YPSILANTI, Mich. — If Tricia Cullop and her Toledo women’s basketball team were half as cold-blooded as people as they have been as competitors this season, they would have cut down the nets on Saturday.
In Eastern Michigan’s building.
On senior day.
During the postgame ceremony.
But, of course, they are not.
“We let the kids know how many seniors they had,” Cullop said. “We wanted to be extremely respectful.”
Besides, they didn’t need a ladder to feel like they had reached the clouds.
After the Rockets clinched the outright Mid-American Conference regular-season title with a 75-51 thumping of Eastern Michigan, and the coaches hugged and the players bounded onto the court, and their inimitable radio voice, Jim Heller, spoke for everyone when — over the din of a couple hundred delighted visiting fans — he said, “Who saw this coming?!” they let loose the celebration of the season all the same.
They just waited until they got to the locker room.
When Cullop entered last, confetti cannons fired and decibel meters shattered, the scene deep inside the arena’s concrete catacombs turning into a mosh of what the coach called “pure joy.”
“It was special,” she said.
Perfectly fitting, too.
If there is one thing we’ll remember about these indomitable Rockets (23-4, 17-1 MAC) — beyond their pedal-to-the-floor dominance in racing to their first league regular-season championship since 2013 — it is the joy with which they played, and, for that matter, the joy they brought Cullop.
“This staff, this team,” she said, “it’s been the most fun I’ve ever had coaching.”
In that way, the season was a timely blessing.
The past four years had tested Cullop, 50, like never before, both personally and professionally.
She lost her beloved parents and two biggest fans, Theodore and Jannette, and her program was at a crossroads. After knowing little but success all her life — including at Toledo, where, in her first nine seasons, she was a remarkable 108-44 in the MAC — the odds finally caught up to her. Her Rockets were 34-40 in league play the past four seasons.
With four starters back, this year figured to be better, but how much? Nobody could say.
Picked to finish eighth in the league, the Rockets didn’t have a single senior in their rotation and were filled with players who soared under the radar.
Consider: Their top scorer, Quinesha Lockett, was spotted only by chance when Toledo’s coaches were recruiting another player at an AAU tournament in Wisconsin (“Out of the corner of our eye on another court, we kept noticing Quinesha,” Cullop said of the guard from Omaha).
Their top rebounder, Rossford graduate Sammi Mikonowicz, was headed to Owens on an academic scholarship before earning an invite to walk on at UT. And their top defender, Jayda Jansen, transferred from Division II Maryville (Mo.) University.
But, sometimes, the puzzle just comes together, completely and wonderfully.
Add in guards Sophia Wiard and Khera Goss, three new posts, and the deepest bench in the MAC — the Rockets have 10 regulars — and this is one of those seasons.
They have the talent and everything that can’t be measured, too, playing hard and in lockstep, reflecting a team that’s inseparable off the floor.
“When we got on the court, it's the same type of chemistry,” Lockett said. “Just with the ball.”
“This is a group that will do anything for each other and it shows on the court,” Cullop said. “When things get tough, they don't fight among themselves. They just push harder because they don't want to let each other down.”
The result is an offense in which the ball never stops moving (Toledo’s 1.10 assist-to-turnover ratio leads the MAC) and a league-best defense that’s stingier than a Major League Baseball owner.
Saturday featured more of the same, with Lockett (16 points) pacing a long list of scorers (eight Rockets had at least six points), and the visitors holding Eastern Michigan to 31.1 percent shooting, another resounding performance in a storybook season that keeps getting sweeter.
Afterward, Cullop said she thought of her parents, including her dad, who enjoyed nothing more than visiting Toledo to watch his daughter’s games.
“He absolutely loved this,” she said, “and I know he's watching from above with a big smile on his face.”
Kind of like the smile on Cullop’s face on Saturday.
“Sometimes when you're going through adversity, you just hope there’s a silver lining at the other end of the tunnel,” she said. “For our team, for our staff, to go through everything and come out the other side with a championship, it makes it all worth it.”
First Published February 27, 2022, 2:02 a.m.
