STARKVILLE — Chad Harrison knows Victoria Vivians can make basketball look easy.
With the strength to drain 3-pointers from 25-30 feet and a scorer’s mentality, Vivians blistered nets throughout the state en route to becoming Mississippi’s all-time leading scorer with 5,745 points.
Harrison coached Vivians for five seasons at Scott Central High School in Forest and watched her mature into a two-time first team All-American and the nation’s leading scorer (46.2 points per game) as a senior.
Even though many things on the court came easily to Vivians, Harrison said there were times he had to challenge his best player.
“Sometimes getting her mad might be the right thing to do,” Harrison said. “A lot of nights most of the time I made her mad and she was going to prove me wrong.”
As the assistant superintendent of the Scott County School District, Harrison now watches from the stands and from home and stays in touch with Vivians to provide support and guidance. In the last two years, Harrison has paid close attention to Vivians’ maturation. He marvels at what Vivians and the Mississippi State women’s basketball team have accomplished under coach Vic Schaefer. He also has confidence Vivians and the Bulldogs will do what they have to do to climb even higher.
For Vivians, Harrison said reaching those heights is a matter of urgency.
“She has to realize, ‘Hey, I am a junior now. I only have two years left and one of the things I wanted to do was to be an All-American and I am not an All-American yet,’ ” Harrison said. “She has to realize I have to do this better and this better and this better. The sense of urgency has to take her over.”
Harrison believes Schaefer is the right coach to push Vivians and No. 10 MSU to those goals. That journey will start at 6:30 tonight when MSU takes on Villanova in the Maine Tipoff Tournament in Orono, Maine. WLZA-FM 96.1 will broadcast the game live.
The winner of tonight’s game will play the winner of the game between Purdue and Maine at 6 p.m. Saturday. The losers will play at 3:30 p.m.
Vivians has paced MSU in scoring (14.9 points per game, 17.1 ppg.) in her first two seasons. She has led the team despite shooting 36.8 and 38.2 percent from the field. Last season, she attempted 610 field goals, including 256 3-pointers (42 percent of her shots), which was double the number of shots of all the other Bulldogs.
With five starters and nine letterwinners returning from last season’s program-record 28-win team, MSU figures to have greater depth, balance, and experience. The addition of junior transfer Roshunda Johnson also should give the Bulldogs another scorer on the perimeter.
But MSU also needs Vivians to improve on the offensive end. In the last three years, former Louisville standout Shoni Schimmel and former Penn State standout Maggie Lucas are the only players who have shot less than 40 percent from the field — 39.7 percent and 39.1 percent, respectively — and earned a spot on The Associated Press’ All-America teams. Schimmel was a second-team pick in 2013-14 after averaging 17.4 ppg. (574 shots attempted), while Lucas was a third-team pick in the same season (21 ppg., 529 shots).
“My game is not where I want it to be,” Vivians said. “My main focus (in the offseason) was ballhandling because I have to do more for the team. I can’t do one-dimensional.”
Vivians said you name it and she did it in the offseason at Mize Pavilion. She said she worked with coaches and by herself to become a player who feels more comfortable in every aspect on offense. She said she also watched the videos coaches sent to her iPad so she could critique herself and find ways to improve.
“Last year, I took a big step,” Vivians said. “Freshman year, I was a shooter. Last year, I tried to drive more and shoot it. This year, I am trying to create more, not only shooting and driving, but getting open looks for my teammates and being the person who creates things.”
Schaefer said Vivians reminds him so much of Danielle Adams, who was a forward/center on the 2010-11 Texas A&M women’s basketball team that won the national title. He said Vivians and Adams share a love for the game that is infectious. He also said Vivians is someone who brings it every day to practice and is trying to get better. He said that attitude is helping Vivians become a bigger vocal leader on the team. He said Vivians’ ability to be a bigger leader will be a key factor this season.
That being said, Schaefer also wants Vivians to challenge herself and keep growing as a player.
“Her game not where I want it to be, either,” Schaefer said. “I think she understands the importance of having a variety to her game. If she is going to be a great player, you have to be a great player on both ends of the floor. It is not just about getting points. Great players play both ends of the floor. What I have been trying to talk to her about is if you go 2-for-15 then you shut the other team’s best player down or get double digit rebounds or get us five or six assists. That is the understanding you have to have if you’re going to be a great player.”
Vivians showed signs of that development last season with 11 games when she shot 50 percent or better in a game and 12 when she shot 45 percent or better. As a freshman, Vivians had six games when she shot 50 percent or better and eight games when she shot 45 percent or better.
Last season, first-team AP All-Americans Breanna Stewart (Connecticut), A’ja Wilson (South Carolina), Moriah Jefferson (Connecticut), Kelsey Mitchell (Ohio State), and Rachel Banham (Minnesota) all shot better than 45 percent from the field. Mitchell’s 45.2-percent mark was the lowest of the group.
Schaefer said Vivians understands scoring is a small piece to becoming a great player. He said he has been encouraging Vivians to work on her own and to develop other parts of her game to become a better all-around player. He said work ethic isn’t an issue with Vivians, so he is confident her maturation will continue.
“I think she is comfortable with (her role) and knows it is an expectation I have of her,” Schaefer said. “I think she understands the role she is going to have to play if we’re going to win.”
Harrison agrees with Schaefer that there are parts of Vivians’ game that need to improve. He doesn’t say that to be critical but to help Vivians realize how good she can be. He said her shooting percentage has to improve and that it isn’t OK that she is missing some of the shots she is missing. He isn’t referring to the long-distance shots because Vivians is so strong that those are makable shots for her. But he said he would like to see her enhance her mid-range game and take more shots under control as opposed to ones where she goes off one foot and floats into the lane.
“She has to put more time in it on her own,” Harrison said.
In high school, Vivians could get away with the kind of shots Harrison mentioned. Many of them helped her finish her career second in National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) history with 5,172 points. She would have been first if the NFHS recognized her eighth-grade point total. As an eighth-grader, Vivians scored 573 points (17.9 ppg.) and tied her step-sister Kelcia Bufkin for the team lead in scoring. That Scott Central team also had double-digit scorer Tyisha Amos (14.6 ppg.).
Harrison believes Vivians can make any adjustment Schaefer wants her to because she is a coachable player from a great family. He also knows Schaefer will keep pushing Vivians to get the best out of her. Harrison said he will continue to talk to Vivians to help impress upon her the special opportunity she and MSU appears to have in a year without a dominant team like Connecticut ready to claim another national title.
“Are we ready for that sense of urgency to take place yet? I don’t know,” Harrison said. “That is the million dollar question. In high school basketball, she made some incredible things happen. … I just hope she understands the sense of urgency where she is now. I will have some conversations with her through the year and I will try to talk to her about all of this stuff. I love her and I love her family. They are a great family that supported me. I pushed her hard in high school. She was pushed, pushed, pushed. I truly believe in all my heart that there were some situations that I pushed her and in those competitive moments she answered that bell. I think Victoria is somebody used to be pushed.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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