Matadors’ Catalyst Isn’t Run of the Mills

NORTHRIDGE — A few weeks after he was hired as the Cal State Northridge women’s basketball coach, Michael Abraham went to a summer league game to get a look at some players he would inherit.

But it was Tammie Mills, a 5-foot-3 fly of a player--too small and too quick for opponents to swat away--that caught his eye.

“I’m watching this little kid out there with Lisa Leslie and Nikki McCrimmon and Tricia Stafford and Cindy Brown, she was playing with all the big names,” Abraham said. “And she is out there running the show. She was distributing the ball, playing defense, hitting the jump shot. But the thing I liked most about her was her combativeness. She was not going to back down from kids who were bigger and stronger.

“I found out later she was, like, a seventh-degree brown belt [in karate].”

Mills would have been a black belt had she not turned to basketball at age 16. Still, her martial-arts background is evident in her play as Northridge’s point guard.

“Because I’ve been in karate, I won’t back down or give up,” said Mills, a junior. “I’ve got that fight in me.”

Mills began participating in karate at age five, but her father and coach, Willie, remembers her crying at tournaments before the competition even began. She might have quit had it not been for Willie Mills, a black belt who has been teaching karate for 28 years.

“I said, ‘This is what you wanted to do and you’re not backing out of it,’ ” he said. “She would either have to take a licking or go ahead and complete the match.”

Tammie got the message, and after that first difficult year of competition, she started filling her family’s Bakersfield house with trophies.

“I’ve lost maybe two times by a point system,” Tammie said. “The rest of the times I’ve gotten disqualified for something like hitting too hard to the face.”

Mills also has a tendency to get in the face of her basketball opponents, despite her size.

Against Oregon State this season, Mills drove--no, climbed--to the basket against the Beavers’ 6-5 Tina Lelas.

“Tammie literally put her foot in [Lelas’] stomach and her other about chest high and she just ran right up her,” Abraham said. “She made the layup and drew the foul. She was going too quick for Lelas to get out of the way.”

Abraham has been so impressed by Mills that he calls her a candidate for next year’s Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award, which goes to the nation’s top player who is 5-6 or shorter.

Mills leads the Matadors with a 8.4-point average, but Abraham said her productivity has been hampered by stress fractures in both shins, the result of a lifetime of walking and running on her toes.

“It gets in the way sometimes,” Mills said of the constant pain. “But I don’t think it’s stopping me. I’m not going to let it stop me.”

Mills transferred to Northridge from Harbor College, where as a freshman she played in every game of the Seahawks’ 33-6 season in 1994-95, averaging six points, 3.5 assists and three steals.

Eager to play Division I basketball, Mills was a walk-on at Northridge last season and averaged 4.8 points and 2.2 assists, starting 19 of 26 games. But her contributions are not measurable by statistics, Abraham said.

“Tammie is one of the fiercest, most competitive kids I’ve coached,” he said. “She immediately established herself as a leader and a scrapper and a kid who had the intensity you have to bring to Division I basketball.”

But, Abraham said, Mills’ intensity sometimes needs to be re-directed, particularly when things aren’t going well--a frequent occurrence with the Matadors, who are 8-36 in the past two seasons.

“I admit that sometimes I get frustrated,” Mills said. “But still I’ve got to try to stay positive, stay strong.

“My dad taught me in karate, ‘Don’t quit, just battle to the end.’ And that does transfer over to basketball.”