North Carolina State University Athletics
McDowell: Model of consistency this season
1/28/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Jan. 28, 2005
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH -- Billie McDowell doesn't mind slashing through the lane. She doesn't mind getting out on the fast break. She doesn't mind getting her feet set on defense.
But you know what she really wants to do? A runway strut.
In fact, the junior guard from Lumberton gets plenty of grief from her teammates for her primping and practicing for what she hopes is a post-basketball career in modeling. Freshman Khadijah Whittington does a pretty good impersonation of McDowell impersonating a model.
"She definitely does her model walk every day," said sophomore teammate Ashley Key. "There is not a day that goes by that she is not strutting."
Her teammates may find some humor in that, especially with all the matching shoes and coordinated sweaters that go with her warm-up suits. But they will let McDowell spend all the time she wants in front of a mirror as long as she keeps up her current scoring pace.
McDowell, a former North Carolina High School Player of the Year who led Lumberton to the 4A state championship in 2001, was a modest scorer in her first two years at NC State. She averaged a modest 3.8 points in her first 53 games, making one career start.
But she's on a roll right now, scoring double figures in five of the Wolfpack's last seven games. She's hit for at least 20 in three of those games, with a career high of 27 against Wake Forest. A starter every game this year, McDowell has raised her season scoring average to 11.3 points, trailing only junior center Tiffany Stansbury.
So heading into Sunday's matchup with top-ranked Duke, McDowell is one of the hottest and most consistent players on the team.
"She can primp all she wants if keeps scoring like that," Key said. "I give her all thumbs up, toes up, everything. She is playing with a lot of confidence."
Yet McDowell almost wasn't in the lineup at all earlier this year. Last June, she was scheduled to have shoulder surgery to repair torn cartilage, which hampered her at the end of the season. The surgery, which was booked for June 1, would have put her out of commission for about four months, cutting into her individual skills workout, her conditioning and a good chunk of preseason practice.
The day before the surgery, Coach Kay Yow met with McDowell and her parents, Billy and Vera, to discuss the impending operation. It's a family that trusts Coach Yow's knowledge of the game, since two of Billie's cousins, Colandra McDowell and Alton McDowell, both played for the Wolfpack.
"Coach Yow asked me if I really, really, really needed it or if I could wait," McDowell said. "We all came to the conclusion that I would just work on my strength of my shoulder that I might not have to have the surgery, and that's what I decided to do."
She still has some pain now in her shoulder, particularly after rugged games like the one the Wolfpack played last week at Maryland. But McDowell has played - and produced - through her pain. Yow couldn't be happier with the results.
"I think it is just a matter of her concentration and her confidence," Yow said. "She feels much more comfortable. I think she was a little nervous when she got here. I think she has settled down, she feels in her element. She knows what she is doing."
McDowell also knows what she eventually wants to do - follow in the footsteps of WNBA star Lisa Leslie, as a player and a model. McDowell is an unabashed clothes horse, who might spend as much time shopping in the off-season as she does working on her jumpshot. While she has done some research on the Internet about getting into modeling, she's waiting until after her Wolfpack career is over to really pursue it.
"It is a difficult business," she said. "I have some friends who do it and my brother did some through a class he had in college. I know it is a competitive, rough business.
"But it is not any more difficult than college basketball."
And right now, McDowell is making that look easy.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
