Baumholder's Eliyah Tillman goes to the basket against Brussels' Chloe Proietto in a Division III semifinal at the DODDS-Europe basketball championships in Wiesbaden, Germany, Friday, Feb. 20, 2015. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
All season, Baumholder sophomore Eliyah Tillman worked to push her considerable talents into new territory. But with her team’s season on the line, Tillman returned to her comfort zone.
The Bucs trailed Sigonella by one point with 11 seconds to play in the 2015 DODDS-Europe Division III championship game on Feb. 21. Tillman took possession with a chance to win the game and the title.
Thoughout the winter, Baumholder head coach Matt Martinez encouraged Tillman to expand her game. At times, Tillman was reluctant to shoot from outside, preferring to work her way into the paint for a higher-percentage opportunity. While that instinct wasn’t a bad one, Martinez understood that she’d eventually need a more diverse set of skills to beat defenses that would be increasingly focused on her.
That effort yielded steady results. Tillman averaged 14.4 points in the regular season, scoring not just on drives to the basket and offensive putbacks but on a jumper that gradually trended upward in accuracy and range. In the European tournament, even as teams scouted the Bucs and crafted plans to neutralize the ball-dominant Tillman, she continued to lean on that improving outside shot and increased her proficiency to 19.4 points per game.
But on that one season-defining play, Tillman left nothing to chance.
With most of both teams’ players trailing the play, the left-handed guard dribbled hard and high down the center of the court against a pair of frantically backpedaling Jaguar defenders.
Around the three-point line, she cut right and switched her dribble to her right hand, shaking loose the first overmatched opponent in the process.
Then Tillman suddenly switched course again, unleashing a devastating crossover dribble that left the second and last Sigonella defender reeling. She gathered the ball, took two powerful steps to the hoop and scooped in a layup that put the Bucs in the lead.
While it certainly saved their season, that shot wasn’t a game-winner. Sigonella forced overtime with a last-second free throw. But Tillman had the answer again; she scored all four of Baumholder’s overtime points in the 28-24 win, completing a 20-point, 12-rebound, two-block masterpiece of a title-game performance.
As a result of that game, and her sustained excellence all season, Tillman is the 2015 Stars and Stripes girls basketball Athlete of the Year.
To reach her current level of success, however, Tillman had to confront a fear of failure.
“I’ve been playing since I was six, but I didn’t like shooting that much,” Tillman said. “I always hated it when I missed.”
In his first year as Baumholder coach, Martinez quickly recognized the logical flaw in that approach: Tillman was very good, and she should be shooting, and doing it often. After some convincing, the sophomore agreed.
“He pushed me past my limits,” Tillman said of Martinez.
The process is far from complete. Tillman is still looking for more consistency on her jumper. She’s still sorting out the difficult decision-making process incumbent on every star player, learning the nuances of when to attack the defense, when to loft a jumper over it, and when to draw the defense in and dish off to an open teammate. She’s actively fighting her current tendency to finish every shot from all areas of the paint with her left hand.
That’s a lot of work. But Martinez knows Tillman has all the necessary fundamentals to complete it.
“Not only is she a good player, she is also a great teammate,” Martinez said. “Eliyah is one of the most friendly and coachable players I have ever had on a team.”
In a way, that dramatic sequence late in regulation of the European championship game was a snapshot of Tillman’s career. She’s pushing her limits, discovering what she’s capable of, without abandoning what got her this far. The jumper will evolve, but she’ll never abandon that unstoppable drive to the basket. Nobody else can stop it, so there’s no reason she should stop herself. But it’s a weapon that needs to be harnessed, as it was in that instant, for maximum impact.
“She can completely change the dynamic of a game,” Martinez said.
That goes not just for championship games, but for her own.
Twitter: @broomestripes
