Stevens Women's Soccer Receives 2008 NSCAA Ethics/Sportsmanship Award
January 16, 2009
From D3hoops.com by Matt Florjancic
One of the best women’s basketball players in Division III stands only 5-foot-4, but has made a huge impact both on and off the basketball court.
“I don’t think it’s about height,” said Stevens senior point guard Dani Dudek. “It’s about heart. That’s what I pride myself on.“
Dudek enters the weekend averaging 16.3 points on 51 percent shooting. She’s also tallying 8.2 rebounds, 7.6 assists, and 2.7 steals per game, with a 2-to-1 assist/turnover ratio. Stevens is 10-2, 2-1 in Empire 8 play heading into a Friday night game at Alfred.
Dudek should be a candidate for the Jostens Award, one of the biggest honors in Division III, combining basketball, academic work and community service. Among other projects, this past summer, Dudek and her sorority sisters drove on their own to Pittsburgh to volunteer at the National Transplant Olympics. She has been selfless in her volunteer efforts and dynamic in her basketball endeavors.
“She’s our Jason Kidd, our Magic Johnson,” said Ducks head coach Jon Hochberg. He also noted that he’d begun calling her “Psycho D.” Hochberg said that reference came from watching how the look in her eyes was similar to that of the star of her favorite Division I team, Tyler Hansbrough at North Carolina, with respect to on-court intensity.
Hochberg noticed recently that Dudek was closing in on 600 career assists. He checked the 2009 NCAA Record Book and found that once Dudek notches 20 more assists, she’ll become the fourth female player in NCAA history with 1,000-plus points, 700-plus rebounds, and 600-plus assists. The other three are Division I legends Nancy Lieberman, Dawn Staley, and more recently, Georgia’s Kelly Miller. If Dudek can get to 700 assists, the list shortens to just her and Lieberman. Dudek already shares the NCAA Division III record for triple-doubles in a season (three, her junior year) and career (four).
Dudek had 17 points, 12 rebounds, five assists, and five steals in a win against Utica earlier this week, but Hochberg pointed out that kind of performance has become routine.
“I actually don’t pay any attention to my stats, at all,” Dudek said. “I actually had no clue the night that I scored my 1,000th point that I was close to 1,000. It would be an unbelievable accomplishment to be paired with those three players, but my teammates are the ones who helped me reach that goal. If it happens, that’s great, but we have other things to look forward to, and I’m not satisfied until I achieve them.”
The purpose this season is to get to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in the 13-year history of the program. Stevens has gone 20-9, 21-7 and 25-6 the past three seasons, but has consistently been one of the last teams eliminated for a Pool C bid. Last season, Stevens was 15-1 in league play, but lost in the E8 finals to Utica, and was not invited to the NCAA postseason. The Ducks took an ECAC bid and won the Metro NY-NJ title.
Dudek has evolved from being a pass-first guard, who averaged eight points as a freshman, into one who can both pass and score. The post-up has been a recent addition to her game and one that has been a major offensive asset.
“She’s really unselfish, but she knows how to take over a game,” Hochberg said. “The tougher the challenge the more she stepped up. The eight rebounds per game, that‘s a tribute to her toughness.”
Dudek has been fortunate to be fully healthy throughout her collegiate career, perhaps payback for what she had to endure to get to this point. While in fifth grade, Dudek was diagnosed with post-strep juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, a rare illness that left her with significant pain in her joints. Gary Walco, the director of the David Center for Children’s Pain and Palliative Care at Hackensack Medical Center, taught Dudek self-hypnosis techniques to help her block out the pain, which had been prevalent even after the illness left her system.
“It’s not like the hypnosis you’d see on a stage, where the people are out of it,” Dudek said. “It’s a state of mind that you have to be in. I can be hypnotized now and no one would know it. It’s like a light switch. Mine was on. He taught me how to turn the switch off.”
Dudek also suffered a torn ACL as a high school junior. During rehab, she broke three knee braces and an insurance company wouldn’t pay for a fourth brace, since they’d never heard of an athlete having such difficulty. That inspired Dudek to become a biomedical engineering major at Stevens. She intends to work with prosthetics, but also to develop a design for a lighter, more efficient knee brace.
“I think there’s a better way,” Dudek said, “an easier design with the same purpose.”
As far as hobbies go, one of Dudek’s is watching basketball, particularly NBA point guards in action to pick up certain skills for her game. Last season, that meant focusing on Suns guard Steve Nash, and noticing how he always maintained his dribble. This year, she’s focused more on the do-everything game of Hornets guard Chris Paul. The thing she’s learned most from them is how much energy they give every moment they’re on the court.
“This is my last year, and I never want to regret the time I’m on the floor,” Dudek said. We set goals before the season, and have a lot of team goals left to achieve. In the past, we’ve used youth as an excuse. This year, we’re kind of young, but we’re not going to use that as an excuse.”