Coaching Nicholls’ women’s basketball a matter of faith for Payne

Following his playing career at Nicholls in 2009, Justin Payne had to make what would prove to be a fateful decision of having a possible professional basketball career or beginning a journey into coaching.

After Payne’s playing career, he was faced with a decision between possibly playing professionally overseas or accepting an offer from then-Nicholls men’s coach J.P. Piper.

“Coach Piper, my head coach at the time, told me, ‘look, I think you would be a great coach,” Payne recalled. “I want to try to get you on our side as well.’

“I took a little bit longer trying to decide whether I’m going to play professionally or whether to come and work with him and I took too long. When I called him back, he said that he had filled the spot up at that time.”

That’s not what really proved to be his fateful decision. That came after a few more words from Piper.

“He said, ‘but hold on. I’m going to go and talk to the women’s side. I think they just had some openings. So, he came and talked to Coach (Doobee) Plaisance and Coach (Louise “Do) Bonin (a Nicholls assistant coach at the time) and I got an interview with Coach Plaisance. We hit it off and I started coaching on the women’s side as a graduate assistant and fell in love with the women’s game and stuck with it,” Payne remembered.

He stuck with it despite not really ever having considered a career coaching women. Looking back, it may have been more of a case of making a faithful decision.

“I had chances to go back and coach the men’s side and stuck with the women’s side. I just love the game. I appreciated the art of it. I’ve been on the women’s side ever since. I never thought it would happen. But God’s plan, right?”

After serving as a Lady Colonel graduate assistant and later fulltime assistant over a span of ten years, Payne left the Thibodaux school in 2019 to become the head women’s coach at Georgia Southwestern, a down-and-out Division II program.

The Lady Canes managed only a pair of eight-win seasons prior to Payne’s arrival.

“When I first got there, I inherited a mess,” Payne said. “They were upfront about that. The women’s basketball program wasn’t really involved with a lot of the things that the athletic department was trying to go, the direction that they were trying to go.

“So that’s one of the things that they came to me and said ‘you’ve got a mess right here. We don’t expect to win many games though, you have to pretty much fix everything.”

Payne immediately started fixing.

“From the ground up, we went over there with the plan, and it was to change the inside first before any wins would happen – just trying to create a culture with these kids that the athletic department, the community would be proud of first,” he said. “Then, I knew that the wins would come.

“We tried to make sure we were active in the community in the right way. Just making sure that our academics were on point, that kids were going to classes now and everything like that, and I knew that the wins would come. Once we changed the stuff internally, the success on the court, you saw it right away.”

In his first year as a head coach in the 2019-20 season, Payne led the Lady Canes to an 11-15 mark, including 7-13 in the Peach Belt Conference.

“My first year, we won the most consecutive conference wins ever in program history. It was five at the time,” Payne pointed out.

The team posted a winning record his second year, going 9-7 overall and 7-4 in an abbreviated 2020-2021 season.

“My second year, we went to the semifinals in the conference tournament for the first time ever in program history,” said Payne.

A milestone year came in his third year as Georgia Southwestern compiled a record of 23-7, including 14-4 in league play.

“In Year Three, we had the most wins ever in men’s or women’s basketball history. We won the first NCAA tournament game in men’s and women’s basketball history,” Payne recounted.

Last season, the Lady Canes went 17-2.

“We won the first conference championship, first conference tournament championship ever in school history and first Sweet 16 appearance ever in school history,” said Payne, whose team reached the Elite 8.

His success at Georgia Southwestern allowed him to return home with Payne, now 36, heading into his first season as Lady Colonels coach.

Among the things Payne has been able to teach his players is hard work. After playing at Opelousas High School, Payne earned his way onto the Nicholls men’s basketball team as a walk-on.

“You just have to work so hard because you’re pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole,” Payne said of life as a walk-on. “You can feel it a little bit when you come in and you see all these guys that you know that you just realize, ‘hey already I’m not the tallest, I’m probably not the most skilled, didn’t shoot the best, but I can work to get to there.’

“I always had in my mind that I was going to outwork each and every player that was on that roster. I just had to prove to myself, first, and then to them I know in my mind I’m a scholarship guy. I’m gonna just outwork you every day whenever we have a chance to lace them up.”

Not only did Payne earn his scholarship, he ended up a four-year letterman and three-year team captain. During his final season at Nicholls in 2008-09, the Colonels went 20-11. By the time his career was up, he had started 89 of the 111 games he played in, with the point guard leaving the school with 329 assists, the sixth most in school history.

“I feel like we kind of got the men’s program back rolling. We had the first 20-win season in about 10 to 12 years,” said Payne.

In fact, the Colonels’ last 20-win season prior to Payne’s senior campaign came 14 years prior when Nicholls went 24-6 during the 1994-95 season.

After that came learning the women’s game under Plaisance.

“In my eyes, she’s one of the best coaches to ever coach, especially in Louisiana,” Payne said. “Just look at her accolades from high school to NAIA to what she did here at the Division I level. When I came over here, I didn’t know anything about the college game in terms of recruiting and the business, the ins and outs and she showed me and taught me the ropes about all of that stuff.”

What stands out in Payne’s mind about Plaisance?

“It was just her relentlessness and the recruiting aspect what she did.  Just her energy and her passion for the game. It was incredible to see her day after day just get after it. She showed me everything about recruiting and everything like that. Where to go recruiting, how you do it and everything like that,” he said.

Plaisance resigned following the 2022-23 season, opening the door for Payne.

After taking over a Nicholls program that produced one winning season in school history, she left following 15 years at the helm, leaving as the all-time leader in wins with a mark of 174-256. The Lady Colonels’ only winning season prior to her arrival was a 13-12 mark in 1989-90.

Prior to her stint at Nicholls, Plaisance posted a record of 81-13 at Loyola of New Orleans, a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics program.

Payne said he hopes to duplicate the success he had at Georgia Southwestern, taking over a Nicholls program that won only five games in Plaisance’s last season.

“At Georgia Southwestern in Division II, we built it into the national powerhouse,” Payne said. “We were Top 10, Top 15, Top 25 for the majority of the year last year.”

Just as he looks at Georgia Southwestern’s success for inspiration, the new Nicholls coach also sees hope for the Lady Colonels from a Southland Conference foe.

“You look at Texas A&M-Commerce in the Southland Conference now. They went from Division II to Division I and they were a Top 25 program. They lost some of their best players and still finished in the Top 4 in the Southland Conference.

“You look at that as a coach, you feel good. You’re like, ‘hey, man, we can do this.’ You have faith first and foremost in God and then yourself, and I got faith in our staff that we’ll get the job done.”

It does seem to have been a faithful decision.