Maggie Lucas had a summer reading assignment.
“Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence,” a book written by sports psychologist Gary Mack and David Casstevens, who penned Charles Barkley’s biography.
OK, so she’s not as outspoken as Barkley, but even Lucas can call a spade a spade, summing up her game just the same as coach Coquese Washington and teammate Alex Bentley.
Lucas is a perfectionist on the basketball court to the point where Bentley will see Lucas in the gym and say, “whoa, you need a rest.”
“That’s something I always thought I had control over that I can separate myself from other players with,” said Lucas, who also neatly lines up her boxed shoes in her closet. “You don’t have control of your speed. You don’t have control over your height. I felt like I can’t control that and I just worked as hard as I can.”
Problem? Hardly.
“She just really focuses, she has a high work ethic and she’s extremely competitive,” Washington said Wednesday. “And when you put those three things together and put her around other very talented players like we have on this team, then you can see somebody can have a great career.”
Lucas is third in the Big Ten in scoring at 19.2 points per game, which also ranks in the top 25 nationally. So much of that success is predicated on her desire to be as close to perfect as possible, but Lucas doesn’t beat herself up over missed shots. In fact, she does the opposite by seemingly shrugging off each miss and moving on to the next shot.
The sophomore’s play has helped make the Lady Lions (11-3, 1-1 Big Ten) one of the favorites to win the Big Ten this year despite a conference-opening loss to Nebraska. State returns to action at 2 Saturday afternoon at the Bryce Jordan Center against Michigan State.
Lucas’s game is fine-tuned down to footwork, slot and release point that if something is awry she’ll know during warm-ups and discuss it with assistant coach Fred Chmiel. Or her father will correct it. He helped teach her the game growing up and stood under a hoop rebounding who-knows-how-many shots for his daughter.
The mental tests came from AAU coach Brian Creech, who taught Lucas how to work off a screen to create space for her lethal jump shot.
“We set down screens,” she said. “You gotta read it, and you’d run it over again until you read it right.”
She added: “I just feel like I spent a lot on myself. When I put a lot of time in the gym, things should feel a certain way.”
Such character traits could create a volatile teammate, one who demands the ball be passed in a certain spot to help trigger a quick release or even just fed in critical junctures of a game.
Lucas is not that teammate. But it doesn’t stop her point from calling it her responsibility to learn and play to her teammates’ inherent styles, whatever they are. So leave it to Bentley to call Lucas’s obsessive work habits detrimental or not.
“On the court I can count on that kid,” Bentley said. “Since I’ve been playing I know who on my team has heart and who really doesn’t. And Maggie, she has heart for the game, and that’s what makes her great.”
Since a 1-for-11 showing in a second round defeat at home to DePaul in last season’s NCAA tournament, Lucas and the Lady Lions have been itching for this season to start, let alone sink into conference play and head toward March.
She read the book Washington assigned cover to cover, helping her move on from plays and keep good vibes.
‘Being an optimistic teammate, optimistic player,’ Lucas said she got out of the reading. ‘Almost having a trigger to move on to the next play and move forward in the game.’
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