She’s Rad, Not Weird : UCI’s Stafford Is Quirky but Often Beyond Compare on Basketball Court

Megan Stafford perceived an image problem. Not a bad one, mind you, it was just a little personality quirk . . . hers.

“My teammates thought I was kind of odd at first,” said Stafford, a freshman guard at UC Irvine. “I don’t know why.”

Let’s see.

The tiny barbell-shaped ornament that was pierced through the skin above the right eye.

The skateboarding to practice so she could pick up a little extra shut-eye.

The hemp necklace, the baggy jeans, the Jimi Hendrix-Janis Joplin-Doors music collection.

Couldn’t be that, could it?

“Basically, Megan is the first hippie we’ve recruited,” Irvine assistant coach Mark Adams said.

According to her teammates, there is nothing too strange about Stafford.

“Megan is rad,” center Chelsea Mackey said “Really rad.”

“Oh yeah, she’s rad,” forward Kirsten Cappel said.

Couldn’t be the way Stafford plays basketball, could it?

Stafford has been the lynch pin for the Anteaters this season. She was immediately put into the starting lineup and is a big reason Irvine, which plays New Mexico State tonight in the Big West Conference tournament, finished second in the Western Division.

She is second in the conference with 5.4 assists a game. Stafford set an Irvine season record with 140 assists and closed the regular season by setting a single-game record with 15 assists against Cal State

Fullerton.

“Megan? She’s normal,” guard Shannon Anders said.

Of course she is, there are no tattoos.

It’s not just that Stafford would ride her skateboard to Irvine practices. It was the reason.

“I could get to practice in a couple minutes so I could sleep five minutes longer,” she said.

Sleeping has priority with Stafford and skateboarding is a passion. And surfing, well, she’s going to get Andrew Carlson, a 6-foot-10 center on the Irvine men’s team, to teach her.

Her abilities on the court, especially her leadership, make her eccentricities off the court seem colorful instead of a little bizarre.

When Leticia Oseguera was getting ready to shoot key free throws against Pacific this season, Stafford was there to pump up her confidence. That’s not too unusual, except Oseguera is the team captain and Stafford is the freshman.

Still . . .

“My friend, Liz Scollin, she found this skateboard in the gutter a couple years ago,” Stafford said. “We decided we might as well use it.”

Soon, Stafford was tooling around on her own board.

Coach Colleen Matsuhara hasn’t banned it completely, but just mention that skateboard and watch her cringe. Stafford, to Matsuhara’s relief, has found the campus walkways too crowded to use a skateboard. She has resigned herself to walking, and waking up a little earlier.

“If I could, I’d stay in bed until noon,” Stafford said.

Yet another quirk. When Dan Knight, her coach at Santa Rosa Ursuline Academy, would schedule a 9 a.m. practice, he knew when to expect Stafford. At 9 a.m.

Still, he could live with that.

“We had one 6:30 a.m. practice that I think she was still asleep for the first hour,” Knight said. “She was still clearly the best player on the floor.”

Said Stafford’s mother, Pam: “My husband and I would take turns trying to wake her. But she’s always been her own person. She likes having fun and she likes playing basketball. But when she got the eyebrow ring, we went oh-oh.”

Not to worry. The ornament, to celebrate her 18th birthday, is gone. It got ripped out when she was taking off a T-shirt last fall.

“It left a little scar,” Stafford said. “Nothing too bad. After the season I may get another. They’re cool.

“I guess people think I’m a little different. I’m just a laid-back person from Northern California.”

Stafford can’t fool all the people all the time. “Under all that laid-back personality lurks a killer,” Matsuhara said.

Actually, the only real strange thing about Stafford is how Irvine managed to land such a player.

Matsuhara was the only college coach to make a visit. Santa Rosa is a bit off the beaten path, but there was good reason for a coach to drop by.

Stafford, who played on boys’ youth teams until she was in high school, scored 2,160 points and had 751 assists in four seasons at Ursuline. She doesn’t know why so few schools were interested, nor does she seem to care.

“They got a Pac-10 caliber player,” Knight said. “They stole her.”

Matsuhara just smiles at this, knowing what she has got. “Megan has great court sense,” Matsuhara said. “She’ll see someone open and make the pass at the same moment.”

The Fullerton game was a perfect example. Stafford put players in position to score before the defense was able to react, and the assists piled up.

“I’ve always been a point guard,” Stafford said. “Ever since I was little, I’ve liked the basketball in my hands. I can see the whole court and I can see little openings people have or might have.”

That’s not to say things have been perfect. Stafford, like all freshmen, has had to adjust to the quality--and quantity--of talent on the college level.

On Feb. 9, UCI was trailing New Mexico State by one with 30 seconds left. Stafford was trying to set up a play when New Mexico State’s Rebecca Fresquez came from the backside and stole the ball. The Roadrunners got a layup and held on for a 62-59 victory.

Stafford also was the reason UCI stayed close against New Mexico State; she scored 19 points.

“In the beginning, I don’t think people were thinking I could come in and do the things I did in high school,” Stafford said. “Now the team has confidence in me and that gives me confidence in myself.

“Kind of weird, huh?”