Guess it never occurred to the guy that Hardeman might be a ballplayer.
Maybe Hardeman looks like she just came from a campus sorority — "I love to shop! I would do it for a living,” she proclaims in the OSU press guide — but beware her on the court. Hardeman will scratch out your eyeballs.
Cowgirl coach Kurt Budke calls Hardeman "mean.” She's OSU's Lindsay Lohan, a damsel who dishes out distress for this team full of hard-nosed lasses.
The Cowgirls will need all the growls and elbows they can muster today against LSU in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16. The sixth-ranked Tigers, seeking their fifth straight Final Four trip, are ultra-talented, ultra-experienced and ultra-confident.
But the Cowgirls counter with toughness. Every OSU starter seems to possess a streetball attitude, a whatever-it-takes mentality, and none more evident than the girl from the suburbs.
"She's a tough kid,” said teammate Danielle Green. "When you look at her, she's from Norman, pretty uppity background. But she's tough. She's not giving nothing to nobody.”
Hardeman admits it. The same press guide page that extols her shopping fetish also says the reality show she would have the best chance of winning is Survivor.
"I'm mean on the court,” Hardeman admitted. "You have to have that toughness. You can't just let people walk all over you. You gotta be that girl that nobody likes.”
Hardeman battles. She yaps, sometimes at her own teammates. She grits her teeth and crashes to the floor and turns the game into hardball. No soft stuff for her.
Hardeman is more than scrapper. She's a shooter, too, OSU's resident 3-point marksman, with 60 made this season on 36.6 percent shooting. And she's OSU's best defender, thanks to being savvy and willing in Budke's myriad zones.
That's a powerful combination for a player. Someone who can do the dirty work with attitude and consistently nail a 3-point shot.
Hmm. Know of any other team nearby that could have used a player like that? Hardeman not only grew up down the road from the University of Oklahoma, her older sister, Sunny, played on Sherri Coale's first Sweet 16 team. And the just-completed OU season went down the tubes primarily because it needed more outside shooting and more toughness.
Yet Coale barely recruited Hardeman.
"She did in the beginning,” Hardeman said. "When it came crunch time, my family never heard from her. I assumed she didn't want me.”
Fine by Hardeman. She didn't grow up an OU fan, even though both parents are grads and Sunny was a Sooner. Sometimes mean girls make their own way.
"I would never wear red,” Hardeman said. She wore maroon once, in Spokane, Wash., for OU's 2001 Sweet 16. Now she's in her own Sweet 16, seeking bragging rights on Sunny (being a sister to a mean girl has got to be a drag), and her parents have converted.
"Both have orange all over their closet,” Hardeman said. "You can't catch my mom in a red shirt.”
Hardeman signed with OSU when Julie Goodenough was coach. But before Hardeman hit campus, Budke had replaced Goodenough, and the standards for basketball players had been raised.
"It was kind of scary,” Hardeman said. "You don't know if they're going to keep you or release you.”
But every team — Sweet 16 or winless in conference, as Hardeman's freshman year went — can use toughness and a quick, accurate shooter.
Hardeman averaged 22.9 minutes a game as a rookie, and now she plays 30.8 minutes a game.
"She's smart,” Budke said. "She's not the ultra-quick athlete. She's a position defender, always in the right spot. She's the key to all the defenses we play ... corner to corner to top of the key. That's why I can't take her out, even on nights she might be 1-of-10.”
Hardeman and fellow starter Shaunte' Smith are the scarred veterans, the lone Cowgirls left from Budke's first squad. Survive 0-16 in the Big 12, with only four games decided by single digits, and no wonder Lindsay Lohan turns tough.
"Probably one of the hardest years of my life,” Hardeman said. "Makes now so much sweeter. Made me the player I am today.”
That player is mean. Good and mean.
