FORT COLLINS, Colo. — It's easy to let size fool you. But at the moment you allow Colorado State point guard McKenna Hofschild get one extra step, she makes the fool of you.
"I've kind of had to have that my whole life," she said. "I'm very undersized, I've always been. My physical features are not something you look at and think, 'yeah, she's a basketball player.'"
Listed generously at 5'5," Hofschild has a bulldog mentality that has led to a chip on her shoulder large enough to compensate for any other size discrepancies.
"You know, it gets big sometimes and then other times I think, 'why do I have a chip on my shoulder?' I'm just out there playing the game that I love with the people I love," she said. "But there's definitely something inside of me that I like to prove people wrong and I like to kind of show people that there were a lot of people that passed up on me just because of my physical features, and so just to be here and to be able to prove people wrong is kind of a nice feeling as well."
The story bears striking resemblance to a now-famous Ram: an undersized, underrecruited player out of high school, who went on to be a six-time WNBA All-Star, and most recently the WNBA Coach of the Year.
"Greatness," Hofschild described Becky Hammon. "I mean, you don't walk around CSU, you don't come into Moby without hearing her name and seeing pictures of her, I mean she's everywhere."
Hofschild is matching that greatness. In her All-American year, Becky Hammon averaged 22.9 points per game, 4.8 assists, and shot 49.6 percent. Hofschild, on the other hand, just shy with 21.5 points per game, but her 7.3 assists per game ranks 4th in college basketball, and her 51.7 percent shooting average ranks 52nd.
"To just be in the same situation as her, is just awesome, it's so cool, and I'm so grateful for it," she said.
The highly-touted Nancy Lieberman recognizes the top point guard in women’s NCAA Division I college basketball. Hofschild cracked the top-10 list.
"To be on a list with people like Caitlin Clark, who I've said before is going to go down as one of the best to ever do it once her career is over at Iowa, it's really, really awesome," she said.
With one more year of eligibility, she plans to return to Colorado State to ball out one more year while getting her master's degree. After that? The future is unknown...but the possibilities are pleasing.
"My dream at the end of the day is to a great Division I basketball coach."
Not just any coach.
"I want to be the best."
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