Feb. 23, 2010
By John Denton
UCFAthletics.com
Orlando, Fla. (UCFAthletics.com) - Chelsie Wiley had always been taught that shooters have short memories and live in the moment. So when the in-game announcement came last week that UCF's standout shooting guard scored her 1,000th point, she never once thought about soaking in the magnitude of the moment.
She helped her teammates get a defensive stop and then 34 seconds later boosted her career total to 1,002 career points with a nifty one-handed runner in the lane. It's a singular focus that helped the junior guard overcome an early-season slump and evolve into UCF's leading scorer down the stretch of this season.
"I wasn't paying attention (to the public-address announcer), but then I heard (about the 1,000 points) and I just told myself, 'You need to play defense' and 'You need to make sure we keep this lead going into halftime,'" Wiley remembered. "It was a pretty awesome accomplishment, but actually I didn't know that I was that close. But most of all, I was just focused on helping us get a win."
UCF has gotten more wins of late, winning four of the past six games to improve to 8-14 overall and 5-8 in Conference USA play. Slowly, the Knights' momentum has built as the season has progressed, mirroring a similar late-season closing kick last season in which UCF won the C-USA postseason tourney.
UCF closes the regular season with three consecutive road games, starting Thursday in Dallas against SMU. Games at Tulsa and Southern Miss are ahead before UCF begins defense of its C-USA crown from 2009.
Again, Wiley's business-like mentality will tell you that the Knights actually aren't defending anything.
"Our mindset has to be that we're pursuing a championship instead of defending one," she said. "To say you are defending it means you have arrogance. We're focused on doing the little things to get us back in the same position where we were last year."
UCF's early-season struggles and late turnaround coincide - not coincidentally - with Wiley's roller coaster season. She averaged just 8.8 points through the first nine games while struggling mightily with her shooting stroke. But she never lost confidence and has rebounded to score in double figures in 10 of the past 13 games.
Her finest game of the season came at UTEP when she made 10 of 16 shots and seven of 10 3-pointers for 29 points. That sterling performance came during a stretch where she scored in double figures in seven games in a row.
"My coach has always told me that great shooters have short memories and you have to think that the next one is going in," said Wiley, who ranks third all-time in school history in 3-pointers with 123. "You just have to look at stuff in the past, move on and build on today. As a team we have a quote that says, 'Minute by minute,' and that's how I've tried to approach things myself."
She made sure to get up plenty of extra shots during her rough shooting stretch early in the season. But what helped her more than anything was that teammates kept getting her the ball and demanding that she not shy away from open looks. And head coach Joi Williams reaffirmed that confidence by continuing to draw up play after play for Wiley in timeouts.
"Chelsie can miss five shots in a row and we're going to go to here on that sixth one. She's playing with a lot of confidence right now and she knows we all believe in her," Williams said. "I know early on she wasn't making her shots, but good shooters keep shooting and we encouraged her to do that. We believed in her and we also talked to her about getting her points in different ways. And I think everybody saw (against Houston) that she had some drives, got to the free throw line and showed some great versatility. She's a very important player for us."
John Denton's Knights Insider appears on UCFathletics.com several times a week. E-mail John at jdenton@ucfathletics.edu.