It was sometime past midnight, and Jolette Law sat across the table from C. Vivian Stringer at Champions Sports bar in the lobby of the Indianapolis Marriot during this year’s Final Four.

It almost felt like they were back at Rutgers, where the current Illinois women’s basketball head coach was Stringer’s assistant for 12 years, when the two would meet at Delta’s restaurant in New Brunswick, N.J., and sit for hours talking shop.

At one point Stringer, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame two years ago, arranged five yellow Splenda packets and moved them toward the creamer on the table.

“What’ll you do when I do this?” Stringer asked.

“Well, I’ll shut this down and I’ll shut this down. I’ll trap this ball screen,” Law replied, moving five pink Sweet ‘N Low packets into a defensive set, and the dialog continued back and forth in the late-night game of Splenda versus Sweet ‘N Low.

“Everyone was like, ‘What are they doing?” Law said afterward.

The two bounced ideas off each other for hours, discussing subjects ranging from 6-foot-3 Lana Rukavina’s improved shooting to the importance of Law’s perseverance through struggles as a head coach.

Stringer told Law she needs to stay the course, as she always has, and to stay true to her ideals as a hard-working coach, who won’t take anything less than a player buying into her program.

It was just like old times.

“It was good therapy for me,” Law said.

Law misses those days.

“I don’t get enough of this,” Stringer told her. “I’m getting ready to go hibernate for two weeks, get all my tapes. Jolette, why don’t you come up to Jersey?”

While the offer was tempting, Law couldn’t accept. She had her own team to work with back home. Illinois only won nine games last season, but Law sees something in this group of players that others don’t. She she’s a young group of players who are finally buying into her program. She sees a culmination of work and perseverance through difficult situations. She sees a team that is ready to win.

Even if others don’t see it, Law has complete and unending faith in herself that she will not fail.

… … …

The Illinois women’s basketball players don’t know much about Jolette Law the player.

Sure, they’ve seen the lone Jolette Law clip on YouTube. The short, Jheri-curled Iowa point guard with sweatbands covering her forearms catches the ball at her team’s own 3-point line with two seconds left in the first half, takes two dribbles to the center circle, and hurls her entire body behind the ball, which sails in a perfect arc as Law runs after it.

She gets only as far as the opposing team’s 3-point line when the ball falls into the basket, and the little junior from Florence, S.C., leaps in the air twice and pumps her fist emphatically before sprinting back the other way into her team’s locker room.

They know the half-court shot was her specialty when she played for the Harlem Globetrotters (though sophomore forward Kersten Magrum claims Law’s accuracy isn’t what it supposedly used to be), on which she was the first women’s player ever, and that she was in M.C. Hammer’s “2 Legit 2 Quit” music video.

“We always look at that and we laugh at it. She tells us that she used to be able to dunk. We don’t believe it,” sophomore guard Adrienne GodBold said. “Other than that, we don’t know too much.”

What her young team knows firsthand about Law is that no one will outwork her.

Law doesn’t have a husband or kids, and she doesn’t have many other hobbies, especially during the season. Basketball is her life.

Most days, and always after losses, which were numerous in a 9-23 season, she’ll come to practice the next morning with bloodshot eyes.

After most people leave Ubben Basketball Complex at 4 or 5 p.m., she sits in her office and watches tape until 9 or 10. Then she goes home to her theater room and watches more game footage. First she looks at the opposing team’s offensive flow. Then she analyzes the team’s defensive flow. Finally, she’ll focus on the opposing coaches, how they approach the game and what they say in important situations. She said Ohio State head coach Jim Foster has gotten smart — he now covers his mouth before giving important information to his players.

“She’d tell us, ‘I’ve been up since four in the morning, figuring out how we can get better,’” GodBold said.

Law used to be known as a drill sergeant head coach, famous for her preseason conditioning drills, her unwavering intensity in practice and her long speeches after games, which sometimes kept the media waiting half an hour for her at press conferences.

For this team, she’s changed. Law finally has a team of her players, no holdovers from the Theresa Grentz era. In 2009, there was a rift between the seniors — Lacey Simpson, Jenna Smith and Whitney Toone — and the young players who were part of the third-ranked recruiting class in the country, according to ESPN, but weren’t yet ready to compete in the upper echelon of the Big Ten.

Finally, Law has a team that buys in, with players that she can say with confidence want to be at Illinois. Every year before 2011, at least one player left the program. Between her first and second years it was star guard Lori Bjork. Then, after the first game last year, it was Destiny Williams, the cornerstone of that star recruiting class, and after that season Brianna Jones was kicked off the team and Fabiola Josil transferred.

The program’s biggest hit was losing Williams. The forward out of Benton Harbor transferred after playing just seven minutes against Temple, the first game of the 2009 season.

As the years go by, coaches see more and more players transfer in women’s college basketball, and it hasn’t been an easy adjustment for Law.

Today’s kids want instant gratification without putting in the work, Law says. North Carolina head coach Sylvia Hatchell says today’s parents want to be their kids’ best friends rather than their disciplinarians.

“Sometimes kids aren’t respectful like they used to be or they need to be. That’s because we’ve allowed that to be,” Hatchell said.

“It’s different now. It’s tougher. Nowadays kids are not self-disciplined, as Jolette was.”

… … …

The kids in Florence, S.C., all thought 11-year-old Ty Burgess would be in the NBA someday.

“Everyone in the whole area was talking Ty, Ty Burgess, Ty Burgess,” said Michael Law, Jolette’s older brother. “The kid was super good. He was like a little young phenom kid.”

Ty would become Law’s first big opponent.

Whenever he was at the local Boy’s Club (now called the Boys and Girls Club), 18-year-old Michael would let 11-year-old Jolette in through the back door, where she would practice with her brother.

One day, Michael told Jolette she was going to play Ty, one-on-one.

“I don’t want to play Ty, I don’t want to play Ty,” Jolette said, tears welling in her eyes.

But eventually Jolette relented. She was always clamoring for her brother’s approval.

She remembers that when she was six, he had her dribbling through cones in their driveway, with ankle weights strapped to her leg right above Michael’s combat boots, which they stuffed with extra socks so they would fit her feet.

“Right hand!” Michael would yell. “Now left hand!”

For years, Michael molded Jolette into a superstar, and little Jolette was always willing to accept his help.

So when Michael told her to “stop acting like a girl,” and play Ty, she stopped crying and played Ty, even though in her mind she was thinking, “Wait, but I am a girl.”

The first time they played, Ty beat Jolette. The same thing happened the second time. And the third time.

But the games kept getting closer and closer. Eventually, the kids at the Boys Club started gathering around to see Jolette, the challenger, against Ty, the champion.

And finally Law started to beat Ty Burgess.

“A lot of people were surprised. I wasn’t surprised, because I knew if she put her mind to it, she could do anything she wanted to do,” Michael said.

“The first time she beat him, it was monumental. To see her win that first time, it made me continue to keep pushing her.”

… … …

Sylvia Hatchell was less than a 10-mile drive from Law’s Wilson High School when she was coach at Francis Marion University.

Assertive and aggressive — that’s how Hatchell described Law’s play. Law didn’t have to shoot from the outside to be effective, she could always get past her defender and make it to the basket or dish to an open teammate.

Extraordinary court vision and dribbling skills led to her being named a Kodak All-American three times while at Wilson.

Players in the mid-1980s didn’t receive as much exposure as they do now, so coaches from big colleges didn’t always know about some of the best talent if they weren’t close to their school’s location. This allowed smaller schools, like Francis Marion, to snare big players like Pearl Moore, Law’s cousin who averaged more than 31 points in her last three years of college, topping out at 33.6 points as a junior.

Hatchell was hoping she could bring Law to Francis Marion. But Law was different, and before long, she had offers from schools like South Carolina, UCLA and Clemson.

While coaching with Stringer at the 1985 World University Games, Hatchell told Stringer, then head coach at Iowa, about Law.

“Vivian, there’s this little kid in Florence, this kid is a player, now,’” Hatchell said in her heavy Carolina accent. “You need to send one of your assistants down and watch her play.”

A few months later, Stringer sent assistant coach Marianna Freeman to watch Law play. As soon as the game ended, Freeman went outside to the school pay phone.

“You need to come down here,” Hatchell remembers Freeman telling Stringer.

Soon after, Law got a call from Stringer.

Stringer asked in her soft voice, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

“You know, Coach Stringer, I don’t know,” Law said. “All I can tell you is that whatever I’m doing, I’m going to be on the top of that. I don’t like being second best.”

After a few more conversations and a home visit, Law was set.

“I said, there’s something about this woman that I know she’s going to get the most out of me,” Law said.

… … …

Law wanted out her freshman year at Iowa.

She was farther from home than she’d ever been. It was cold, she had gained weight and worst of all, she wasn’t playing.

So she called Michael.

She’d always thought about heading to UCLA to be closer to her brother, who moved to California to play semi-pro basketball while working as a physical therapist, and she even thought about going back to her home state that she missed so much.

Michael had received Division I offers to play basketball upon high school graduation, but instead chose to attend a small school in South Carolina, where they let him play basketball and baseball, a decision he regretted.

Law called her brother and sobbed.

“I don’t want to be here, I want to transfer,” Law said.

“You’re not going to quit,” he told her. “Quitting is not in your vocabulary. I’ve always taught you, you make a decision and you stick it out. You’ve been knocked down, but you haven’t been knocked out.”

So after a long conversation with Michael, Law decided she needed to stay at Iowa.

A month later, her father, Joe, and about a hundred friends and family from Florence drove to watch her play at N.C. State.

Law knew there was a chance she wouldn’t get in the game — she’d only played a few minutes all year.

Sure enough, with four minutes left, Law wasn’t in the game, even though the Hawkeyes led by 20. Joe started a chant of “We want Law, we want Law.”

Law never got in the game.

“My daddy was furious,” Law said. “If you could see smoke and steam coming out of his ears, you would have.”

Joe angrily approached Stringer.

“He wanted to take me on the bus right then and there,” Law remembers.

Stringer called Law over.

“Are you learning?” she asked Law. “Would you tell your daddy if you wanted to leave?”

Had it not been for her conversation with Michael a month earlier, Law’s answer may have been different.

“No daddy, I’m going to roll with her, she’s teaching me a lot,” Law said.

At the end of the season, she told Stringer, “Next year, I’m going to come back as the player you recruited.”

Law came back in great shape, ready to be a star.

And she was. She started the first game of the season and never looked back. She was twice a First-Team All-Big Ten selection and would eventually be named to the University of Iowa Hall of Fame.

Most importantly, over the next three years she built the foundation of perhaps the most important relationship of her life.

Stringer, who was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame along with Michael Jordan, Jerry Sloan and John Stockton in 2009, helped Law get her first coaching job as an assistant at Ball State after she played for the Globetrotters for four years.

“I’m going to let them have you for a year, but as soon as I get an opening, you’re coming with me,” Stringer said.

The next year, Law got a call from Stringer.

“I’m leaving Iowa,” Stringer said. Law was in disbelief.

“I’m leaving, I’m going to the east coast. I need you to call your boss, because you’re coming with me,” she said.

A few days later, Law was at the press conference for Stringer’s hiring, wearing the black, white and red of Rutgers. Stringer would replace Theresa Greintz, who left to coach at Illinois.

Law would call New Brunswick her home for 12 years before leaving to coach at Illinois.

… … …

The sad reality is that today, it seems, a player in Law’s situation is more likely to transfer.

Hatchell has noticed more and more transfers over the last 10 years across college basketball and kids, she says, are just different nowadays. Two players transferred from North Carolina after the 2009 season.

“They did not put the work in that I wanted them to do,” Hatchell said. “Every player is not the right fit for every school. But if you look across the country, there are kids transferring more than ever. In my 25 years, I can count, maybe like five or six.”

In 2009, Kelsey Bone was the second-ranked high school recruit by ESPN behind Brittany Griner, and had the Illini in her top three schools. Bone, though, pledged herself to Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks and decided to transfer at year’s end.

Michael Law now runs an AAU program, California Supreme, and is a consultant for prospective pro basketball players, advising them on which agent to pick and the process they need to go about.

“Kids have changed a lot,” Jolette’s older brother said. “Now, everyone wants to be pampered, babied, and it’s like, sometimes it’s hard to motivate a lot of these kids.

“They want it, but they don’t want to work for it.”

… … …

Fall 2009 was stressful for Law.

Tamika Louis was the recruiting coordinator who helped Law bring in the 2009 recruiting class — highlighted by Williams — that was one of the best in the country. But Louis left the program less than a month before those players had their first official practice.

It’s tough to get a straight answer out of anyone as to the conditions of Louis’s departure, but what is clear is that the split was not amicable.

For a former assistant coach who had stayed at the same program with the same head coach for 12 years, losing Louis was hard.

“Coach Stringer, in her book, said that she could go to sleep at night knowing that I had her back. I got you. For good times, through bad times, through any kind of times,” Law said.

“It’s just making sure that you have people around you that are on that same page, that are about what you’re about and in it for the right reasons. You might think everybody’s in it for you, but it makes you more aware. Everybody don’t like Jolette.”

Williams herself left the team months later, and was a starter for the top-seeded Baylor Bears this year in the NCAA tournament, where she averaged seven points and 7.8 rebounds during their Elite Eight run.

Williams’ mother, Angelia Brohiri, told the Champaign News-Gazette afterward that Williams’ departure didn’t have anything to do with Louis leaving, but there are discrepancies between her story and Law’s. Brohiri also told the Gazette, “I promised (Jolette) Law that I would not say why (as) long as Destiny was released.”

Law said that was not true.

In any case, Law said her team was more worried about her than Louis during that ordeal.

“At the bottom line, they were like, ‘Are you OK?’” Law said. “If they were all worried about (Louis leaving), they all would’ve left. There was one of them that was connected and left. But the rest of them, they didn’t, they stayed.”

Upon arriving at Baylor, Williams told media outlets she wanted to leave Illinois the moment she got to campus, and that she thought it was suspicious that three out of the four coaches that recruited her left before the end of the 2009-10 season.

“I thought, ‘Wait a minute, why is everybody leaving?’” she told the Waco Tribune.

She sat down and convinced Baylor’s Kim Mulkey that she would buy into her program. It seems as if she has.

In truth, Louis is the only Illinois coach who left in a questionable, abrupt manner.

Karen Middleton left after the 2009 season to take over a head coaching job at Western Carolina, and Patrick Klein returned to his native Ohio because of family issues. He is now on the staff at Ohio State, where he started his career as a graduate assistant.

Law looks at Williams’ situation as a kid simply not fitting in with the team.

“People say, ‘Why could you let go of the No. 8 kid in the country?’” Law said.

“I see a whole before I see one. If you’re not a part of a whole, it can’t go. That’s the main thing that’s kept me balanced and kept me focused and kept me sane.”

Law sees the situation as a bump in the road — something that made her life more difficult, and led to more losses, but also a learning experience.

Sure, she hears the outside criticism, the calls for her job and the questions about her extension, which she received after three years and no NCAA tournament appearances. From her angle, though, the program is better off in the long term.

You’d never know by her demeanor that her team lost 23 games last year.

“These kids are everything we teach them to be. We’re taking them to another level,” she said with excitement in her voice.

Her words are eerily similar to those she uttered two years ago, when she would speak excitedly about her 2009 recruiting class.

But this group — with fewer flashy names and less individual talent — is indisputably different.

Law finally has a group, though, that wants wholeheartedly to learn from her and play for her.

Law has stayed the course, and if she wins next season, she’ll answer a lot of questions about her coaching ability. If she doesn’t, she’ll raise a lot more.

One thing is clear, though: People associated with Law are sure she’ll succeed.

“She’ll be fine because she knows what she’s doing. She’ll get some more kids in there and she’ll be fine,” Hatchell said.

“All the other coaches just love her to death. She has a great reputation. All the other coaches just think the world of her and they just have tremendous respect for her as a former player, as a person and as a coach.”

And why shouldn’t they believe she’ll succeed? She always has.

“I’ve been knocked down, like getting beat by Ty. He knocked me down every day, every day,” Law said. “I lose assistants and it was a bad situation. But you can’t dwell on it. I know that right now, there’s something positive. There’s a rainbow at the end of this. I learned from it, and it made me stronger. It made me more aware of a lot of things.”