
Kelley said she's not overly concerned about the slow starts the past two games.
``We're a No. 1 seed and we've had this target on our back all season,'' she said. ``We've been saying all year that everybody is giving us their best shot. For the most part our team has done a good job of staying poised, sticking together and not separating. It's nothing we haven't seen since the beginning of Big 12 play.''
But the competition gets tougher and the stakes now get higher.
``Henceforth, we're not going to be able to have an eight- or 10-minute period of the game where we're not playing on all cylinders,'' Yori said.
Yori is counting on Kelley to keep doing what she's doing to keep the Huskers going.
Kelley is a Lincoln native, but Yori never took for granted that she would sign with the hometown Huskers three years ago. Kelley was looked at by many Division I schools, and she was close to committing to Colorado. Yori said she never worked harder to recruit a player.
Yori loves Kelley's all-around game. She's third on the team in scoring, rebounding, steals and assists. She's a 78 percent free-throw shooter. She doesn't shoot the 3-pointer often, but she's good at it, hitting 42 percent (21 of 50).
``She does a lot of the little things right,'' Yori said. ``She's aggressive, she gets to the foul line, she reads her teammates, she finds her teammates, she's a very good ball-handler. She fits perfectly into our system on both ends.''
