Connor McNelis had his dinner requests in when he headed home to Hattiesburg, Miss., earlier this month: Fried chicken, white beans and rice, cornbread and spaghetti.
He had one more ask for the chef, who doubles as his mother.
" 'Mom, you're not going to ask me any questions, are you?' Joye Lee-McNelis recalled her son imploring. " 'I don't need anybody to mess with my mind.' "
McNelis wanted to stay locked in.
The following night, he and his mom would share the same court at Reed Green Coliseum, just on opposite benches -- McNelis as one of Arkansas State's assistant coaches and Lee-McNelis in her 19th season at the helm of Southern Mississippi's women's basketball program.
Mother and son will collide again tonight as the Red Wolves host the Golden Eagles in Jonesboro, marking the fifth meeting in six seasons between Connor and Joye. And insofar as these head-to-head matchups were perhaps inevitable with McNelis, 28, following his mom into the coaching profession, the second-year ASU assistant doesn't treat them any differently than other games.
"It's a special moment," McNelis said. "But ... at the end of the day, it is a game we've got to win, so regardless of who it is, you've got to try to kick their butt."
'Already a coach'
A basketball lifer, Lee-McNelis, 60, considers coaching "a calling." After scoring 1,510 points during four seasons at Southern Mississippi, Lee-McNelis was hired as head coach at Memphis in 1991 and has won more than 500 games over the past three decades.
As soon as Connor could walk, he insisted on having a whistle around his neck. While riding on a firetruck in a Memphis Christmas parade, Rip Scherer --the Tigers' head football coach at the time -- asked a 3-year-old McNelis what he wanted to be when he grew up.
"I already a coach," McNelis quickly retorted.
As McNelis grew older and began working his mom's elite camps, he saw the impact that she was able to have on people, both on the court and off.
"It's her passion for [coaching]," McNelis said. "She's a God-fearing woman and she cares about people. She's very prideful about where she's from, her family and stuff like that.
"Those values, people probably see that day-to-day because that's the way she lives. It's not a secret."
McNelis, if only by osmosis, immersed himself in the game.
When he was little, he would crawl underneath the bench and pull on his mom's leg to deliver an in-game message. McNelis and his older sister Whitney wouldn't be afraid to draw up a play for Lee-McNelis, either.
Once, the pair slipped past their mom and into her team's locker room to deliver a strongly-worded postgame message, demanding the players come to their house at 6 a.m. the next morning to learn how to win.
After high school, McNelis played one season at Emmanuel College before coming back to Hattiesburg, where he served as both a manager for the Golden Eagle men and a student assistant for his mom with the women's team.
Often, that meant being a practice player.
But McNelis found ways to be more than just another body on the floor.
"Connor loves people," Lee-McNelis said. "When ... I would get after a player or kick them out of practice, he would leave practice and go to the locker room to sit, to console, to talk to them, to better understand what was happening. He has a heart for helping young people live a dream."
Making his own name
In February 2004, Lee-McNelis' Memphis team, on the road at Marquette, trailed 60-57 with seven seconds to play.
Lee-McNelis called her standard free-throw breakout, and the ball was supposed to end up in Victoria Crawford's hands. Jonesboro native Jennifer Sullivan, however, opted to shoot instead, missing the would-be game-tying three-pointer.
When Lee-McNelis phoned home after the game, a fiery Connor picked up on the other end.
"He's yelling at me, 'Mom, you should be fired!'" Lee-McNelis said. "I said, 'Why?' [And he said], 'You let Jennifer Sullivan shoot that ball.' "
Lee-McNelis calmly explained that wasn't the plan. But McNelis wasn't having any of it.
In his mind, if Sullivan wouldn't listen to her coach, then she needed to be kicked off the team.
"I'm glad he wasn't my boss," Lee-McNelis quipped.
McNelis, having spent several years with his mom as his boss while in college, spent two seasons as a video coordinator at Florida Atlantic and two more as an assistant at Nicholls State before arriving at ASU in 2021.
"It's good to just get out in the world and see different people's perspectives and just get a holistic view on coaching -- not just a one-dimensional kind of look," McNelis said when asked why he didn't stay on at Southern Mississippi. "I always wanted to do things on my own, I always wanted to pick the hard way."
As much as McNelis wanted to establish a solo career, he and his mom often talk basketball -- at least on weeks when they're not playing one another. That relationship has provided a critical outlet for McNelis, something Red Wolves Coach Destinee Rogers understands well.
Although Rogers' El Dorado team only went head-to-head with Little Rock Christian and her dad Ronald during summer team camps, father thumped daughter each time.
"That's one thing about the Rogers family: It doesn't matter who lines up against you, and me being his daughter, he did not care," Destinee Rogers.
McNelis got a similar taste last month when Southern Mississippi hung a 25-2 third quarter on the Red Wolves and won 61-36. It marked a third straight loss for McNelis against his mom, something he wants nothing more than to change tonight.
Whether that happens, however, is up to the players.
They're the reason both Connor and Joye love coaching, after all.
"If you're wrapped up in your own bubble, that can be kind of miserable," McNelis said. "It's healthy and it's rewarding and it's just enjoyable to be able to pour into people and just see what comes out of it.