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Nicholls State senior forward Alisha Allen was a bench player on her eighth- grade basketball team.
She hasn’t stopped working ever since.
She’s now one of the best players in the Southland Conference.
Thanks to a unique, inside-out skill set and her diligence in practice and during the offseason, Allen has established herself as one of Nicholls’ leaders.
The Garland, Texas native is averaging a team-high 14.7 points and 5.7 rebounds per game in her final season with the team – all while shooting 52 percent from the field.
“She’s just awesome,” Nicholls State junior guard KK Babin said of Allen. “As a guard, she’s the player you always have to be looking for because she can make a difference at any time and on every possession. She’s a special player.”
It wasn’t always that way.
Allen is the first to admit she wasn’t much of a ball player in her earliest days.
Aspiring model becomes high school hoops star
Today’s lofty stats aside, Allen’s path to collegiate success was paved through unique circumstances.
The Colonels’ senior said as a child, she wasn’t overly interested in becoming an athlete, but instead had dreams of becoming a model or a dancer.
“But that really wasn’t something that my parents wanted me to do,” Allen said with a smile.
So Plan B was sports – more specifically soccer.
Allen said she played fútbol as a small child and “was very good.”
But when she got toward middle school, she started to grow a little taller. At the same time that was happening, she noticed that all of her closest friends were starting to trade in their cleats for sneakers and gym shorts.
“Basketball was the thing that all of my friends were really into,” Allen said. “I sort of got involved in it like that.”
Allen tried out successfully for her eighth-grade basketball team, but spent most of the season as a reserve player.
“I wasn’t really good. I didn’t really play much,” Allen said.
Not liking the feeling of being on the bench, Allen said she went to her father, Jessie Allen, following that season and asked for help.
“I went to my dad and I told him that I wanted to get better and I wanted to play,” Allen said. “One of the first things he told me back was the best advice I ever got. He said, ‘If you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to be consistent. You’re going to have to put effort into this.’ He said, ‘Success isn’t going to come overnight.”
With her father’s advice driving her actions, Allen said basketball became her job as she approached high school.
She said she immediately started practicing every day – for sometimes hours at a time.
Allen said she remembers taking trains across town to work out with various coaches and trainers in her area.
“Anything I could do to get better – that’s what I did,” Allen said.
It worked.
The eighth grade bench player had blossomed into a freshman budding star.
Allen recalls walking into the gym in high school and playing for the first time.
The looks she got from her teammates are faces she said she’ll “remember for the rest of my life.”
“They thought I still wasn’t good,” Allen said with a laugh. “So I just started shocking people. They were expecting me to still be bad. We played a pickup game in practice and we picked teams. I remember not getting picked and just sitting on the side and waiting my turn.
“When I got on the court, they all saw what I knew – I was a different player. I shocked everybody.”
Shock is an appropriate word for that time in Allen’s life. She was the spark in Naaman Forest High School’s success.
Allen said she was moved from junior varsity to varsity midway through her freshman year – a move that helped the team make a playoff push.
“We got to state for the first time that year – it was like I was the missing piece,” Allen said with a smile. “It was perfect. It was like I was the thing we needed to go over the top.”
The next three seasons weren’t too bad for Allen either.
She earned All-District and All-Region honors each year and guided her high school to the playoffs in every season.
Allen averaged 12.6 points, 6.2 rebounds and 5 assists per game her senior season – numbers that earned her the distinction as the team’s MVP.
Because of her success, colleges started to get in line for Allen’s services as her prep career came to a close.
She said she had offers from a handful of Sun Belt schools and almost the entire Southland Conference.
“But it wasn’t too hard of a decision,” Allen said with a smile, pointing to the red Nicholls logo on her practice shirt. “This is where I needed to be.”
‘First-ever’ recruit leads Nicholls into new era
“Alisha Allen is my first-ever verbal commitment – in life,” Nicholls State women’s basketball coach DoBee Plaisance said earlier this season with a laugh. “She’s always going to be the first I’ve ever had.”
Allen’s senior season coincided with Plaisance’s first season coaching the Colonels.
Nicholls’ roster was depleted at the time and was in dire need of quality players.
The Colonels won just one game in Plaisance’s inaugural year. Most of the team’s defeats came in lopsided fashion.
Because of the team’s struggles, Plaisance hit the recruiting trail hard to seek help.
While there, she encountered Allen and labeled her a “must-get” player.
“We needed a player of her caliber in this program,” Plaisance said. “Getting her was huge for us.”
Allen admits she was a little nervous about the Colonels’ lack of success.
But she committed to Plaisance because she truly felt wanted in Thibodaux.
“With the other coaches, it’s like they weren’t trying as hard to get me,” Allen said. “But when I spoke to Coach DoBee, it was always like, ‘Oh, we really need you,’ or ‘Oh, we really want you to come to Nicholls.’ That’s why my parents want me to come here – I was wanted.”
It’s easy to see why the Colonels wanted Allen so badly.
Her commitment was the first domino set in place in what has become a complete program overhaul in Thibodaux – even if the early days were rough.
The 5-foot, 11-inch forward has been a starter since her first season in Thibodaux and a double-digit point contributor from her earliest days in the program.
Allen’s first season at Nicholls was a tough one – the Colonels won just three games. She averaged 13 points per game.
The second wasn’t much better, as Nicholls finished with just an 8-21 record – a season that saw Allen score close to 11 points per game.
“It was hard,” Allen said. “I just remember walking off the court in those days and we played so hard. It’s like you’re exhausted – absolutely spent. It’s like you gave it every, single thing that you had, but you still couldn’t win.
“It’s very frustrating.”
But the tide turned for the Colonels last season and Nicholls advanced to the Southland Conference Tournament where they advanced to the league semifinals.
A junior leader on that team, Allen averaged more than 14 points per game.
It was during the past season that the rest of the conference started to become exposed to what Plaisance had been saying since Allen’s freshman season – she’s a matchup disadvantage to almost anyone in the Southland Conference.
“We can do so many things with her,” Plaisance said. “She can dribble and take the baseline for an easy shot. She can shoot the 3. We can post her up on smaller players. She has a ton of ways to hurt the defense.”
“We know that there’s really no one in this conference that can stop her,” Babin said. “She’s just a problem for the other team because she has so many different ways that she can play.”
Senior wants to finish the job
With one last go-round in Thibodaux, Allen has one goal – finishing the job and cutting down the nets.
The Nicholls State forward said she told herself when she committed to the Colonels that she wanted to help take the team to the top of the Southland Conference.
To prepare herself for her last crack at that goal, Allen went back to her eighth grade mentality this past offseason. She said she worked tirelessly to improve her game.
“I put in so much time over the summer,” Allen said. “I just try to stay consistent every day because the day you take a day off is the day someone else is out there getting better.
“This is my senior year. This is it. I might as well put my all out there, right?”
Allen has been doing exactly that.
The Colonels’ standout has been a mismatch for opponents throughout the season, having scored double digits in 14 of the Colonels’ 15 games.
In conference play, Allen is averaging 17.5 points per game and is shooting 56.6 percent from the field.
But Plaisance said Allen’s biggest contributions come off the floor.
The Colonels’ coach said Allen has firmly entrenched herself as a leader within the program. Plaisance said Allen has set a clear example off the floor of what the Colonels’ program stands for.
On the floor, the coach said that Allen is a stabilizing force to the team’s other players – an intangible that has allowed the team to post an 11-4 record, which includes three wins in four Southland Conference contests.
“The intangibles that Alisha brings – the leadership and the experience – that’s the qualities she brings besides for just being a great player,” Plaisance said. “When the wheels start hobbling off the wagon a little bit, she’s the one who says, ‘Oh no, this is going to stop right here.’ She’s just incredible. I couldn’t be more enamored for her because this is her senior year.”
Babin said she agreed with the coach and added that the team wants to send Allen out the right way.
“We want her to leave the program as a champion,” Babin said. “She deserves that, most definitely.”
Whether it happens remains to be seen.
But champion or not, Plaisance said Allen will forever be remembered as an original – the first-ever player to believe in the coach’s vision that the Nicholls program would be turned around and taken to a higher level.
“She’s lived it – she’s been through the ups and the downs throughout the rise of this program,” Plaisance said. “I’m just so happy for her that right now, it looks like it’s coming to be what she came here for. If the good Lord says the same in March, I expect her expectations to come true.
“She’s always going to be the first. She’s always going to have a special spot alone in my heart for that. She’s one we’ll remember here for a long time. She’s a special player and a special person.”
Nicholls State senior forward Alisha Allen dribbles the ball during a Southland Conference game last season. Allen is the Colonels’ only senior this year. She is enjoying a huge season, averaging more than 17 points per game in conference action. In those games, she is shooting close to 60 percent.
