In her final season, Oregon State guard emerges as one of school’s all-time greats

By Brooks Hatch
Gazette-Times reporter

LaVonda Wagner thought she’d seen all Casey Nash could offer after spending two seasons with Oregon State’s versatile senior guard.

Then Nash was knocked out of the Feb. 22 game at Washington late in the first half with a nasty facial injury that required stitches to close her lacerated nose and upper lip.

“Lying on that table at halftime getting stitched up, she said, ‘Don’t worry coach, I’m coming back,’ ” Wagner said this week in recounting their encounter at Hec Edmundson Pavilion in Seattle before Nash returned for most of the second half.

“I thought she was gone. I walked out of that training room going, ‘Wow.’ ”

It’s been a memorable final season for the 6-foot-1 standout from Stayton, OSU’s captain and lone senior seeing significant playing time. She leads the Pacific-10 Conference in scoring (20.3 ppg) and has set an inspirational example for five freshmen and two other first-time starters that will pay dividends after she’s graduated and working in professional basketball or the health care field.

“She’s put that team on her back and taken the league by storm,” California coach Joanne Boyle said on Feb. 17 after watching Nash score 25 points in 50 minutes in a double-overtime loss to the Bears in her final home game.

“To see that kind of leadership, and to see what her team will do with that next year after she’s gone, is huge for the future.”

Neither Nash nor Wagner honestly anticipated she’d have that kind of impact when they met in December 2005, to begin preliminary planning for her senior season. Given her status as the only player with appreciable experience, they knew she must be the one others would listen to, follow and emulate, a responsibility shared by four seniors in 2006.

“She doesn’t like controversy, and leadership isn’t always easy and isn’t always popular,” Wagner said. “Her role has been very hard and very lonely. But it will make her better not only in basketball, but later in life.”

Nash candidly admits she wondered if she had the right stuff to meet Wagner’s high expectations.

“I didn’t doubt myself, but I had never been in that type of role before so I didn’t know how I’d do,” she said. “It was difficult for me, because of my personality.

“It was amazing to see the results after I made those changes. It was good that I accepted that challenge and welcomed everything.”

Even the instances when she had to play the bad cop with teammates?

“Those situations happened, and I gained more confidence in that leadership role” every time problems were addressed and resolved, she said. “I try to lead by example. If I’m working hard and doing everything right, they’ll look at it and go, ‘OK, that’s how we do it.’ ”

She also spent hours watching video to refine the technical aspect of her shot, then worked with her husband, ex-OSU point guard J.S. Nash (2002-05), to apply and polish what she’d watched.

“We would always be working out,” she said. “He gave me some good pointers, and we just got up a lot of shots.”

Practice transformed Nash into an offensive weapon. She has tripled her pre-2007 career scoring average (6.3 ppg) and improved her overall (.449 to .465), 3-point (.211 to .400) and free-throw (.636 to .777) shooting percentages despite playing 38 minutes a game and being guarded by the opponent’s best defender as part of a double- or triple-team.

“Guarding Casey is a team effort. It takes all five players,” Cal’s Ashley Walker said.

Added Wagner: “Casey has been phenomenal. She has exceeded every expectation anyone had, under extreme adversity. She’s played in pain, against an enormous amount of defensive pressure.”

She’s done so without her husband’s first-hand advice or emotional support. J.S. has been playing professionally in Leiden, Holland, since mid-September.

“We talk or e-mail twice or three times a day, but it’s definitely very difficult,” she said. “We knew what we were getting into when we got married (on Aug. 27, 2005), but it’s been harder than I thought.”

These past couple months have been the hardest in part because she’s taking only six hours of classes and has more free time.

“But my teammates have been amazing and I hang out with them as much as I can,” Nash said.

“I’m going overseas after the season. We’ll find out what kind of professional opportunities I have and we’ll go from there. A lot of the stuff is up in the air. Our idea is to play in the same area. I’m definitely not done playing basketball yet.”

Nash said her senior season has been the most challenging, but fun and fulfilling because she’s pushed her athletic and personal envelopes in so many different directions.

“I came into this year thinking, ‘I don’t want to have any regrets when I’m done,’ ” she said. “And I can honestly say I don’t.

“There are some things I hoped would have come out differently, but there are definitely no regrets.”