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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 28, ISSUE 3 69 Gators' coaching change, to get a bulk of the minutes. In the two games after Murphy departed, McLaughlin totaled 38 and 32 minutes, upping her season average to more than 25 per game. "She's one that is very confident, but can lose confi- dence, like anyone," Versyp said, "and in our situation, she has to play a lot of minutes." That McLaughlin is playing the point is a credit to the work she's put in over the years. When Hollins, a former Fort Wayne North Side star who played at Wright State and professionally overseas, started training McLaughlin when she was in seventh grade, he didn't see much more than a shooter. And through the first couple seasons at Homestead, college coaches thought the same, he said, considering Mc- Laughlin a shooter — and a good one — but nothing else. But McLaughlin set out to change that, working to turn herself into a more versatile player. By the time she was a senior, she was playing the point for Home- stead and led the Spartans to the title. "One of the things that separates her from a lot of the kids that I train — and I had Caleb Swanigan, he was one of the other ones who was really good in my pro- gram — is translation," Hollins said. "You could teach them something on a Friday night and then Saturday in the game, they're able to translate it and do some of the same things you talked about on Friday. "A lot of kids, they want it and want to work hard, but sometimes I tell the parents, 'It might take five months, it might take a year, it might take a couple years.' But with Karissa, she's able to get an understanding of it and translate it right then and there. That's separated her from other kids who might take a year or two to get an understanding of what is expected." It means, too, that McLaughlin's on an upward tra- jectory. "She can shoot the ball like crazy," Keys said. "... She's been awesome and only a freshman playing the point guard position, so there's going to be ups and downs, but I'm constantly talking to her and she's constantly open for feedback." And McLaughlin is likely to keep showing up at the gym, at all hours. It wasn't only the early morning in Fort Wayne, Hollins said. There'd be days when McLaughlin would show up at 5 a.m. only to be back 12 hours later. The schedule was a bit odd for a high school student, but she wouldn't have done anything differently. "If you want to be great, you have to put the time in," she said. "But no one is going to be in the gym at 5 a.m., so that was the perfect time to go do it. You want to get as much reps as possible. "People often thought I was crazy, but I loved being crazy I guess." j Download... An updated Rivals.com mobile app for access to GoldandBlack.com. Search at Google Play and the App Store