As Kiki Robertson sat on the visitors bench in an otherwise empty Alaska Airlines Center arena earlier this week, the only sound was the thump, thump, thump of a bouncing basketball.
Gazing into the distance, Robertson whiled away time by passing the ball from one hand to the other, dribbling it between her legs, moving it from right to left, then left to right, controlling it the way a puppeteer commands a puppet.
"I've been dribbling ever since I was young," Robertson said. "My dad would give me a basketball and I'd just dribble.
"We never had a basket, but our neighbors did in their driveway. If there was a car in the driveway I couldn't shoot, so I'd just dribble."
Dribbling is Robertson's default mode. Give her a basketball and she doesn't shoot it. She dribbles it.
Robertson is the starting point guard for the top-ranked UAA women's basketball team, which plays the late game Friday in the NCAA Division II West Region tournament at the Alaska Airlines Center.
When the Seawolves (29-1) meet Point Loma (19-11) of the Pacific West Conference at 7:30 p.m., Robertson will be running the show -- and running the floor.
Human highlight reel
Robertson is key to the relentlessly up-tempo, full-court style of play that has carried the Seawolves to 17 straight wins and the No. 1 ranking in the nation.
A sophomore from Honolulu, she was the MVP of last week's Great Northwest Athletic Conference tournament. In a semifinal win over Simon Fraser, she was limited to 22 minutes by foul trouble but finished with six points, five assists, four rebounds and three steals. In the title game win over Western Washington, she poured in a season-high 21 points to go along with six assists.
Robertson spearheads a trapping, pressing defense that averages 17 steals a game and holds opponents to 59.3 points per game. Her steals off the dribble and her no-look passes are the stuff of highlight reels, and her 175 assists against 80 turnovers in 29 games are the stuff of coaches' dreams.
"She's an elite ball-handler," UAA coach Ryan McCarthy said. "The ball is on a string with her."
Big catch
Robertson was McCarthy's prized recruit during his first season as UAA's head coach. He landed her during the early signing period of the 2012-13 season, his first year with the Seawolves.
"I was needing to build a program, and it starts with a point guard," he said. "Kiki was my first choice and I needed to get that locked down."
When she made her official visit to Anchorage, Robertson was being recruited by other schools too, including Division I Pepperdine in Southern California.
She left Anchorage without signing a letter of intent. McCarthy gave her a week to decide, making it clear he had a second point guard waiting to sign.
A week passed. Robertson called to say she still hadn't decided.
"I told her, 'I'll give you till tonight and then someone's getting a (scholarship) to college,' '' McCarthy said. "She called me back and said yes.
"It was a relief, because I knew I had a special player on my hands."
Robertson said she resisted the lure of playing Division I basketball at Pepperdine and chose UAA because she liked what she heard from McCarthy.
"I liked his style of play and his vision of becoming champions," she said. "It was good to know if I came here I had a chance to succeed."
Turning doubters into believers
Robertson, 19, is the youngest of Mike and Lisa Robertson's two children.
Her older brother, Kawika, is 25 years old. Her real name is Kiana, but her brother wasn't able to pronounce it when he was little, so Kiana became Kiki.
Kawika was into karate, but Kiki was drawn to basketball like her dad, whose playing days at Chaminade came a couple of years before the school's famous upset of Ralph Sampson's top-ranked Virginia team.
"When she was like 3, she said 'I want to play basketball like Daddy.' So I got her a basketball and she started teaching herself how to dribble," Mike Robertson said.
"All those skills Kiki has, she taught herself."
Growing up, Robertson was the only girl on her street. She practiced by herself every day. Soon she wanted to play with the neighborhood boys, who just laughed.
"They would said, 'You're too little,' and push her down and take the ball," recalled her dad. "She worked harder and harder to make her skills even better."
Before long she was holding her own against boys two, three and four years older than her. She liked the speed the boys played at, and she liked how physical and competitive the games were.
"The more physical you are with her, the tougher she gets," her dad said.
The same goes if Robertson feels overlooked or underestimated. Her dad remembers the time a 7-year-old Kiki traveled to a tournament outside Hawaii and heard people say that Hawaii teams aren't good enough and that she wasn't tall enough.
"She showed them," he said.
Kiki's team won the tournament two years in a row.
Good DNA
If there was a Mount Rushmore for basketball, you could make a case that a player named Robertson belongs on it.
Oscar Robertson was a triple-double machine before anyone heard the phrase "triple-double."
He was a 12-time NBA all-star and the league MVP in 1964. He averaged a triple-double over his first five seasons with the Cincinnati Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) -- 30.3 points, 10.4 rebounds, 10.6 assists. During a storied college career at Cincinnati, he posted a career average of 33.8 points per game, which ranks third all-time in Division I basketball. He was the point guard for the 1960 Olympic gold medal basketball team.
Oscar Robertson is the cousin of Kiki Robertson's grandfather.
The two have never met, but the man known as "The Big O" has had an impact on the UAA player known as "Little Kiki."
"It's a huge deal to me," she said. "My dad always says the gene was passed to me."
Robertson averages 8.3 points, 6.0 assists, 3.2 steals and 3.1 rebounds a game and has flirted with a triple-double on a couple of occasions. In a win last month over Seattle Pacific, she finished with nine points, nine rebounds and nine assists.
Determined to win
Whether she's dribbling the ball, passing it, stealing it, shooting it or rebounding it, Robertson plays with confidence. If she makes a mistake, she shakes it off and usually makes up for it quickly.
"I'm pretty chill," she said.
Yet her competitive fire is off the charts, whether she's playing a board game with her brother or for a championship with her basketball team.
"If she loses anything, she wants to play again. That's her mentality," Mike Robertson said. "She's not scared of anybody -- she is determined to win.
"That's her biggest asset. She may not be the tallest girl, but she has the biggest heart."
NCAA Division II West Region
Alaska Airlines Center
Friday's games
Noon – Seattle Pacific (21-6) vs. Humboldt State (23-5)
2:30 p.m. – Cal Poly Pomona (19-8) vs. Cal State Dominguez Hills (26-6)
5 p.m. – Cal Baptist (24-6) vs. Hawaii Pacific (25-4)
7:30 p.m. – UAA (29-1) vs. Point Loma (19-11)