Statesman Q&A: Former Texas star Nneka Enemkpali on coaching at USC, facing her old team

When Texas plays USC at American Airlines Center in Dallas on Sunday, UT fans will see a familiar face on the Trojans’ bench.

Nneka Enemkpali is in her second season as an assistant coach at USC and is the recruiting coordinator for the Trojans, who are 9-1 this year. Enemkpali, 30, has also worked on the staffs at UC Santa Barbara (2018-20) and UNLV (2020-21). She was a video coordinator at Gonzaga during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons.

Before Enemkpali got into coaching on the West Coast, she played plenty of basketball in the Austin area. An All-Central Texas honoree at Pflugerville High, she appeared in 95 games at Texas from 2011 to 2015. Her 899 career rebounds are 10th-most in school history, and only Stacy Stephens grabbed more offensive rebounds than Enemkpali's 367. She is one of 47 members of UT's 1,000-point club.

The Statesman caught up with Enemkpali last week to talk about the start of her coaching career and facing her old team:

What are your thoughts about playing your old school Sunday?

Yeah, it's funny. I was walking into the gym, and one of my post players looked at me and she was like, "Oh look at the baby Trojan heading home." I'm like, "What do you mean?" She goes, "Well, technically you're only in year two as a USC Trojan, and you're going back to play your school. So you're basically a baby Trojan going to go face your alma mater. This should be interesting, Coach." So it is interesting. Obviously, I have a deep-rooted love for my university, and now being on the opposing bench as them and coaching against them, it's going to be a different feeling, but it's the game. It's the game. I'm excited for the matchup, I'm excited for my players to have the opportunity to see me with my people, playing against the team that I played for, and kind of get the sense of pride and love that I have for them, but also still coaching the program that I'm with now.

Are you going to have a lot of family, friends and ex-teammates in Dallas this weekend?

I think some people are going to show up. I know my high school coach is coming, some of my best friends, and I'm sure some former college players will show up as well. It'll be a nice little mix of my Texas peeps.

Now is coach Walling going to be rooting for the Trojans, or is she going to keep rooting for her Longhorns? (Nancy Walling coached Enemkpali at Pflugerville and played at Texas from 1979 to 1983).

You know what? Coach Walling loves the Longhorns, but she probably loves me just a little bit more than she loves the Longhorns. I think it'll be a split decision. Maybe they'll come neutral. I'll be surprised to see if they come in their Longhorn gear or if they just come in a neutral color to show that they're rooting for both and there's no bias.

Why and when did you decide to get into coaching?

For the woman that you just heard, Coach Walling. I actually initially wasn't sure if it was a path that I wanted to take fresh out of college. But it was kind of natural in the sense that I wasn't ready to enter the big bad world of adulting, so I said let me go ahead and get my master's. I found a program (at Gonzaga) that brought me on as a video coordinator. I was able to get my master's, and I utilized that opportunity to really sift it out and see if it was something I could see myself doing.

I always just thought back to the days at Pflugerville just because it was such a pivotal period of my life as far as the coaching dynamic between coaches and players and just the amount of love and care that that staff poured into me. I really loved that, and I saw it through my coaching staff at Gonzaga as well.

I told myself, you know what, I've put two years in as a graduate assistant; let me see what it feels like to be a coach, to have a position group, to have players, to do scouts, to go through the whole nine of being a coach, and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it my first year at Santa Barbara, and I just told myself I have dreams to get to this level. I wanted to essentially climb the ladder and see what it felt like to be a Power Five assistant. I think it all stems back to the relationships that I had with Nancy and then seeing it again rebuilt whenever I went to Gonzaga with that staff. I just really, really wanted to see what it felt like being in that position as an assistant.

You've risen up the ranks at Santa Barbara, UNLV and now USC. How would you describe the first few years of your coaching career?

Very nomadic in nature, obviously, because I'm bopping around up and down the West Coast. It's been a great learning experience. It's been tough, very, very tough. Different staffs, different head coaches, different personalities, different administrations, and you learn through experience of what it means when people say, you know, administrations really do matter. So learning how to manage up and build relationships with your admin, build relationships with your development, build relationships with your players and all the extracurricular arms that really feed into your program.

I think the biggest thing for me was learning that basketball is literally the smallest portion of what we do on a day-to-day. The recruiting portion of it, the donor part of it, the relationship part of it (take up more time). I would always tell my coaches whenever I'd see them on the road, like (former UT assistant Jalie Mitchell), "Oh, my gosh, Jalie, I'm so sorry for everything I put you through. I used to think you came to practice and left, and I would never for the life of me understand why y'all were so exhausted until I became a coach, and now I see why y'all were always exhausted, and I was a (jerk) to y'all." It's been a great learning experience, and it gives you so much insight to just the foundation of a program and what it takes to run a program. So it's been a lot of learning.

How would you describe yourself as a coach? Are you a yeller? Player's coach?

I'm not a yeller, but my players know that whenever I do get to that point, that means that they have pushed me to that point. I think that you have a really good balance as a staff. If everybody's a yeller, then it's not going to be a very stable staff. And I think that my position on this staff has been, obviously, I think I'm a player's coach.

My girls naturally gravitate towards me in that sense, but I have a good balance of being super playful, jovial, and that ability to connect with them but also having a seriousness to me as well. I love that my personality and the relationships I have with them allows me to kind of dibble and dabble with both. You have your head coach, who's always going to be the big bad wolf just naturally because that's how they look at the head coach, so I try to kind of find a good equilibrium and a good balance between the two.

Is there anything you learned from Nancy or any of your coaches at Texas that you've applied to how you coach today?

I hate it for myself, but some of the things that my coaches used to say to me as a player, I literally champ at the bit to say to my players now. Karen (Aston) used to always tell me, "Nneka's jumping over a credit card," whenever I wouldn't jump. So anytime my players refuse to elevate to grab a rebound, I use that line. Just little things that they used to say that would get under my skin as a player, I now get to retain that to my players. I knew it was always coming from a teaching space as a coach, so I love being able to reiterate that to them.

For me, Nancy, she viewed her players as humans. She viewed her players as young women, as young people she had to mold, she had the opportunity to mold and she poured into us holistically. So I really appreciated that portion of it, and that's something that I try to do as a coach is, yes, they're players, yes, they're student athletes, but I like to look at them holistically. They're not just here to grab rebounds and score points. I like them to know that we're pouring into them and we feel that and see them more than just that.

Do you have a favorite Texas memory?

I'd say probably my sophomore-to-junior year transition, my favorite memories were always whenever we'd do track workouts with our strength and conditioning coach, because he was so attention-to-detail, he was so tedious, and he had high expectations of us. So we could run a 100, and if your toe didn't cross the line, we'd run it again. My favorite memories are always from those 6 a.m.'s, when we're on Clark Field, and me and my teammates were running 300s in circles, rep after rep, and we're over there dragging each other across the line, pushing each other across the line. I remember dragging Brooke (McCarty) across the line, and she was like, "Dang, Nneka," and I was like, "Brooke, we've got to make this time," so I literally dragged her across the line. Imani is bringing up the rear; Empress (Davenport) is right there; Bri Taylor is right there; Ariel Atkins is a step in front of me. I just really, really enjoyed those memories that ended up leading to the production that we had on the court.

I bet those girls didn't know about you in the 100. (As a freshman in high school, Enemkpali won a bronze medal at the state track and field meet in the Class 5A 100-meter dash.)

No, they didn't. They did not, but I love those. Those are my most vivid memories because they sucked the most, but we persevered through it, and we figured out how to do it.

How is USC doing this season?

It's interesting. I think the transfer portal and COVID has presented a lot of different challenges for various programs and how you recruit and how you build out a roster. We came into the season with a lot of new players and a lot of great additions, honestly. It's just figuring out how to jell with what we have brought into the system that (USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb) wants to run. Obviously, we've had a really great start.

Lindsay had a baby in October, so how has that changed your role and what you've been doing this season?

I think it's encouraged everybody to step up more and to add more to their plate because she now has two little ones at home who she has to be there for. I love that she puts being a mother to the forefront because that again helps young people like me understand and see that it's doable at such a high level.

Coming into the season I took on the role of the recruiting coordinator position, and it has been eye-opening just managing that database and managing and continuing to foster relationships with people all across the country. I think that's been the biggest change. When you're at a smaller institution, you recruit more regionally, but now at a university like USC, we have the opportunity to recruit worldwide so international recruiting, domestic recruiting, I've stepped up in that space, and I've challenged myself to really master what this craft looks like as a recruiting coordinator while still holding my responsibilities as an assistant.

I think that I would commend everybody on our staff for taking on more than what was on their job description, which as an assistant or in the coaching world period, you always take on a little bit more. Lindsay has been extremely vocal, she's been extremely present, as much as she can be. She's continued to be the voice of the program, so she's made it really easy for us to make that transition as well. She has a level of confidence in us, and that shines through as well.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Former Texas basketball player Nneka Enemkpali now coaching at USC