She was a child. He was a legend.
She was an assistant coach in her first faculty job. He was the best coach in faculty basketball historical past.
She was 22. He was 83.
When she was ushered into his Encino apartment for the primary time, she was so nervous, she couldn’t even pronounce her title.
“Who is this?” requested John Picket, pointing to the place she was standing behind a number of different visiting coaches.
Cori Shut oversees a workforce follow. Earlier than she took over as UCLA coach, Shut discovered beneficial classes from Bruins teaching legend John Picket.
“I’m Co-o-o-ri,” responded Cori Shut, drawing out the straightforward introduction to 10 syllables.
“How do you spell that?” mentioned Picket.
She spelled it, and he smiled, and invited her into his den to examine a tiny stool adorned with the identical title.
“Cori, that’s my great-granddaughter’s name,” he mentioned. “You’re the first person I’ve ever met who also spells it like that.”
A sigh stuffed the room. The jitters had been gone. The connection had been made.
From that second, John Picket handled Cori Shut like, nicely, a great-granddaughter.
Each different Tuesday for a number of years, they might meet. Even after Shut moved throughout the nation, they continued to fulfill. Proper up till Picket died in 2010, they had been in constant contact.
Cori Shut watches over her gamers throughout a current UCLA follow session.
Picket would educate. Shut would hear. Picket would host her for breakfast on the VIP’s Cafe. Shut would shock him at his apartment along with his favourite lemon custard ice cream from Baskin-Robbins.
For 17 years, they talked basketball with out ever actually speaking basketball. For 17 years, Picket hoisted Shut on a climb by her personal private pyramid of success, first as a UCLA assistant, then UC Santa Barbara assistant, then a Florida State assistant.
A yr after Picket’s loss of life, Shut turned head coach at UCLA. Picket by no means noticed it, however he at all times knew it, and in some ways he helped create it.
Cori Shut prays within the locker room by herself earlier than the sport towards Nebraska at Pauley Pavilion on Dec. 29.
Cori Shut, left, with legendary UCLA males’s basketball coach John Picket.
And so it was that after she not too long ago turned the winningest girls’s coach in UCLA historical past, Cori Shut visited John Picket’s statue and provided a prayer of thanks.
“It’s ridiculous how lucky I am to be able to walk in that legacy,” she mentioned. “And now to have the humble opportunity to pay those things forward, as imperfectly as I do it? What a privilege to even be able to try.”
Shut is certainly paying Picket’s knowledge ahead, and at a livid tempo in what may very well be the best of her 14 seasons as Bruins boss.
She not too long ago earned her 297th victory to surpass the nice Billie Moore atop the UCLA girls’s win record. A number of weeks earlier than that, the Bruins turned a respectable nationwide championship contender with a 77-62 victory over defending champion South Carolina, breaking the Gamecocks’ 43-game win streak with the Bruin program’s first victory towards a top-ranked workforce after 20 consecutive losses.
UCLA girls’s basketball gamers congratulate coach Cori Shut after her three hundredth profession win towards Nebraska on Dec. 29.
The win over South Carolina, mixed with a 14-0 begin, has vaulted UCLA to the highest spot within the nationwide polls for the primary time in program historical past. The Bruins immediately have turn into one of many favorites to win their second nationwide title and first because the then-Ann Meyers led them to the AIAW nationwide crown in 1978.
Shut has led UCLA into the postseason for 9 consecutive seasons, not counting the COVID-canceled postseason of 2020. She’s reached the Elite Eight as soon as, reached the Candy 16 5 instances and gained the ladies’s NIT as soon as.
However she’s by no means had a workforce as highly effective and deep as this one. It’s all very heady stuff … and stuff that Shut utterly ignores.
She not solely speaks Coach’s language, however lives his phrases.
Cori Shut coaches at a women basketball clinic on the UCLA campus earlier than the Bruins’ recreation towards Nebraska on Dec. 29.
In a 30-minute dialog a day after her 297th win, she didn’t focus on wins and losses. Not as soon as did she point out the potential for main a workforce into the Ultimate 4 for the primary time. Not as soon as did she point out their nationwide No. 1 rating.
She talked about instructing. She talked about development. She talked about molding younger athletes into robust adults. For half-hour it was like speaking to Picket himself.
“Coach Wooden talked about how the least of his concerns were a championship trophy and a banner,” she mentioned. “Those were the byproducts of being a great teacher of life and lessons about things that will live on long after the ball goes flat.”
She is actually the UCLA coach who’s carrying the Picket torch. Simply take a look at how her workforce performs. Picket would have liked it.
Cori Shut talks to gamers on the bench through the recreation towards Nebraska at Pauley Pavilion on Dec. 29.
Led by 6-foot-7 Lauren Betts, eight of her gamers common at the least 20 minutes a recreation, comprising what is actually the nation’s deepest beginning lineup. 5 gamers common at the least two assists and 5 gamers rating in double figures. They’re the epitome of teamwork and unselfishness.
“I’m not at UCLA just to be an individual star, I want to be on a winning team, a championship team,” mentioned Kiki Rice, the Bruins’ flashy guard who would personal the headlines at nearly every other faculty. “Having that mindset means you’re giving up personal recognition for team recognition, but at the end of the day, that’s always more important.”
The gamers not solely share with one another, however with the followers. Earlier than every recreation, they throw T-shirts into the group. After every recreation, they wade into the group in a mosh pit of high-fives and hugs. Then later, two gamers stroll as much as the concourse and signal autographs.
Cori Shut holds the door open on the UCLA pupil actions middle on her method out after teaching a women basketball clinic on campus.
“We want to be an uncommon transformational program that teaches and equips young women for life beyond UCLA,” mentioned Shut.
Sound like Picket? His household agrees.
“My grandfather would have been extremely happy with Cori’s success,” mentioned Greg Picket, the legend’s grandson. “It sounds like he was her mentor for many years. Just listening to her, there is no question about that.”
Bonding with Shut helped unlock a little-known awakening within the legend. It seems, girls’s faculty basketball was Picket’s favourite sport.
“My grandfather really liked women’s basketball, he felt the women’s game was closer to his style than the way the men played today,” mentioned Greg.
Cori Shut instructs her gamers throughout a timeout towards Nebraska at Pauley Pavilion.
Greg mentioned his grandfather would have been pleased with Shut’s consideration to extra vital issues than closing scores.
“My grandfather was always concerned about how his players would turn out afterward,” mentioned Greg. “She’s the same with her players. Those are the types of things where you can see my grandfather’s influence.”
Shut delighted in honing that affect.
For the three years she was an assistant at UCLA, she would spend each different Tuesday with Picket. They might go to in his modest cluttered apartment and she or he would hear as he reiterated the golden oldies reminiscent of, “Be quick but don’t hurry” and “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
“You’ve heard of ‘Tuesdays With Morrie,’ I had my Tuesdays with Coach Wooden,” she recollects.
When she turned an assistant at her alma mater in Santa Barbara, she would search for any excuse — recruiting journey! — to drive down and hold the connection alive. After 10 years at Santa Barbara she spent seven years at Florida State, from the place she would at all times plan journeys to her dad and mom’ Santa Barbara house round visits with Coach.
Cori Shut, left, waves to her mother Patti Shut, proper, earlier than a recreation at Pauley Pavilion.
“I tried to maneuver it, whatever I was doing, whatever off days I had, I tried to make quality time with him a priority, totally selfish on my part,” she mentioned. “I would literally schedule my flights into LAX around going to see him. And amazingly, he always made time for me.”
Typically she would carry fellow Florida State coaches together with her. Their response was at all times the identical. They might stroll into the apartment assured that they might sustain a dialog with Coach, solely to be awestruck into silence.
”I didn’t blame them — he was so deeply sensible you knew you had been within the presence of greatness as a human being and also you didn’t wish to miss a minute of what he needed to say,” she mentioned.
4 days after she started her head-coaching profession at UCLA in 2011, there was an incident that satisfied her to utterly mannequin her program in her mentor’s giant footsteps.
She was visited in her workplace by John Vallely on behalf of a most cancers fundraiser. Vallely launched into the methods Picket had helped him endure a number of private trials, inspired her to contribute to the charity, after which abruptly left.
Shut had no concept Vallely was a former Bruin star guard or two-time nationwide champion or had spent six years within the NBA.
Cori Shut shares amusing with Kiki Rice, second from left, throughout follow.
“I thought, who is this guy, and then I looked on the computer and found out all about his basketball background, none of which he had mentioned,” Shut mentioned. “His basketball career clearly paled in comparison to the man he had become and I thought, that’s it! How many John Vallely stories can we create? Yes we want to raise banners, but may they always pale in comparison to the character of the women and who they become.”
Her gamers see this philosophy the second they stroll into her workplace and see a pyramid of success on the wall close to a framed autographed photograph of Shut and Picket.
“The themes that Coach Wooden preached, Coach Cori carries them over to us,” mentioned Rice.
UCLA’s Angela Dugalic, middle, sits at her locker earlier than a recreation towards Nebraska on Dec. 29.
Amazingly, there are UCLA recruits who’ve by no means heard of Picket. Not surprisingly, by the point their recruiting journey ends, they know all about him.
“On every recruiting visit I’ve been part of, she tells the story of John Wooden, and by the time they end their visit, they know who he is,” mentioned Rice.
Charisma Osborne is a former Shut disciple who began all however two video games throughout her 5 years at UCLA, which means she’s heard all these Picket tales. She even took a category on Picket the place Shut was a part of a video presentation.
“It was weird to see your coach in a school setting,” recalled Osborne with amusing. “But, yeah, she talks about him a lot.”
Osborne quickly discovered that with Shut, it was about greater than phrases.
Cori Shut, proper, checks in with Elina Aarnisalo throughout a recreation towards Nebraska at Pauley Pavilion.
“She really cares about us more than just basketball players,” Osborne mentioned. “When you have somebody leading you not only on the court but off the court, you really want to play hard for her.”
A number of years in the past Shut took her Picket connection to the following stage when she invited the late Rafer Johnson into her locker room to observe a Picket preseason custom of instructing the workforce placed on their footwear and socks.
“As he put on his shoes and socks he kept weaving in stories about his past, he kept teaching,” mentioned Shut. “When he got to the end, he turned to our players and said it didn’t matter if you were from another country or of a different religion or race, it didn’t matter where you came from, because we all started by putting our shoes and socks on the exact same way.”
Shut emphasizes this lesson each season, marveling in its good simplicity.
Coach Cori Shut waits for gamers Zania Socka-Nguemen, left, and Timea Gardiner, proper, to make their strategy to the follow court docket.
“Rafer ended by saying it doesn’t matter what role you play or how many stars are next to your name as a recruit, we can all come together as a team because we all start by putting our shoes and socks on the same way,” she mentioned.
Curiously sufficient for somebody so entrenched intimately, Shut says she has no concept who her Bruins defeated for her first teaching victory in 2011 (trace: It was McNeese State).
“I just remember the faces,” she mentioned. “I just remember the smiles.”
It figures that she additionally doesn’t bear in mind a lot about her record-breaking victory towards Lengthy Seashore State.
Cori Shut curls her hair and watches a girls’s basketball recreation on her laptop computer within the coaches’ locker room earlier than a recreation towards Nebraska at Pauley Pavilion on Dec. 29.
“I just remember the texts from my former players,” she mentioned. “Those will live with me longer than a final score.”
She remains to be in contact with the Picket household, texting son Jim on his birthday and recurrently checking in with — you guessed it — that great-granddaughter whose an identical title sparked an eternal bond.
She is Cori Andersen, a instructor from Murrieta, and the 2 namesakes usually textual content and infrequently go to.
Shut has organized tickets for Andersen’s daughter’s basketball workforce. Andersen has made ornamental pillows for Shut’s workplace.
They reside far aside, however stay shut within the shared recollections of a person that Andersen calls, “Poppa.”
“Poppa’s influence on her is very evident,” mentioned Andersen. “She’s leading the way he would lead.”
Cori Shut, middle, stands for the nationwide anthem together with her gamers and assistants earlier than going through Nebraska at Pauley Pavilion on Dec. 29.
Put that quote on a banner. Engrave it on a trophy. In a time when faculty athletics has veered removed from the teachings of John Picket, his pupil cherishes the thought that he’s wanting down on her with a smile.
”I don’t need our gamers on this NIL fast repair instant gratification society to overlook out on how significant it’s and the way content material you’re feeling when you already know you’ve accomplished one thing larger than your self and also you’ve invested in any person else with no expectation of something in return,” Shut mentioned. “That’s what a meaningful life looks like. Coach Wooden taught me that.”
Taught her nicely.
