Wofford women’s basketball head coach Jimmy Garrity sometimes gives that role to his all-conference player. Just to keep her involved.
Chloe Wanink was averaging 22 points when she suffered a knee injuury on Nov. 30. She was 8-for-9 shooting in that game. Wanink had surgery Friday and will miss the rest of the season.
“Once in a while during timeouts, I tell her, ‘This is your huddle,’ ” Garrity said. “She does some coaching in practice. She’s good at it. I don’t want to see her just sitting. And she doesn’t want that, either.”
Wanink might be a coach in waiting, but right now she is also Wofford’s best player in waiting, too. Wanink, a junior from Cameron, Wis., would be leading the Southern Conference in scoring if she still had enough games to quality. Last season, she was the only one in the SoCon to rank among the top 10 in points, rebounds and assists. She led the league in 3-point percentage and free throw percentage.
“She’s a great leader, but the thing for us is that she could flat-out score it,” Garrity said. “When plays broke down, she could just go get a bucket. We’re having a hard time scoring now. We’re trying to manufacture good shots and it’s tough.
“We’re still trying to learn how to play without her. The game against North Florida (69-57 win on New Year’s Day) was the best we had done since she went out. Until then, I thought everybody was trying to make up for the loss of her points. That didn’t help us. We just need players to be the best they can be. We don’t need them to be something else.”
The good news was that the injury happened soon enough, in the seventh game, to make Wanink eligible for a redshirt season. Nine games was the cutoff. So she will have two more years of eligibility and should be fully healed by the time next season rolls around.
“I just always try to look at the positives,” Wanink said. “I know we can be competitive without me and I believe we can definitely make a run. As long as everybody plays together, plays like they can and doesn’t try to do too much, I think we’ll be OK.”
Sounds like a coach already, huh?