Wiley-Gatewood Shows Poise Under Pressure

Maybe Sade Wiley-Gatewood is just getting warmed up.

Maybe at Tennessee, under a national spotlight and intense scrutiny, she’ll rise to a higher level.

Maybe she was destined for something greater than high school heroics.

But while in Southern California, there were heroics aplenty in a career that yielded four Southern Section championships, two state titles and one No. 1 national ranking for Lynwood High.

She made teammates better. She showed poise under pressure. She made a difference by hitting big shots, making key passes and almost always delivering when it counted most.

For her work this season, Wiley-Gatewood is The Times’ girls’ basketball player of the year.

“When the game’s on the line, the girl makes plays,” said Coach Carl Buggs of Long Beach Poly. “She makes plays. To me that’s a big part of your All-American, your player of the year, your national recognition. Can you make plays in big games when the game’s on the line, and on a consistent basis? I’ve seen her do it for four years.”

As Wiley-Gatewood says goodbye to a career in which she never averaged fewer than 17.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, 7.0 assists or 4.0 steals, while playing against the highest level of competition, she looks forward to her next stop in Knoxville, Tenn., where she will try to deliver the goods for Coach Pat Summit.

“I’m the type that focuses on basketball and likes the game,” Wiley-Gatewood said, “and I can’t play on a team that doesn’t focus on basketball.”

Then there should be no problem at Tennessee.

Summit and Wiley-Gatewood first met at Summit’s Tennessee elite camp, where she was the only eighth-grader on a high school all-star team that played against the Tennessee Lady Vols.

“She picked me for an all-star team,” Wiley-Gatewood said. “I did real good” against Semeka Randall and April McDivitt, “and afterwards she was like, ‘Let’s talk.’ ”

The impression each made on the other sparked an early albeit unofficial, commitment. The summer after her freshman year, Wiley-Gatewood told Summit she would attend Tennessee.

“We quit letting anybody recruit her after that point,” said her father, Jerry.

Wiley-Gatewood talked to Summit about three times a week during this season.

“My freshman year, I knew I was going to Tennessee ... but I never knew she would recruit me the way she did,” she said.

Wiley-Gatewood wants to eventually be a broadcaster, but would first like to play professional basketball. It doesn’t matter for whom.

“I don’t mind if they’re not very good, I just want to play,” she said. “I just want to compete.”

She loves to compete. It is the charge she gets from facing other All-Americans that drives her.

“It’s cool having the spotlight, but people expect too much from you,” she said. “In a game, they expect me to score 30 or show them something that they’ve never seen. That’s when I don’t like the spotlight. I’d just like people to watch a basketball game with me playing.”

She averaged 17.5 points as a freshman, 22.8 as a sophomore, 24.8 as a junior. This season she averaged 23.1 points, 8.5 rebounds, 9.4 assists and 6.7 steals on a team that went 26-3. She scored 28 points in Lynwood’s 73-61 loss to Newhall Hart in a Southern Regional playoff game.

Over four seasons, Lynwood went 119-7. Wiley-Gatewood was a starter from Day 1.

“I’m going to be sad, I’m going to miss the purple and gold,” she said. “My coach, my teammates ... I know it’s going to be different.”