Nixon garners respect from teammates, coaches
Morehead State women’s basketball head coach Tom Hodges plans on attending Ta’Kenya Nixon’s graduation next May to make sure she walks across the stage and gets her diploma.
“Just to make sure we don’t have to play against her again,” Hodges said.
This season Nixon averaged 16.3 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game, and Hodges said Nixon was his vote for conference most valuable player.
However, Nixon had two of her lowest scoring games against Morehead State this season, scoring 10 and nine points respectively.
“The (Ohio Valley Conference) is a guard dominant league and, in my opinion, she has the best all-around game at that position,” Hodges said. “One of the top 10 mid-major guards in the country in my eyes.”
Nixon has earned similar respect from coaches all over the Ohio Valley Conference for what she has accomplished at Eastern in three years.
“Ta’Kenya is an unbelievable all-around athlete,” said Austin Peay head coach Carrie Daniels.
Nixon had two of the biggest games of her career this season, setting and matching a career high with 30 points. The first 30-point effort came against Tennessee-Martin. The second came against Eastern Kentucky.
“Ta’Kenya is a fierce competitor who raises her level of play with the level of competition she faces,” said Tennessee-Martin coach Kevin McMillan.
McMillan’s Tennessee-Martin team couldn’t shut down Nixon in either game it played against her this season. In the first, she scored 21 points, had six steals and nine rebounds. In the second, she scored 30 points and had nine assists.
Nixon, who is rapidly jumping up the ranks in scoring in Eastern history, said it was her goal to improve defensively this season.
She did, increasing her steals per game from 1.7 to 2.7. She had 11 games where she got four steals or more this season.
Offensively, she ended the last three games of the season on a tear. In those games, Nixon scored 30, 23 and 25 points, respectively.
Nixon is up to 1,442 points in her career after having had her best year this season with 506 total points. She has catapulted herself into seventh on Eastern’s all-time scoring list.
Assistant coach Rachel Galligan holds the crown with 1,891 points. Nixon knows that, but she said it’s not one of her goals to break the record.
“That would be like a by-product,” Nixon said. “It would be a part of my legacy. It would be nice, but it’s not one of my goals.”
Nixon said she wants to do whatever makes the team better next season, trying to win an OVC conference championship.
“I don’t know if coach is going to need me to score 20 points a game next year,” Nixon said. “He may need just 10.”
To break the record, Nixon will not need anywhere close to 20 points per game; in fact, if the team plays 31 games as they did this season, Nixon will only have to average about 14.5 points per game to break the record. She’ll only have to score 450 points to break the record by one point.
In each of her first three seasons, Nixon has scored 461, 475 and 506 total points each season.
Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-7942 or admcnamee@eiu.edu.
