When shots go up, Nike McClure sends them the other way

Tom Kelly hasn’t forgotten Nike McClure.

Now head coach at top-ranked W.F. West High School, Kelly was at Centralia in 2014. The Tigers were a scrappy bunch with a corps of talented outside shooters.

“We’re playing W.F. West. We swing the ball side-to-side for a shot from the deep corner. When the ball went up, Nike had one foot in the lane,” Kelly said. “She closed out and blocked the shot with her elbow.”

Four years later, McClure is still at it, moving into the starting lineup at Washington State University because of an uncanny ability to block shots.

The Tenino resident, who transferred to W.F. West for her final two years of high school, set a Pac-12 record for blocked shots in a game last February, swatting away 12 in a win over Colorado.

Her 68 blocks during 2016-17 are a WSU single-season record, while her career total of 148 going into Friday night’s game at Arizona is just 10 behind record-holder Carly Noyes, a 6-foot-5 post who graduated in 2013.

More recently, McClure, a 6-3 redshirt junior, added six blocks to a 16-point, 16-rebound double-double as the Cougars beat rival Washington in overtime, 78-75.

WSU assistant coach Rod Jensen is the staff’s defensive guru. He’s worked with McClure the past three years.

“She’s blessed with a great first step that allows her to get places in a hurry,” Jensen said. “She’s doing a better job of keeping her nose in the air, understanding where the play is going to be made.”

Pac-12 coaches notice. Though she’s scoring just 5.5 points per game, McClure is on the radar when opponents prepare for the Cougars.

“She’s a force defensively,” said Southern California head coach Mark Trakh, whose team rallied in the fourth quarter to squeak past WSU, 73-72, in Pullman over the weekend. “She has impeccable timing, giving her the ability to influence a game with her shot-blocking.”

McClure works to develop an awareness of her opponents.

“When I watch film, I study how people take shots, where they release the ball,” she said. “If they like to scoop it from down low, I try to block the crap out of it.”

Knowing McClure is behind them as a de facto goalkeeper allows Cougar defenders to exert more pressure on the perimeter.

“She does a really good job of communicating to her teammates,” Jensen said. “She also makes some great plays transitioning from offense to defense, running down people on the fast break.”

Back home in the South Sound, McClure is a legend — an athlete defined by memorable moments as much as by statistics, though she did average a 12-point, 11-rebound double-double on her way to The Olympian’s All-Area player of the year honor in 2013-14.

One local coach recalls McClure silencing a crowd with how high she jumped on a meaningless play, going up to rebound a free throw that swished.

Kelly remembers McClure, playing in a JV game after the WIAA denied her varsity eligibility when she transferred from Tenino to W.F. West, trying to dunk on a fast break. She missed, but the rim cracked on its hinge. One of his Centralia players turned to Kelly.

“That’s just wrong, Coach,” she said, awe in her voice.

McClure took up basketball in sixth grade as a favor to her grandfather, who had long encouraged her to play. She’d spent her elementary school years focused on track, natural since her mom, Juqita, competed in the sport for UNLV.

Nike didn’t give up track. She reached the 2A state meet in four events as a senior, winning the shot put by a wide margin with a throw of 43-10 1/4, finishing third in the 200-meter dash behind Tumwater star Brooke Feldmeier (now at Oregon) and participating in two relays.

But, by the time she first enrolled in high school, at Tenino, basketball was the priority.

“My coach at Tenino, Wanda Blanksma, inspired me. So did my teammate Janelle Young. I still wear number 21, like she did in high school,” McClure said.

McClure enrolled at W.F. West for her junior year, believing she would be immediately eligible to play varsity. The WIAA turned down her appeal, leading to the sight of one of the area’s most talented athletes relegated to JV.

“Honestly, it was fun,” she remembers. “It was laid back. I took on a leadership role. I saw the game from the bench for the first time, since I’d get taken out when we had big leads. I learned patience.”

The wait to don a varsity uniform proved worthwhile. The Bearcats rolled to the 2A state tournament title her senior year, winning all four games in Yakima by double figures.

“That was an ah-ha moment. It made me wish I’d won my appeal so we maybe could have won two championships,” she said. “It was my most cherished memory from high school.”

Arizona State, Purdue and Princeton showed interest in McClure, but she committed to WSU before her junior year began, knowing only that the environment seemed right.

“I didn’t know anything, my parents knew nothing. We barely knew about the Pac-12. We knew what Division I was, that was about it,” she recalled. “But I loved the team at WSU, I loved the Pullman area. Being from Tenino, anything farmy was going to look good.”

McClure’s first year at WSU was discouraging. She suffered a torn knee cartilage in her first practice. When she was cleared from that injury, she fell for a fake in a campus rec center pickup game and tore her ACL.

“It was depressing,” she said. “I went to counselors. I didn’t do as well as I could academically my first two semesters. It felt really good when I was finally able to play the next year, but I wasn’t 100 percent.”

Last season, when she played in all 36 games and turned into a feared shot-blocker, was different.

McClure, whose long range career ambitions include either television broadcasting or coaching, wants to play professionally overseas after college, admitting the WNBA is a longshot because of her lack of scoring.

“She’s getting better offensively all the time,” said Jensen, once the men’s head coach at Boise State. “She started basketball much later than most players who get to this level. If her offense catches up to her defense, she’ll be able to play somewhere.”

This story was originally published January 29, 2018 at 2:52 PM with the headline "When shots go up, Nike McClure sends them the other way."