The thud of ball on concrete woke Steve and Jennifer Aldridge before the crack of dawn most mornings.
It was their daughter, Lauren Aldridge, already outside. Then in elementary school, Missouri’s starting point guard would wake up early to practice her ball-handling and shooting skills.
“We would yell, ‘Lauren, it’s 6 a.m. It’s time to get back in bed. It’s not even time to get up yet,’” Jennifer Aldridge said. “She’s very much down-to-business, serious and a goal-minded person. And she’s been that way since she was little bitty.”
Jennifer said Lauren started crawling at four months old and walking at eight months, something that most people don’t believe until the old VHS tapes are dusted off.
The Aldridges' oldest daughter has always had a driven mindset. Tenacious and strong-willed. Determined and persistent. If Lauren puts her mind to something, she gets it done
Take law school, for example — Aldridge is a first-year law student at Mizzou after transferring at the start of the 2016-17 school year from Kansas. There are no lawyers in her family, and she says she doesn’t know any family friends that are lawyers, either. Law school was a shot in the dark, but she enjoys arguing and she enjoys challenges.
So she took the shot.
Of course, Aldridge isn’t just a law student. She’s a point guard at one of the top women’s basketball programs in the nation--the Tigers are ranked 11th, the program's highest ranking in 34 years--and she’s a good one, too. How does she do it? Time management is just her thing, she says, nonchalantly. Like going to law school and playing some of the best basketball of her life is just another day on the job.
The two endeavors actually might be more similar than you think, which is part of the reason why law school appealed to Aldridge in the first place. The same factors that make Aldridge a great point guard also can make her a great lawyer someday.
“Whenever I’m trying to control the game, I go through that same exact process as what some might do in a courtroom, which is using my analytical skills,” Aldridge said. “Analyzing everything, what do we need, what’s my gut reaction and thinking on my feet as to how we’re going act.”
Aldridge calls control of the game an intangible. It’s one of her favorite parts about being a point guard, and it’s something she has developed over time.
When she was in elementary school, she played basketball with all boys, and she was always the point person on the court, always the one to tell the boys what to do. Now, Missouri is reaping the benefits of Aldridge’s skill on the court.
“She’s a calming factor for us,” Missouri head coach Robin Pingeton said. “She’s not afraid to push, but she knows that, if there are a couple of possessions where we haven’t gotten anything, we need to pull back a little bit and get a little bit more organized with our motion.”
To do so, Aldridge has to be somewhat of a coach on the floor. She looks to Pingeton on the sideline for plays, but it’s not always so black-and-white.
Sometimes, Aldridge has to pull back and let her teammates find an opening. Sometimes, she has to get the ball in Sophie Cunningham’s hands to get something done. Aldridge did just that with 13 seconds left in the first half of Missouri’s win over South Carolina on Jan. 7. She brought the ball up the floor, Cunningham ran off a screen and Aldridge bounced a back-door pass to Missouri’s leading scorer who dropped it into the net.
Aldridge doesn’t fill up the stat sheet, but she’s okay with that. The redshirt junior is averaging 5.7 points per game, yet she’s playing the most minutes on the team: 31.1 per game. Truth be told, she kind of likes it that way.
“I love to be the behind-the-scenes, nobody, kind of person but who still gets the work done,” Aldridge said. “I think being able to control the tempo of the game is one of those really cool positions to be in, where you can affect the game without really affecting the game.”
Aldridge still gets up at 6 a.m. every morning, but it’s not just to practice basketball anymore. It’s to start a packed day of classes and practice, maybe with some traveling thrown in there.
“I think whenever you find something that you love, it doesn’t become so much work,” Aldridge said. “It becomes more of just a lifestyle. And that’s how I approach everything I do, all the time.”
