Getting Right to the Point
Rams set to shift gears to yesteryear
Mike Brohard
One might think Ryun Williams is in for a dickens of a time this season.
Or – hear his team out – the time of Dickens. The best of times to deal with what some on the outside might deem to be the worst of them.
Some may see this as the time of darkness, the exit of point guard McKenna Hofschild, the all-time assists leader in the program with 779, a total built off the reality her final three seasons she was the only Ram to ever distribute more than 200 in a campaign.
Add to the equation she’s the program’s No. 2 scorer with 2,162 points, one would have to live in an age of foolishness to believe the Rams can quickly and successfully exist without her presence.
As incredulous as it may seem, Williams believes they can.
“McKenna was a once-in-a-generation type of player. We’re not going to have another McKenna,” Williams said, entering his 13th season. “That’s not a bad thing at all. It will be a more collective effort. McKenna was such a unique talent, the ball had to be in her hands for her to be special. We’ve got the same playmaking ability perhaps, just from different positions.”
Getting to the point, the position will be different. Meet Hannah Simental, a transfer from Northern Colorado. Meet freshman Brooke Carlson. Both will be entrusted to run the position. In their own way.
A terrible time to replace a legendary performer. Au contraire.
“I think it’s great from that perspective. For me, this is my last year and coming from a program where I played some point, played some two,” Simental said. “I just take it as a really great opportunity. McKenna laid the path before us, but we’re different players. Brooke has a different perspective on the game, each of us, when we’re on the court.
“It’s a fun way to play. We have five players out there who can shoot the 3, so that opens it up. Then we have a lot of mismatches on the court since we play with speed and a lot of guards, so we’re going to be hard to guard this year. It’s going to be challenging for other teams.”
Throughout his tenure, Williams has not been afraid to change how his team operates depending on the personnel, a flexibility which has led to eight 20-win seasons.
What he sees is a return to a former period of his tenure, the best of times, if you will, when his teams won four consecutive regular-season Mountain West titles. Those were not point guard driven teams because they had a point-forward in Ellen Nystrom who dictated the pace and flow of the offense.
It was her assist record Hofschild broke. And as important a role as Simental and Carlson will hold, the arrival of Emma Ronsiek demands the team alters the approach.
“She’s exactly that,” Williams said. “We’ve gone back and watched film of Ellen and how we got her to her spots and how she got to her spots and how we ran an offense through her at different spots on the floor. Emma is all of that.”
At her best. Nystrom was a conference player of the year averaging 12.7 points, 5.3 assists and 6.6 rebounds per outing. In her four-year career at Creighton, Ronsiek averaged 14.1 points, 2.5 assists and 5.2 rebounds.
This group, the ball really does move. We have some threats at a lot of different positions. It’s been fun to grow this, and we’re still trying to figure some things out with them, but our rhythm and our pace is different.Ryun Williams
Ronsiek’s skillset on the wing – she is more of a shoot-first version of Nystrom – comes with the ability to grab a defensive board and push the pace by bringing the ball up the court herself.
And Marta Leimane can do it as well. As can Hannah Ronsiek. All of it frees Simental and Carlson to be themselves, which is all a fifth-year and a freshman can ask for entering a program.
“It’s awesome just to have them trusting me, and I can trust the players and the coaches as much as they trust me,” said Carlson, who scored more than 2,200 points in her prep career. “Just being able to play as myself, not having to switch my game up, it builds more confidence in who I am and I can play how I play.”
Simental likes it too. At this point, she joked her game isn’t changing, though she feels the young pup she’s mentoring has shown her a few new tricks with the speed aspect of her game.
They will be conductors of the offense, the ones who start to tip the dominoes, though it’s not their initial pass leading to the final one being knocked down. To Williams, it’s not beyond comprehension to feel the team’s assists numbers won’t vary that much.
“The energy in the pass is a lot more prevalent in this group than previous years. McKenna was so good off the bounce, so we played to that,” Williams said. “This group, the ball really does move. We have some threats at a lot of different positions. It’s been fun to grow this, and we’re still trying to figure some things out with them, but our rhythm and our pace is different.
“We got a fair amount of assists in our fastbreak game with McKenna, and maybe we don’t have that type of punch right now. In the half, I think we will surely exceed what we did last year. I think we could equal that.”
Because of the style the Rams played with Hofschild at the point, they counted on her to make the one quick pass which led to the shot. There weren’t a lot of assists left to go around. Folks forget Sanna Strom was second on the team with 52. Or than Hannah Rosiek had 41 and Leimane 33.
Williams sees the trio has very adept passers with court vision, and with the ball moving around the way it will have to, that key pass can now come from anywhere, not just where people once expected.
To be that type of point guard, well, it’s a good time. Especially a young one.
Carlson watched Hofschild play, and some of that game is in her. She also has the chance to learn from Simental, which has broadened the way she sees the game and the floor.
“Especially having the opportunity to watch her and then also learning from Hannah and seeing what I can get better with and lead myself into becoming a better player and trying to take over where I fit in,” Carlson said. “Having the comparison is awesome, but at the same time, we’re each our own player and we create different ways for ourselves down a different avenue.
“It’s nice to have someone with that much experience and the way she sees the game. She’s a really smart player, and I need to take after her that way. Being able to follow how she is going through all the process, it’s cool to see that and what I can take from her game and add it to mine.”
To those who feel the Rams can’t remain successful because of one key loss, Williams sees their vantage point as the wrong comparison being made. His isn’t the era which recently passed, but one from the past.
In it he sees no despair. Nothing like that at all. What he sees is hope through two new guards pointing the team in the right direction.
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