Updated info: Severe Weather Postpones Thursday's WBB Game at Vanderbilt
Friday, February 25, 2011 | Women's Basketball
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – As she watched TV on the other side of the country earlier this month, Sacramento (Calif.) High girls basketball coach Michele Massari easily recognized the player wearing No. 23 for the Gators.
And it had nothing to do with the way No. 23 wore her socks – two pairs on each foot, one long pair and one short, the Nike symbol perfectly aligned on both – or the bright orange mouthpiece she takes out regularly and places in her sock.
The Brittany Shine that Massari coached was the same Brittany Shine giving Vanderbilt all sorts of trouble Feb. 6 at the O'Connell Center. Shine took over for a stretch late in the game, scoring 10 of her 19 points in the second half of Florida's 103-97 loss in double-overtime.
Massari saw the same Shine take over in last season's Northern California prep playoffs when Sacramento High faced Oakland's powerful Bishop O'Dowd High. Shine scored 27 points, grabbed eight rebounds and shot the Dragons into the state title game with game-winning three-pointer.
“She's dominating offensively,'' Massari said Tuesday, a few hours before Sacramento High's first playoff game in three years without Shine. “She just has the ability to take over. When I was watching her against Vanderbilt … I saw that look in her eye.''
What most people see when they first encounter Shine is the smile she flashes after nearly before and after every sentence.
As Massari prepared her remarks for this season's Senior Day, she looked back at what she wrote about last year's team, led by Shine and Pittsburgh freshman Kyra Dunn. When Massari came across her comments about Shine, a 5-foot-10 freshman guard for the Gators, all she could do was smile.
“The opening line was, 'A smile that brightens the room,' '' Massari said. “It's still the same smile whether she is getting yelled at or whether she is playing well.''
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In her first season with the Gators, Shine has had moments to grin about and moments to forget like most freshmen. She scored a career-high 28 points against Alabama State in the Gator Holiday Classic in December, and has had games where she hardly played.
Overall, Shine has appeared in 25 of 28 games, averaging 5.9 points, 1.2 rebounds and 1.2 assists. Those numbers are far from the 16.7 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 3.7 steals she averaged as a senior in high school. Shine was often at her best against the best, going 3-0 last year against two other top prospects from the Sacramento area – Stanford freshman Sara James and Oregon's Ariel Thomas.
She arrived on campus telling coaches that her goal was to win SEC Freshman of the Year.
“Her offensive confidence is tremendous,'' Florida coach Amanda Butler said. “Every time she has the ball in her hands, she is thinking, 'I'm going to score.' Most freshmen hope they don't screw up. That is something that is really from within her.''
While Shine has yet to stand out on a consistent basis, she is an important piece to the puzzle Butler is trying to put together. Shine can shoot outside, has a good mid-range jumper, can handle the ball and is working to improve defensively.
Still, the intangibles are perhaps more important to her overall potential.
“Her resilience is what has impressed me,'' Butler said. “As positive as a lot of her experience has been here, there has certainly been some challenging moments and games where she hasn't played as many minutes. She has experience a little bit of failure, too.
“She has bounced right back. She doesn't hang her head and pout. She is just ready for the next rep.''
Shine is over the reservations she initially had about moving so far from home for college. She has adjusted to her new teammates and to school, and her next challenge is elevating her performance on the court.
When she started driving in high school, Shine would often leave her house early for school to start shooting jumpers at 6 a.m. She has shown the same type of work ethic at UF with hopes of the same production to follow.
“She was put in a position where she had to learn very quickly,'' teammate Azania Stewart said. “She still has a lot to learn, but I think this experience has helped her a lot. We definitely have a lot of faith in her. She is a great shooter and energy-wise, she is a spark of the bench.''
Through all the ups and downs of her freshman season, Shine remains focused on one thing: getting better.
“This is an opportunity you can't let pass you by,'' Shine said. “My vision as a basketball player totally matches [Coach Butler's]. I always feel like I could be doing more. I want Coach Butler to be able to call on me and say, 'I need you to do this.' And I want to be able to just do it and get it done.
“The best is yet to come.''
Much of her drive comes from her mother, the former Shelia Haney, and former Olympian and WNBA standout Ruthie Bolton. Growing up, Shine often attended Bolton's game with the Sacramento Monarchs. The two developed a friendship to where Shine now looks at Bolton as a godmother figure.
She also saw the work Bolton put into her WNBA career, which shaped Shine's drive to excel.
“She kind of took me under her wing,'' Shine said. “I've been around [greatness] a lot. I want to be there so bad. It makes me want to work even harder at basketball.''
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Florida assistant coach David Lowery knows Shine's smile very well. Lowery recruited Shine heavily, making the long trip from Gainesville to Sacramento often to meet with Shine and her family. Shine's mother Shelia was a prep star at Sacramento's Grant High, winning conference player of the year in 1981.
Shelia later coached Shine from the time her daughter was 4 – the first team she played on at the YMCA featured her cousins and current Rice freshman Trevan Abraham – until high school. She was also a tough sell for Lowery when trying to lure Shine to Florida. Finally, in September of 2009 when Brittany and Shelia made an official visit to UF, Lowery knew.
Shine was going to be a Gator.
“I remember taking her back to the airport the weekend of her finishing her official visit,'' Lowery said. “We're sitting in the car and I'm talking to Shelia. I see [Brittany] back there and all I see are tears running down her eyes.
“She had made a decision and it was going to be hard. She knew what she wanted to do.''
The decision to move across country for college was a difficult one, but Lowery promised Shine's mother she would be in good hands as a person and player. He offered some proof recently.
A few days after Shine's performance against Vanderbilt, Lowery picked up about 100 copies of the Independent Florida Alligator, the UF student newspaper, and mailed them to Shelia.
A headline on the sports page yelled” “The Look That Shines.''
“I wrote a note to her mom: 'I told you it was going to happen,' ” Lowery said. “She is just a really good kid. She works hard; she never complains about anything, always wants to get into the gym.
“She wants to be great.''
To no one's surprise, Shine was smiling in the photo that ran with the story.
