"The Elephant Man" (Baton Rouge)
January 25, 2010
Octavia McCoy White
January 28, 2010
The sound of a basketball pounding the floor of an empty gym.
The loud screech of sneakers grabbing the hardwood floor.
And the crisp swish of the net as a shot goes through the hoop.
Those are sounds that can be heard approximately 30 minutes following women’s basketball practice in Nicholls State’s Stopher Gym once most of the Colonels players and staff have exited the building as new Nicholls State women’s basketball assistant coach Justin Payne works overtime with his understudy — the team’s starting point guard Ricshanda Bickham.
“He’s turned me into a gym rat,” Bickham said. “I like to be in the gym, but he pushes you hard and makes you shoot when you don’t want to shoot. You’re tired and he’s telling you, ‘Let’s do one more shot here, or let’s do more ball handling there.’ He’s the one who has prepared me for this.”
The “this” that Bickham is referring to is individual success on the collegiate level. In her first season with the Colonels, Bickham leads the team in scoring and averages 17 points per game, including a career-high 30-point effort on Jan. 20 against Central Arkansas.
“That 30 points – that’s all him,” she said. “All the credit belongs to him, because he pushes me to that level.”
Payne knows a thing or two about scoring himself as he started at point guard himself for 89 games over his four-year career at Nicholls State and inspired the team with his gritty, rough and tumble style of play.
That leadership allowed Payne to anchor the Colonels to a 20-11 record this past season in his senior year, which pushed the team just two wins from an NCAA Tournament appearance.
“He and (Ryan) Bathie had a great command of our team and our locker room,” said Colonels men’s basketball coach J.P. Piper.
So with his playing career complete, Payne decided last September to take his leadership skills to a new line of work – coaching.
“Over the summer, I was thinking about either going play ball overseas or coaching,” he said. “I just figured out that I didn’t want to be away from the game after having a great season my senior season. I couldn’t see myself not around basketball.”
Payne is one of two assistant coaches for the Colonels’ women’s basketball team.
“Bringing him in was a no-brainer,” said Nicholls women’s basketball coach DoBee Plaisance. “He brings an immense amount of intensity and passion and that is something that you can’t coach or instill.”
Payne said he initially had an offer to join the men’s coaching staff, but Piper filled the position with someone else while Payne pondered whether to continue his playing career.
Piper did the next best thing for his former player and referred him to Plaisance, who immediately became impressed with the player she had heard plenty about in her first year in Thibodaux.
“I was just getting here last year for my first season and I keep hearing about this guy Justin Payne,” she said. “Everytime you turn around, I’m hearing ‘Justin Payne this, or Justin Payne that,’ but he could have walked into that door and I wouldn’t have known him from the man on the moon. So I got to get out and see my first men’s game and they didn’t have to tell me who he was, because it was easy to see that fire and that intensity I was told about.”
Plaisance said having a guard on her staff has brought a new dimension to the team’s ability to plan for opponents.
“It’s great, because he played the game from the outside-in, I played the game from the inside-out,” she said. “He sees some of those things that maybe we wouldn’t have otherwise caught onto.”
Payne grew up in Opelousas and attended Opelousas High School, where he excelled in both basketball and football, while graduating in the top 10 of his class.
The 5-foot-11-inch former guard said he learned to be a leader at a young age.
“God just instilled it in me,” he said. “I got it from my mom and my dad, but God just put the ability to lead others into me and I just thank him everyday for that.”
But despite being midway through his first season as a coach, Payne has not gathered too much dust on his gym shorts and sneakers.
“I try to take them on one-on-one a little bit in practice,” Payne said. “I’ve got to show them coach isn’t past his prime at all.”
Despite the claims, Bickham didn’t seem to see things the same way initially.
“I’d take him,” she said. “He tries his best, but I take him everyday.”
But the junior guard quickly recanted her sentiments.
“He’s real good,” she said. “He can beat me constantly, but I just know that if I try hard and try to put my game to where he was when he was here, then we’ll be fine.”
Having that much impact on a player is why Plaisance said the sky is the limit for her first-year assistant.
“He’s going to achieve any and everything he wants in life,” she said. “He’s a natural born leader and the day we brought him here was a very fortunate day for our program.”
Nicholls women’s basketball coach Justin Payne gives instructions to Colonels point guard Ricshanda Bickham during the team’s Jan. 20 game against Central Arkansas. * Photo by CASEY GISCLAIR
