ALBANY, N.Y. — Scout the opponent? Boyer. Work with MiLaysia on her free throws? Boyer. Along for every step of the way, and just as responsible as nearly anyone else for South Carolina’s tremendous success over the past 16 years?
Boyer.
“I think we were at Auburn. We were going over the scout, and we play around a lot. I think (Fulwiley) had shot the ball and one of our teammates had blocked it,” forward Sania Feagin said. “Boyer was like, ‘Listen! We need to stop doing that! We’re trying to work on something!’
“Whatever you need, you go to Boyer. She’s easy to talk to, and she just knows everything.”
Sixteen seasons with Dawn Staley at South Carolina. Twenty-two seasons with Staley in college (six at Temple). South Carolina Associate Head Coach Lisa Boyer coached Staley for a season with the Philadelphia Rage of the defunct American Basketball League and when each moved on, it wasn’t long before Staley, as a first-time college head coach, was needling her former big whistle about helping out.
“She asked me to come, and I had just gotten a job. I was like, ‘Hell no. I’m not doing that.’ I didn’t have any desire to go back to college basketball,” Boyer said. “She was at a point where she didn’t need me for coaching, she needed me for all the other stuff — the recruiting, the organization, keeping the stuff going while she was away, because she was still playing (in the WNBA while being Temple’s head coach). She was gone all summer. So she wore me down.”
You hear all that, and it isn’t surprising to hear the rest.
“Boyer and I are an old couple. Seriously. We’ve definitely taken years off our lives. I’ve taken some off hers and she’s taken some off mine,” Staley says. “But at the end of the day, there is not a coach that works harder. Not one coach that works harder that I know.”
“Dawn doesn’t want a lot of yes-people around. I know her really well, and she knows me,” Boyer said. “She depends on me for certain things and I hope to come through as much as possible.”
Even clearing 10 minutes to talk is tough. Boyer — never “Lisa,” always “Boyer” — has to cut up the film of the next opponent, prepare her ever-meticulous keys to the game, and Ash needs some help after a rotten game against Indiana.
“She helped me by watching previous games with me,” forward Ashlyn Watkins says. “She says, ‘Explain to me what you could have done better. Explain to me what you should have done. Explain to me why this worked.’ And it all sinks in to make me better.”
Home turf
Boyer wasn’t going to wax poetic this week about being on her home turf. She’s from Ogdensburg, N.Y., right on the Canadian border about four hours northwest from Albany; she played at Ithaca College, three hours west.
Should the Gamecocks beat Oregon State on Sunday and advance to the Final Four, she’ll be back in Cleveland, where she received the biggest professional push of her career and made her the answer to a trivia question.
All of it is on the periphery. There is always more work to do, another drill to perfect, another aspect of the game to learn and conquer.
“When I want to not think about basketball, she’s always thinking about basketball, things that I’m not particularly thinking about,” Staley said. “I don’t think — well, I know — that I would not have been as successful without her expertise, her tirelessness, her … I mean, she thinks about every single thing.”
John Lucas saw that, in the early days of his tenure as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was struck by the coaching prowess of the Cavs’ WNBA “sister” team, the Cleveland Rockers.
A Rockers assistant was commanding the huddle, and every time she pulled a player aside, that player attentively listened and then did her best to do whatever she had just been told.
“I just thought, her presence, her loyalty, her knowledge of the game was impressive,” Lucas said. “Trust overcomes gender. I felt like I could really trust Lisa.”
The Rockers’ head coach, Dan Hughes, was also going to Cavs practices to watch Lucas work, and when Boyer asked if she could come too, Hughes asked Lucas and Lucas said sure.
But that wasn’t enough. Lucas wanted Boyer to help him.
Then he immediately went to work helping her. The Cavs’ transition defense was not good. Boyer was telling him how it could be repaired.
Lucas said, “Don’t tell me, tell them.”
“I put her in front of the team several times. I wanted to see her, see the reaction of the guys and the other staff,” Lucas said. “She commanded the room.”
She didn’t introduce herself, she didn’t offer a quick rehash of her career, she just went right into it. “Guys, our transition can be so much better. Here’s how.”
“And she had the film work to support it,” Lucas said. “She did all of our transition work and prep.”
A pioneer
That’s the trivia question. “Who was the first female NBA assistant coach?”
Semantics and details get in the way, because many would answer Becky Hammon, who was hired by San Antonio in 2014. Hammon was the first female full-time paid assistant coach, but Boyer beat her onto an NBA staff by 13 years.
Boyer was considered a volunteer assistant coach for the 2001 Cavaliers, because her salary was being paid by the WNBA’s Rockers. Since the NBA at the time had a rule about only three assistant coaches on the bench during games, not four, Boyer sat behind the team during games, and only home games (she did not travel).
She didn’t even get a mention in the team media guide that year. But she was the pioneer.
“It is what it is. The opportunity he gave me was priceless,” Boyer dismisses. “The bigger thing was I got to be friends with John.”
When Staley was finally convinced to start coaching (while still playing), she immediately wanted Boyer as an assistant. Boyer said no. But Staley chipped and chipped until she said OK.
“The deal when I came was, ‘We’re going to try for a national championship, right?,’” Boyer said, making it clear that neither she nor Staley were interested in just becoming a good team. “And that was always the case, because (as a player) Dawn went to three Final Fours and never won one, so that was always sticking in her craw.”
Temple was a success but each knew they needed more. When South Carolina beckoned, each knew it was the right move to make, although it would take time to win.
“It was a build, and it can be tough. You look back, there were 500 people at a game, and that was a lot,” Boyer said. “But I know I absolutely had her back.”
That commitment has helped Staley’s program become one of the best in the country, one that stands a win away from its fourth straight Final Four. There was a lot to work on after the Gamecocks narrowly avoided giving away a Sweet 16 contest to Indiana and then to prepare for Oregon State’s bounty of monstrous forwards.
Boyer was quickly on the case.
“It’s really satisfying and comforting to know that Boyer is right by my side. If anybody says or does anything to me, watch out,” Staley said. “I don’t have to say a word. Boyer will.
“She’s my rider. She’s my rider all the way through.”