Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Kari Hoffman took over the Wright State women’s basketball program on May 20. In less than three months, she’s learned her team has high expectations and a desire to play.
“They want to get after it,” Hoffman said. “They want to get up and down. They have a lot of grit. They want to compete. In the early stages of practice, they were champing at the bit to get up and down and not just do quarter-court practices and small group practices and some of the fundamentals that we want to teach. They’re itching to get playing, but we’re taking it slow and making sure that we’re teaching the important parts of our program on the floor.”
Hoffman spent the last five seasons at her alma mater, Cedarville University, where she was 106-38 with three Great Midwest Athletic Conference regular-season championships. She replaced Katrina Merriweather, a three-time Horizon League Coach of the Year who was 113-47 in five seasons at Wright State.
Hoffman talked about her experiences this summer in an interview Wednesday.
Q: How did the summer go?
A: It was exciting. It was a super busy summer. We had the players back in July and hit the ground running with them, starting with practices and seeing where they’re at and seeing what we have to work with. We had a couple practices, and then we all left for recruiting. We just asked them to shoot a lot while we were gone, stay in shape and, obviously, get in the weight room. Then we came back for a week or two in between recruiting weeks. We had them in there for about four weeks working hard, trying to build relationships with them. We did some community-service projects and just kind of filled our entire month of July. It was fun to get to know our players.
