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34 GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED larly against bigger opponents in the lane, that gives her a chance to move around others. But there's more to it. Mc- Bryde is right-handed but seems equally proficient with her left near the basket. She'll post on the block, fake to her left, then drop back right, spinning the ball into the hoop with her left hand. Or she'll shoot hooks. Or she'll fake left and go right. Or get caught too far under the basket but still twist her body to get an angle, then find a way to get the ball off the glass and in. One move barely ever looks like the next. "Her ability to finish is uncanny," Wisdom-Hylton said. "I've never seen somebody mid-air, being able to kind of change her shot and still get it off. Some- times, I'm like, 'Oh that's blocked,' then all of a sud- den she goes up and scores or finishes through con- tact. And she's somebody who's not the biggest, not the strongest out there, but is still able to get buck- ets." McBryde doesn't know where the ability to go with either hand stems from. She's right-handed all the way — writes with it, throws, everything else (al- though she kicks left-footed) — but feels just as strong with the left in the paint. "Every time I do a drill in practice — or training my whole life — I'd work on my right hand, then do the same with my left," she said. "Just being consis- tent in that aspect (has really helped). "But I honestly don't know. People tell me I can fin- ish really well inside. And I don't know why. I don't know. A lot is focusing, keying on the basket and nat- urally being able to shoot with both hands." McBryde couldn't work on it much during the sum- mer, however, because she couldn't work on much of anything. In what became somewhat of an ongoing mystery, McBryde had an injury that prevented her from sum- mer conditioning; after weeks trying to determine the problem, it was discovered that a lower back issue was causing her pain along the sciatic nerve down her right leg. And that, in turn, was causing her right foot to go numb. "We were trying so hard to fig- ure out what it was. It took a long time and that was frustrating as well," she said. "Before we went to Italy (in August), I had to get an injection and that helped — it's why I started playing — but that flight back really killed me. That's why I was out some of the preseason and I tried to get back to conditioning, but I really couldn't develop and do the workouts that my teammates were doing. "Everybody was asking me about it, like, 'What's wrong? What's wrong? Why aren't you out here with us?' And it was frustrating because I couldn't give them an answer, but I just knew something was wrong. When the diagnosis came, I was like, 'OK, this is what it is and I can move forward.'" McBryde rehabbed and got close to a return in ear- ly October but then she had a concussion that forced her out of the first week of practice. All of those fac- tors possibly contributed to her passive approach ear- ly. In Purdue's first eight games, McBryde averaged only 2.4 points per game. "She was very timid," Wisdom-Hylton said. "And she was coming off injury too, so she wasn't herself. Now that she's more comfortable in our system, of- fensively and defensively, it's given her that confi- dence that she needs." McBryde has room to get better. She calls herself "scrawny" and an offseason — a healthy one — in the weight room could help her be- come a stronger defender. And offensively, she could expand her game toward the perimeter. She's a quali- ty jump-shooter, though she's not shown so regularly, "I see her averaging a double-double for us in the short future. ... She can score and we're trying to get her the ball in positions to be successful." Purdue assistant coach Lindsay Wis- dom-Hylton