Grades Before Games WSU Basketball Player Has Superstar Stature In Classroom

Katie Nyseth’s numbers aren’t all that impressive.

She averages a few points, a few assists and a couple of rebounds per game for the Washington State University women’s basketball team. And, truth be told, it’s pretty easy to glance at those numbers and think “ho hum.” Then you trip across one stat line and it’s “holy cow.”

Nyseth was named the outstanding junior of 2000. Not on the basketball team. For the entire college. Wait a minute, make that two colleges. She was the top student in Washington State’s College of Agriculture and in Biological System Engineering. It’s the second year in a row she took home the Biological Systems Engineering award.

Now there are some stats few will top.

And here’s a line maybe 1 in a thousand will utter:

“I feel like I have an obligation to the athletic department to do well in my academics because they are paying for it.”

Anybody else feel that breath of fresh air breeze into WSU athletics? Wait, it gets better.

“I’m a Washington State University student first, who just happens to have a strong commitment to basketball and athletics,” Nyseth said.

All right. It’s safe to say she is an original. Maybe her classmates don’t believe it - “They think all the athletes get all the easy stuff. They even think my teachers favor me and stuff.” - but it’s true.

This senior point guard with a higher GPA than her career points-per-game average turned down an academic scholarship to Oregon State to play basketball for WSU, has a book bag bigger than Urkel’s, is taking 17 hours and even has an environmental hydrology class at Idaho that she attends three times a week.

“Right now it seems easy,” she said.

Yeah, how about a quick show of hands of those who even knew there was such a thing as environmental hydrology? Anyone? Thought so.

Now, you would think all that would be enough. Not quite. You see, Nyseth’s toughest work this year may come on the hardwoods. For the second straight year, she has been elected captain. For the second straight year, it is up to her to lead the team.

Last year, she was up to the challenge. But everyone on the WSU team was clearly overmatched. The Cougars had a new coach, had their best scorer quit at midseason, had losing streaks of 11 and eight games and finished with their worst record ever - 4-24 overall, 1-17 in the Pac-10.

“The main thing for us is going to be consistency as in consistent intensity,” said Nyseth. “Last year we had a lot of games where the first half was intense and then the second half, maybe we were intense, but the other team picked it up and we didn’t match that.

“If you have mental intensity you’re going to pick it up and make the adjustments that you need,” she added.

It’s obvious Nyseth has the mental intensity part down. It’s those around her who may need to pick it up a notch.

“It’s important for me and the other two captains to make sure people are ready to go in the second half, but there is only so much you can do to make sure they are ready,” Nyseth said. “You have to trust them on the court.”

This season there might be more reason to trust. Coach Jenny Przekwas appears to have put some of the pieces in place for, if not a successful team, one that is more successful than it was last season. Eight players return for the Cougars. They are joined by four junior college transfers and four freshmen.

“The returning players are already showing so much more confidence in what they’re doing on the court,” she said. “They seem to understand the expectations.”

The expectations of the newcomers will be to contribute minutes as needed. Some, like the JC transfers, might make it into the rotation. But others will be relied upon to improve the competition in practice.

Now as for improving the product on the floor, Nyseth believes she has that covered.

“My personal goal was to have the most successful season yet and that was going to be measured by number of wins,” she said. “So we looked, and that would mean we would have to win 13 games this year.

“In talking to my teammates, we decided to revise that to 15 wins,” Nyseth said. “If we had 15 wins, we would be over .500. That is our goal. It’s realistic.”