By Jill Lieber Steeg, USA TODAY
Special to MaxPreps.com
Jasmine Dixon, Long Beach Poly's senior All-America forward/guard, doesn't hesitate when asked why she is one of the USA's best girls high school basketball players.
"Because I played with boys teams growing up," says Dixon, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Division I-AA player of the year as a junior. "It made me tougher. It made me stronger. The boys didn't cut me any slack. I had to earn everything."
And when asked why her Jackrabbits, back-to-back state champions and No. 1 in the USA TODAY Super 25 girls rankings, are one of the USA's most formidable teams, Dixon also doesn't skip a beat.
"We don't back down from any team," says the 6-foot-1 Dixon, 17, a recent signee with Rutgers. "We go in, we want it and we take it."
Understanding that national rankings, consecutive championships and postseason accolades aren't handed out on silver platters has vaulted Long Beach Poly to the top of the girls high school basketball world.
Adhering to high standards, setting astronomical goals and then dedicating themselves to reaching beyond is what will separate the Jackrabbits from everybody else this season, says Poly coach Carl Buggs, 52.
That's especially true, he says, given the Jackrabbits' schedule, which includes four stiff tests against powerhouses right out of the box: the Nike Northwest Invitational, Dec. 6-8 in Beaverton, Ore.; the Nike Tournament of Champions, Dec. 18-21 in Phoenix; the T-Mobile Invitational, Dec. 28-29 in Albuquerque; and the Gatorade Timberwolves Shootout, Jan. 5 in Minneapolis.
In fact, when discussing the schedule a few weeks before the Jackrabbits were to begin their quest for a three-peat, Buggs summed up what lies ahead in one word: "Wooooooo!"
"My philosophy has always been if you want to be the best, then you have to play the best," he says. "You don't back down from anybody. Earn everything you get. We have the kind of schedule this year, if we're able to pull this off and go undefeated, there'd be no doubt who the No. 1 team in the country is.
"But we love the competition, and we want our kids to go through life like that. You strive to be the best you can, you don't back down, you work hard to get what you get. If you want to be the best, then go get it. Don't let anybody hold you back."
To make sure the girls stay on track, LaKeisha Buggs, 42, his wife and assistant coach, has created a mantra: "No excuses!"
"You know how your game peaks at the end of the season? Well, we've got to be ready before the beginning of the season," LaKeisha Buggs says. "We're facing nationally ranked teams and teams that have won their respective state championships. We've got to be at the end-of-the-season pace.
"My husband and I push them to a level where we're getting them ready for college-level competition."
From Day One, Dixon has pushed herself. Her father, Billy Brown, put a basketball in her hands when she was 2, and she was fearlessly going after older boys in pickup games.
When she was 6, Brown signed her up for an organized girls team at Martin Luther King Park and Recreation Center. Almost immediately, she was dominating games. So he moved her to the boys teams at the recreation center, as well as the John C. Wallace Boys & Girls Club.
At Hill Classical Middle School, she joined the girls team but was uninspired.
"They weren't going at me as hard, and I was stronger than most of them," she says.
So her father got her involved with the AAU's Long Beach Lady Warriors, where she played with the 13-and-under and the high school teams.
And, when she wasn't playing for the Lady Warriors, she was participating in a local boys league for recreation center and Boys & Girls Club teams.
"You can see it in her game today that she played with boys and that she played with and against older kids," Brown says. "The aggressiveness, the intensity. She's known for taking contact and finishing in the hole."
Adds Dixon: "I wouldn't be where I am today if my father hadn't pushed me. He made me who I am."
Although she's a self-starter and she has Jackrabbits teammates such as senior guard April Cook (a signee with Washington State) and junior center Monique Oliver (a transfer from Las Vegas) to motivate her, Dixon still likes that little extra push from her father.
A few days ago they went to a nearby park, along with her two sisters (Mahogany, 12, and Shyrl, 6), to work on free throw shooting and drills to sharpen their skills.
"I tell her all the time, 'You're the hunted this year,' " Brown says. "I tell her, 'Jasmine, you're the leader. If the team's successful, you'll get the props. If it fails, it'll all fall on you.' She knows she has to take it day by day, that she has to win one game at a time."
When asked if she can handle the pressure, Dixon doesn't flinch.
"I live for the big games," she says. "I'm ready. Bring it on."