LAFAYETTE, LA (KLFY) – Louisiana senior forward Ty Doucet was named the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year last season.
Before this year, the Ville Platte native was named the preseason Player of the Year for the conference.
She’s living up to the hype – already posting 10 double-doubles on the season, including eight straight from January 13th to February 12th.
“How the streak started, I really haven’t been paying attention,” Doucet says. “I’ve just been getting every rebound that I see. If they’re not double-teaming me I know I’m just gonna go straight to the goal.”
Doucet is averaging a double-double in league play, with 13 points per game and 11 boards per game.
Whether it was her 25 points against ULM, the 18 rebounds at South Alabama, or the six blocks against Troy, all of her season-highs helped etch her name into the Ragin’ Cajun record books.
She currently holds the program record for most rebounds in a single game, most free throws made in a single game, is second all-time for career rebounds, and is a 1,000-point scorer.
“I think her mindset changed,” head coach Garry Brodhead says. “I think this year, being that it’s her fifth year, she’s understanding that it’s gonna be tough. She’s gonna have to fight through things. I think that’s the biggest part that I think she’s learned you know. The growth that she’s had and how she’s matured to me is the biggest part of why we’re seeing some results and the double-doubles.”
Brodhead saw the potential in Doucet early on when she was in eighth grade.
“Me and my wife, I don’t know how many games we watched her play, but we would go together to Ville Platte and it was fun,” Brodhead says. “My wife actually went to the quarterfinal game way up in North Louisiana. I couldn’t go, but she rode with some friends because she wanted to see Ty Doucet. She wanted her friends to see her. It kinda goes way back.”
But the career she’s gone on to have at UL was in jeopardy, when she contemplated leaving basketball behind her freshman year.
“Coming in here, it’s really hard,” Doucet says. “I wanted to quit so many times. I called my mom. I called my dad so many times just saying that I couldn’t do it. But they told me to push through and now look where I am.”
She stayed the course and stayed on the court.
Three seasons later, she helped lead UL to its first-ever regular season Sun Belt title.
“It meant a lot to me,” Doucet says. “In high school, I went to the championship I think twice, the top 28 every year that I was playing in high school. We never could win. For us to win the way that we won, going 13-1, it felt good.”
After falling short in the conference tournament title game, Doucet had another decision to make.
Come back for her last year of eligibility, or move on from basketball?
In a way, her dreams off the court led her to staying in school one more year.
“Once we talked to her and said hey Ty what do you want to do?” Brodhead says. “‘I wanna go into the nursing program, travel nurse.’ Maybe we could try to help you out if you played one more year. And that’s kinda how it got started. We were able to get with the UL nursing department and they were phenomenal.”
“And I was like look, I wanna be a nurse anyways,” Doucet says. “So if I’m coming back I might as well still play.”
The fifth year senior is writing the last chapter of her career in the vermilion and white.
And being the ultimate teammate is the legacy Doucet wants to be remembered by.
“I just want everybody to know my energy,” Doucet says. “I was always trying to make people laugh, always trying to uplift people, always doing what I could to help people.”
That care for others will be carried on from one career to the next.
“Ty’s a caring person you know, real caring,” Brodhead says. “She cares about what people think about her, but she also cares about how people feel too, you know. The best is yet to come. She cares about what her grades are gonna be. She talks a lot about it. When a kid talks a lot about it and they’re having fun in class and all that, I think they are gonna be really successful.”