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Ask Seimone Augustus a pointed question, and she'll greet it with a pause.
A hesitation later, she'll blow you away with an answer akin to the way she has swooped past defenders in becoming the most decorated player in LSU women's basketball history.
"I'm mentally tougher. That's where my advantage comes from," says the 6-1 swing player of her cerebral approach. "My dad made me play against a lot of men. Men are stronger, faster and they can jump higher. So you have to think."
She led LSU (27-3) to the last two Final Fours and consecutive Southeastern Conference regular-season championships, a conference tournament championship in 2003, its first-ever victory at Tennessee this season and another No.1 seed for the NCAA tournament.
It's her smarts, she says, as much as her deceptive athleticism that earned Augustus the 2005 Wooden Award and Wade Trophy as the nation's most outstanding player. She's among the finalists for those individual awards again, averaging 23.0 points (first nationally) for the No.5-ranked team in the nation.
The missing piece: a national championship. Her last chance to complete her cycle of accomplishments begins Saturday vs. Florida Atlantic en route to the Final Four in Boston on April2 and 4.
Augustus ponders the urgency. Then, with the same calm she exhibits on the floor -- whether her team is winning or losing by 20 or she's giving a textbook upfake on a 20-footer to drive inside -- she shoots.
"I look at it as the same this year as other years. Everybody has the opportunity to win," says Augustus, the only guard ranked among the NCAA's top shooters, at 57.8% (15th nationally), even though she plays as more of a small forward in a motion offense.
"I would still be happy with my career here if I didn't win it. It's nothing to be upset about. There are a lot of other milestones I have achieved."
The school's second all-time scorer (2,596 points), Augustus has started every game (a school-record 135) during her four years as LSU has gone 117-18. But the postseason has not been so pleasant.
When the surprise Tigers advanced to the Final Four in 2004, Augustus had a stellar run before the team lost 52-50 to Tennessee. The then-sophomore averaged 24.8 points in the NCAAs while shooting more than 61% from the field -- despite going 7-for-21 in the loss to the Lady Vols.
The Tigers were No.1 most of last season and were favored to win their first championship, but they blew a 15-point lead in the first half of their NCAA semifinal against eventual champion Baylor. Augustus went 10-for-26 in that game and shot 46% for the tournament.
She's down to her last chance to win a championship, and it's expected to be more difficult.
Augustus is still paired with one of the best centers in the country in 6-6 sophomore Sylvia Fowles, yet Fowles doesn't have a strong backup. LSU also has an inexperienced point guard in sophomore Erica White, who missed the front end of a one-and-one in the waning seconds of LSU's 63-62 loss to Tennessee in the SEC tournament title game -- the second year in a row LSU has lost that game to the Lady Vols.
The Tigers' three losses have been by a total of five points.
"This team has done some things better than last year's team," says second-year coach Pokey Chatman, who lost offensive threat and All-America point guard Temeka Johnson to graduation. "The difference is we don't have the same margin of error. We don't have depth."
But they have Augustus.
Persistence pays off vs. Tennessee
Pat Summitt saw it in Chamique Holdsclaw, the leading scorer in Tennessee history with 3,025 points. Holdsclaw sparked a 10-loss team to a championship in 1996-97, one of three consecutive national titles for the Lady Vols.
The same refuse-to-lose grit that Holdsclaw exhibited came to fore with Augustus on Feb.9, when she willed the Tigers to victory against Summitt's team:
*With LSU trailing 67-66, she made a sharp cut to the basket to receive a pass from Fowles for a layup at 1:54.
*She made a key assist to Fowles for a layup with 15 seconds remaining for a 72-69 lead that became the final score.
*She blocked a three-point attempt by the Vols' Dominique Redding from the baseline with seven seconds left.
*She hawked Shanna Zolman, the Vols' best long-range shooter, and blocked her three-point attempt with two seconds remaining.
The result spelled victory for LSU and ended Tennessee's 64-game conference winning streak at Thompson-Boiling Arena. It was the Tigers' first road victory there in 17 tries en route to another SEC regular-season title.
"That's what great players do," Summitt says of Augustus, who averaged 27 points in her last 13 games. "She's taken their team to a different level.
"She's developed her stuff as a big-game player. Her composure is there. With her shooting touch, she's extended her range. She gets into her shot quicker now. She's playing her best basketball this season."
And to top it off with a national title?
"Me and other teammates were talking about it some days ago," Fowles says. "That's our goal, to send (Augustus) out with a win. If we don't accomplish that, nothing else is going to matter."
Unconventional teaching methods
It's the subtle things that make Augustus special. She excels in Chatman's motion offense, which puts a premium on screening and floor balance to free up the movers.
Augustus knows when to back cut, when to curl, when to flare. Her jump shot -- which sometimes incorporates an innate backward lean in her upper torso that makes it almost impossible to disrupt as she elevates -- is as smooth as her gait.
Chatman insists it's not the system that makes Augustus so successful, just the opposite.
"She's everyone's national player of the year last year, so she's going to garner the attention of the opponent. So here's the question I always ask," Chatman says. "Why is she always open for the 15-footer?
"Most players are better with the ball in their hands. She's by far the best basketball player I've seen -- man, woman or child -- without the ball. And she's excellent off the dribble."
Augustus says, "I try to get the best shot possible, mostly around the painted area. I don't let people dictate where I get my shot. I dictate. Mostly it's going to be inside the arc. If I can see myself getting to the paint, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make the right read or the right cut."
For that she can thank, in part, her father, for his rather unconventional method of teaching her basketball.
Duct tape or a belt, blindfolds and a glove. Seymore Augustus was teaching his daughter how to perform a different kind of magic.
In his unconventional way, he was schooling her to be a conventional, fundamentally sound basketball player as early as 5.
The belt and tape held one arm behind her back so she could learn to dribble with her left hand. The blindfold was so she would break the habit of watching the ball. The bowling glove didn't allow her to rest the ball in the palm of her hands so she could shoot properly, with her fingertips.
Her temperament comes from years of playing at recreational centers, where she was challenged mentally -- as much as physically -- by boys and men. Managing the psychological warfare was paramount.
"It's the community she was raised up in," her father says of the Eden Park section of Baton Rouge. "Those guys were physical to you. I always told her, 'Don't let your enemies know they're getting next to you. Beat them on the court and you got the last laugh.'"
Modest about her talents
His teachings are evident in his daughter's discretionary approach.
Although Augustus has made an effort to be more demonstrative, she's careful to be under control. She has shown three-point range -- she's 51.5% from behind the arc -- but has taken only 33 such shots.
For Chatman, the chance to coach a player she scouted as early as middle school has been totally rewarding -- even if a national title isn't realized.
"When you think about the elevation of women's basketball at LSU and the stage that she's played on, she's such an ambassador of the sport and respects the game so much," Chatman says. "She transcends race and gender. It's the totality of Seimone that captures your attention."
Fowles says, "She's very humble. She doesn't let her talent and her skills get to her head. She's taught me so much, just by pushing me in practice. She may not seem like she talks much, but she does talk a lot on the floor and in her body language and leading by example."
Father might have known best, but he never thought his daughter's on-court acumen would be parlayed into such reverence.
"Seimone is not a hot-head jock. Seimone is nonchalant. Nothing matters to her. She's a child trapped inside a grown folk's body," says Seymore, who was joined by his wife, Kim, and Seimone's Chihuahua, Tootsie Baby, on Senior Day on Feb.26, Seimone's last game at Maravich Assembly Center. "A lot of people may not know who she is, but when they meet her they say, 'Hey, she's cool.'
"I never knew she would turn out to be this good. But I now know for sure she's heaven-sent."
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