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Former Lady Vol Anosike returns to hardwood as HC at Anderson County
Former University of Tennessee Lady Vol Nicky Anosike was named head coach of the Anderson County girls basketball team in April. From left to right: Travis Freeman, Jeni Irwin, Nicky Anosike, Ben Downs, Gary Terry and Jason Chambers, all members of the Anderson County administration. (Courtesy: @ACMav4Life/Twitter)

Former Lady Vol Anosike returns to hardwood as HC at Anderson County

CLINTON, Tenn. (BVM) — Fans of the Pat Summit-led University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers will recognize the newest coach for the Anderson County High School Lady Mavericks basketball team. Anderson County hired former Lady Vols center Nicky Anosike as the new head coach for the girls basketball team in April. Anosike will become the eighth head coach in program history.

“When her name came across that phone call to me and it said ‘Would you be interested in Nicky Anosike?’ I was delighted just to get to meet her and say hello to her,” Anderson County athletic director and University of Tennessee alumnus Gary Terry said. “The excitement in our school when her name was mentioned, it brought the level up. Our kids in our school when they heard her name in the mix for the job, you could tell it increased the level of school spirit in our school.”

During her career at Tennessee, Anosike helped lead the Lady Vols to three SEC championships and back-to-back national championships in 2007 and 2008, where she was named to the All-Final Four teams both seasons. Overall, Anosike finished her playing career at the university with a 131-15 record, averaging 7.5 points and 6.3 rebounds from 2004-08.

Off the court, Anosike also excelled in the classroom at the University of Tennessee. Anosike was named to the SEC Academic Honor Roll all four years and as a senior she was a member of the SEC Community Service Team and was a finalist for the SEC’s Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete Award before being named the 2008 NCAA Woman of the Year.

Following her collegiate success, Anosike was drafted by the Minnesota Lynx in the second round of the 2008 WNBA Draft. In her first season, Anosike was named to the AllWNBA rookie team and was named a WNBA All-Star the following year. Over her five-year WNBA career, Anosike played three seasons with the Lynx followed by a season each with the Washington Mystics and the Los Angeles Sparks before retiring in 2012. Anosike ended her career averaging 8.9 points, 6.6 rebounds and 1.9 blocks.

It was during her playing career that Anosike was first given the idea of coaching full time. Already helping to manage the team on the court, Anosike thought the transition would be a natural one.

“When I was a player, my coaches would always say, ‘Nicky, you’re a pretty good player, but you’d be a better coach’ so it always came naturally to me,” Anosike said. “When I was a player, I almost played like a coach. I was like a coach on the floor.”

Anosike joins Anderson County after most recently serving as a graduate assistant coach for the Lady Vols during the 2018-19 season. That’s not the only coaching experience for Anosike, who’s previously served as head coach for the boys and girls basketball teams at Azalea Middle School and as an assistant coach at Gibbs High School, all in the St. Petersburg, Fla. area. It was during her time as coach for the middle school team when Anosike felt coaching at a higher level in the sport would be a better fit for her coaching style.

“I was coaching middle school, really enjoyed it, but my middle school team I guess felt I was a little too tough on them,” Anosike said with a laugh. “So I’m like you know what, I  am really passionate about this, really love doing it, but maybe if I go to a higher level, those players would understand more about having a tough coach.”

Anosike will be looking to use her tough coaching style to help fix up a program that has struggled over the past few years. The new coach will be facing an uphill battle with the Lady Mavs adopting a team that won just a single game last season, finishing with a 1-26 record. However, through her time as a graduate assistant at Tennessee, one of the most difficult seasons in Lady Vols history, Anosike learned how to coach through adversity.

“That was an interesting experience,” Anosike said. “That was I think one of the worst seasons in Lady Vols history which was really hard for me because I was part of some of the best Lady Vols teams as a player. So that kind of taught me the other side of basketball that I hadn’t experienced which was extreme, extreme, extreme adversity. I learned that I needed to understand (losing) was a part of it and needing to bounce back from it.”

Anosike knows that the team will not improve overnight, but she wants to be able to build the program from the ground up and give the team teaching moments, no matter the outcome.

“Even if you’re losing, you still have to continually take from those losses and improve,” Anosike said. “The minute you stop analyzing the mistakes that you’ve made and using that as the baseline for where you need to improve is when you get comfortable with losing. I don’t think we’re going to win every game next season at Anderson County, but we’re going to learn from every game, win or lose.”

Technically, Anosike will be an extension of the late Pat Summitt’s coaching tree having played under her during her time at Tennessee. Summitt was arguably one of the best women’s basketball coaches of all-time, coaching the Lady Vols for 38 years. With her long and illustrious career, Summitt’s coaching tree is an impressive one, including women’s basketball hall of fame coaches Holly Warlick and Sylvia Hatchell as well as current Louisiana State University women’s basketball coach Nikki Fargas. Anosike hopes to continue in her former coach’s footsteps by implementing a similar coaching style to the one Summit once implemented in her team.

“(Summitt) shaped me as not only a basketball player, but she shaped me as a woman and I think that’s something you’ll find if you talked to anyone who played for Pat,” Anosike said. “She definitely influenced my coaching style and my coaching philosophy. One thing she believed in is practicing really hard and conditioning. … I want to make sure my team is conditioned. I want us to practice really hard. If we practice hard, games will be easy. I want to take that with me to Anderson County.”

Nicky will not be the lone Anosike taking the hardwood in Tennessee next season.

Nicky’s brother, E.J. Anosike, announced earlier in April that he would join the Volunteers as a graduate transfer from Sacred Heart. Last season for the Pioneers, E.J. averaged 15.7 points, 11.6 rebounds and 1.7 assists.

The news was well received by the rest of the Anosike family as they had two new things to celebrate — the announcement came the same day as the Anderson County decision for Nicky.

“They were celebrating the victory of E.J. coming back to be on the Vols basketball team while simultaneously celebrating the victory of me getting hired at Anderson County,” Nicky said. “So now it’s kind of like we have to come to Knoxville. We have to go to E.J.’s game, but we also have to go watch Nicky coach. So it was kind of like icing on the cake.”

To give the cake a cherry on top for Nicky, E.J. surprised her by choosing to wear her No. 55 for the Vols next season. The decision was one that came completely out of left field for Nicky.

“I didn’t think he would wear my number because he hates the No. 55,” Nicky said. “He hates it with a passion, has always hated it. When he told me he was wearing 55 I thought he was lying. But, then I saw the jersey and I was like wait you’re being honest? You’re really going to wear 55? So I’m honored. I want him to have so much success wearing that number at UT. I want him to have even more success than I did. It’s going to make it so much more special.”

With the delay caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, Nicky wants to be sure that she gets the ball rolling as quickly as possible as soon as she can. The new head coach has already begun calling some players to get an understanding of what they want out of their coach, their season and their time with the Lady Mavericks. Anosike knows time is of the essence.

“Every day I chip away at my list of players I need to call,” Anosike said. “I want to get to know my players and I want them to get to know me. I want to know what their goals are individually and as a team and I want to make sure we are all hitting those goals. … I just want to get in there and get the ball rolling, literally, we have no time to waste.”

Close to where it all began, Anosike will look to again make a name for herself on the basketball court. This time, it won’t be as Nicky Anosike the player, but Nicky Anosike the coach. Anderson County can’t be more excited for the new hire.

“Our school is excited, our kids are excited and our community is ecstatic about it,” Terry said. “I can’t tell you how many phone calls I’ve gotten telling me how good of a job I did.”

Anosike is excited about being hired too.

“I’m excited about the challenge,” Anosike said. “I’m excited about getting to meet the players and I am excited about orange being in the stands and all of our Anderson County fans and support system being in the stands and watching what we put on the floor.”