Pull-Up Pulliam

Lindsey Pulliam: Our Lady of Good Counsel, Northwestern University, and the Shot That Ended 28 Years of Waiting

Mar 24, 2026

Women’s History Month 2026 · Day 23 · Diary of a Girl’s Basketball Coach

She started playing basketball at five years old in a developmental league in the DMV area, competing against boys. From the first moment she was on a court, she loved it with a clarity she never had to question. She would grow up in Silver Spring, Maryland, and she would carry that love from a rec league in the DMV to the biggest stage in women’s college basketball — and she would do it by developing a pull-up jumper so reliable that it became her identity.

Everyone called her “Pull-Up Pulliam.”

The nickname wasn’t an insult or a limitation. It was a description of a player who had found the most efficient version of her own game and mastered it so completely that opposing defenses built their entire game plans around taking it away. They could not.

Our Lady of Good Counsel

Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland — a school in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference, competing against some of the best programs in the Mid-Atlantic region — produced a player who finished her high school career as one of the most decorated in the WCAC.

Lindsey Pulliam was named WCAC Co-Player of the Year as a junior and earned Washington Post First Team All-Met recognition in the same year. She was the Montgomery Private Schools Player of the Year and a USA Today Maryland Girls Basketball First Team selection. Her team went 24-7 in the WCAC in 2015-16 and was ranked No. 22 nationally by ESPN.

On the AAU circuit, she reached Nike Nationals in 2015 with the Fairfax Stars and returned to Nike Nationals in 2016 with Takeover, earning All-Tournament honors. She was a four-star recruit entering college, one of the top prospects in Maryland.

She was also a member of the Honor Roll throughout her high school career.

She chose Northwestern University.

Building Something in Evanston

The Big Ten was not a traditional destination for Maryland players at the time. The conference was competitive, physical, and brutal on guards who couldn’t expand their games beyond one dimension. What Lindsey Pulliam built over four years in Evanston is the story of someone who understood that limitation and spent every offseason methodically eliminating it.

Her freshman year she led Northwestern in scoring at 15 points per game — thirteenth in the entire Big Ten — and shot 81.8 percent from the free throw line, third-best in the conference. She scored in double figures in game after game on a team that needed her to do exactly that from day one. The program had been building toward something, and she arrived as the engine of what was coming.

Sophomore year, she accelerated. She became the fastest player in Northwestern women’s basketball history to reach 1,000 career points. She finished third in total points in the entire Big Ten Conference that season — as a sophomore — reaching double figures in 34 of 36 games. A coach sat her down at the end of that year and told her the honest truth: the pull-up jumper was extraordinary, but if she didn’t develop more dimensions to her game, she would plateau. She went into the offseason and did the work.

Junior year was the response. She averaged 18.8 points per game — 36th in the country — and led Northwestern to the first Big Ten Championship since 1990. She was named to the All-Big Ten First Team unanimously and earned an AP All-America Honorable Mention. She scored more than 20 points on 14 separate occasions. The offense ran through her every night, and she carried it with the kind of consistency that builds programs. That team was projected to be a top-four seed in the NCAA Tournament before COVID-19 canceled the postseason — a loss that hit her and her teammates with the particular cruelty of an opportunity that simply disappears.

“Coming into Northwestern I wanted to leave as one of the greatest to come through the program,” she said. “To know I’m doing things like that is really special to me, and I’ve got a lot more work to do.”

Her senior year, she was named Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year by the media, appeared on the Naismith Trophy Watch List and the Wade Trophy Watch List, and averaged 15.5 points per game on a team that was finally, finally going to get to play in March.

March 22, 2021, San Antonio

Northwestern had not won an NCAA Tournament game in 28 years. The program had made the tournament in 2021 after missing it for five consecutive seasons. They were the seventh seed. UCF was the tenth seed. The game was played in a bubble in San Antonio with no fans in the arena, the echoes of an empty building carrying every dribble.

Veronica Burton — averaging nearly 17 points per game, the team’s second star — scored four points and fouled out. The load fell entirely on one person.

Lindsey Pulliam played all 40 minutes.

She scored 25 points on 9-of-16 shooting. When UCF went on a 6-0 run early, it was Pulliam who stopped it. When Northwestern needed a basket in the third quarter, she hit a fadeaway with the shot clock expiring — the ball bouncing on the rim, hanging, then dropping — and drew the foul. When UCF cut the lead to six in the fourth quarter, it was Pulliam who answered with a three-point play to push it back to nine. When the game was over and Northwestern had won 62-51, she walked off the court dribbling out the clock and holding up one finger.

This win was just the first.

She had 2,021 career points. She had just become the third Northwestern player ever to score 2,000 career points, joining Anucha Browne and Nia Coffey. Coach Joe McKeown said: “To score 2,000 points in the Big Ten, with everybody trying to guard you, is amazing. It doesn’t happen every day. To be in that company says a lot about Lindsey.”

She was 21 years old. She had just given a program back something it had lost before she was born.

The Career, Complete

She finished at Northwestern having started 123 of 124 games. Career average: 16.5 points per game. Career totals: 2,000+ points, 120 steals, 25 blocks. Third all-time scorer in program history. Fastest to 1,000 points in program history. A three-time All-Big Ten honoree. An AP All-American.

“She set the bar so high,” coach McKeown said. “She cared more about being part of a great team than she did about being a great player. There’s a humility that she had that allowed her to be great.”

After Northwestern

On April 15, 2021, her name was called: Atlanta Dream, third round, 27th overall pick in the 2021 WNBA Draft. She became only the third Northwestern player ever drafted into the WNBA, following Nia Coffey and Amy Jaeschke.

“Finally seeing my name across the board, it was a wow moment,” she said. “All the work that I put in has finally come to light and my dream has finally come true.”

Her professional career has taken her across the world. Turkey, where she averaged 14.7 points and 3.5 rebounds in the Turkish Women’s Super League. Spain, where she played in the Liga Femenina de Baloncesto — the top tier of Spanish women’s basketball. Iceland, where she signed with reigning champions Valur. She has also played in Israel, Slovakia, and Mexico. She earned a silver medal representing Team USA at the 2019 Pan American Games.

She started playing basketball at five years old in a developmental league, competing against boys. She grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. She perfected a pull-up jumper that nobody could stop. She became one of the greatest players in Northwestern history. She ended 28 years of NCAA Tournament failure with 25 points in 40 minutes and one finger held high.

Pull-up Pulliam. From Montgomery County to the world.

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