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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2 89 think I am. "I feel I still have a lot of room to improve on. I'm not satisfied with the level I'm at and know I can improve. There's that potential that I know that I have." Gony didn't have a wealth of offers when she chose the Boilermakers, doing so over South Dakota State and other smaller schools. But she received attention from Purdue during the AAU season — she played summer ball only the last two summers — with Versyp and Co. deciding to keep an eye on her development. And that continued through the summer, until Purdue felt comfortable extending the offer. Others might have been close, too, including Nebraska, where Gony had been to camps over the summer. Perhaps a raw offensive game is a reason why, but Perry says Gony's ceiling is high. "Tremendously high," said Perry, who is entering his second season as Lincoln's head coach. "We didn't know she could do some of the things she's been doing (on offense), until giving her the freedom to do them. Then, it's like, 'Oh, I didn't know you could shoot like that.' Or 'I didn't know your footwork was like that.' Because she had always just been tied to the block. "Before I got here, she wasn't in attack mode as much, so she would be hesitant. But now, she's trying to get that scorers' mentality, like, 'You're big time. We throw the ball down to you, we're looking for you to put it in the basket.' We want her thinking shoot first, then reacting off of the double team, things like that. She's still picking those things up because it wasn't taught to her. She just didn't have that natural instinct, so she's still learning how to be more offensive-minded, along with having her great defensive presence as well." Perry receives the phone calls frequently, maybe even more often now that Gony is a Purdue commitment. It's motivated her to take another step forward, know- ing that in a year she'll be on a much bigger stage. "She took her game to a higher level, she started going harder," he said. "It just changed her mindset to know that, 'Hey, my hard work is paying off to have a school like Purdue look at me.'" j C E L E B R A T E O U R S E N I O R S ! 97 th Purdue-Kiwanis Senior Appreciation Banquet Sponsored by the Lafayette Kiwanis Club Sunday, December 10, 11:30 a.m. Purdue Memorial Union Ballrooms Honoring the 2017 Boilermaker Football Team Media Partners Tickets available from Kiwanis members, or online at www.KiwanisLafayetteIN.org/footballbanquet