The dreads are accidental.
"I've been growing them since March," said Iciss Tillis, one of five freshmen on Duke's basketball team this season.
"I had my hair natural since I was a sophomore in high school. I would twist it up and then I would take it down and press it, and twist it up again and then I got lazy. For four weeks, I didn't take my hair down, and one day, I went to the mirror and thought I'd take them out. They started dreading up at the root, and it was impossible, you can't take them out."
Her mother then told her she would have to cut all her hair off. Tillis had another answer.
"I said, 'No, I'm just going to grow dreads.' My family hated me for the longest time for that. [With] my grandmother, I thought I'd never hear the end of it. I said, 'I'm sorry, but I'm not cutting all my hair off.' Now they all love it."
Now, the dreads are one of Tillis' most visible trademarks.
"Maybe when I'm older, I'll whack 'em off."
Much like her family has had to deal with Tillis' hair, her coaches have had to deal with another trademark: her versatility. On the court, Tillis does not stay in one spot. One moment she is posting up, the next moment she is lining up a three-point shot from further outside than the guards.
"I've always been really tall, meaning I've always played the post," Tillis said. "I've always liked to shoot three-pointers and dribble the ball and stuff like guards do. All my friends were point guards and forwards and stuff and we'd play one-on-one. I'd play street ball at the park from sun up to sundown."
Ball for Tillis was always the priority, even when she did not make it home until after dark. But ball at the park in grade school is a lot different than basketball in the ACC. Although she has come a long way, there are also times when that flexibility fails her.
After a loss to N.C. State a week ago, a frustrated Gail Goestenkors vented at her player's poor post play.
"We've been allowing Iciss to make some decisions with our motion offense and unfortunately, she tends to hang out at the three-point line too much lately," the Duke coach said after the team's third loss of the season.
The substandard performance may have been unusual for Tillis, but the frustration is not. Growing up, she always seemed to confound and frustrate her coaches.
"I still had to play post," she said. "My coach would get mad because I would go outside and shoot the three. They didn't really believe I could make the three until I shot them and made them."
The thing is, she is not that bad at it. Tillis has taken more three-point shots than anyone on the team except Georgia Schweitzer, and she is tied for third on the team in accuracy. The exceptional part is she also leads the team with 5.9 rebounds per game.
Perhaps another trademark is her attitude. On the court, standing in the post, her face goes from stolid to scowling, but seemingly, never smiling.
Yet her teammates swear there is another side to Iciss, a fun and emotional side.
Indeed, walking down the hall in Cameron Indoor Stadium to meet another reporter for yet another interview, a bit of that fun side shows. Just out of the shower, wearing a Cancun T-shirt and a pair of oversized, fuzzy orange-and-black tiger-striped pants, she introduced herself. Despite a persistent cough, her stony countenance morphed into a warm smile.
"A lot of people often say I look mean out here on the court, because I don't really smile or talk on the court," she said. "That's kind of been a problem; the coaches want me to talk. But that's how I've always been. I'll get emotional at times, but I'm just always concentrated and in my own little world. I've always been like that. People ask, 'Are you happy?'"
The answer is yes. Tillis is very happy. Still under the weather before her final regular-season game, Tillis has been replaced by Michele Matyasovsky in the starting lineup. Her 21 minutes against Virginia off the bench last week reflected her slump: 1-for-5 shooting, including two missed treys and only four rebounds.
In spite of all that, Tillis has had a great freshman season, scoring 11.1 points per game (third on the team), and the girl who knew since fourth grade that she wanted to play basketball feels she is improving all the time.
For all the new territory she has covered this season at Duke, there are also many new opportunities she has yet to capitalize on. One of those is dunking.
"I actually did it the other day in practice," said Tillis, adding that she is anxious to try it in an upcoming game.
Despite the fact that the wild-haired freshman's unbridled game might cause Goestenkors to tear her own hair out from time to time, Tillis has no plans to give up her main trademark. When she graduates in four years, she knows exactly what her main strength will be-the same as it was when she arrived in Durham and the same it was in Tulsa growing up.
"It will [always] be versatility," Tillis said. "I think my game is versatile, posting up, shooting the three, driving, a little bit of everything. I think that's just who I am, and I've kind of learned to accept that."
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