Indiana State came into the Nutter Center 0-2 Tuesday night and left with a 68-51 victory. Wright State dropped to 0-3.
And yet, for a few moments after the game, all that was washed away for Claire Henson — the Valley View product who is now WSU’s leading scorer — when she was engulfed by over a dozen family members after she returned to the court, still in uniform, from the post-game locker room.
This was a deja vu moment for all of them.
It’s been a few years since she was a starter, a stalwart of her team, and they were in the stands to see it.
She began her college career about as far from home as you could get.
After growing up in the country between Germantown and Gratis, she went to Long Island University, lived in an apartment building in Brooklyn and came off the bench for the Sharks. Her family saw her on the road a few times, but never in a home game.
Last season — after transferring to WSU ― she again came off the bench and averaged 3 points per game.
Now she’s a starter, leads the team in scoring with a 14 points per game average.
And no one was prouder of her Tuesday night than her 10-year-old brother Cobe, who sidled up next to her after the game. As she leaned down, he took a flower he’d brought from home and helped stick it in her hair above her right ear.
After a game like this, it helps to have a moment to reset and smell the flowers.
“He told me they had something for me,” she said after her family had left. “He said they had a flower and some artwork.”
That exchange had made her smile and there had only been a few moments like that on this night.
One came when she opened the game with a 3-pointer to give the Raiders their only lead of the night. Another had come on her fast break drive down the lane early in the third quarter. She faked going up with her left hand, a move that the Sycamores’ defender bit on, and then she juked back to the right to score.
Henson ended the night with a team-high 16 points, but she also turned the ball over four times and had some defensive lapses.
Still, she played better than the rest of the Raiders and showed some fire, something that Hoffman thought was lacking from her team Tuesday night.
“This was obviously a really poor game,” Hoffman said as she perused a box score afterward. “There’s not a good stat on here.”
Wright State — which was missing one of its veterans, Lauren Scott, who was out with an injury — made just 5 of 28 3-point attempts (17.8 percent), had 20 turnovers was outrebounded, 44-35.
“There’s a lot to learn from these early games with such a young team,” Hoffman said. “I believe we have the pieces we need to make this look like basketball. We’ve seen them do it in practice, but they haven’t quite put it together when the lights are bright.”
The Raiders lost their season opener at Wisconsin, 95-68, and followed that with a furious late-game comeback at Evansville, only to miss free throws and a layup in final 70 seconds to fall, 65-63.
The Raiders have eight transfers on their roster and all but Henson joined the team this season.
Almost all the newcomers are younger players and Hoffman said that was done by design.
With the new scheme of college basketball — where the revolving door of the transfer portal causes players to come and go, season to season — she has tried to change that dynamic:
“Every year now it seems like you’re coaching a brand-new team. We’re trying not to do that, so were choosing younger transfers. Hopefully we can coach the same team two, three and four years.”
She hopes Henson — who has now played in 50 college games — will be one of the building blocks.
Credit: Michael Cooper
Credit: Michael Cooper
‘Family feel’ at WSU
After lettering four years at Valley View, captaining the team her final two and being named Ohio’s Division IV Player of the Year as a senior, she had several scholarship offers and narrowed it down to Lipscomb and Long Island University.
“We talked a lot about it as she was going through high school,” said her dad, Bryce Henson. “I was excited to see her take off and kind of get out of the small town and see what the rest of the world looks like.
“College is one of the only times in your life where you get to travel the world a little bit.
“We talked about finding a school three to six hours away. It would be far enough that she wasn’t coming home to do laundry, but close enough for her to come home for her sister’s Homecoming.
“When Long Island came around — that’s not three to six hours — but they did the best campus tour. We went to Times Square. We were on the subway. We saw all the sights.
“There’s always something to do in New York City and Claire could see herself there.
“At her age group, it’s all about the coffees, the tacos, the empanada shops. She loved it. On her off days she’d grab a scooter and ride all over the city.”
Although she played in 26 games off the bench that year, the team dynamic was disjointed and many of the players transferred after the season.
After entering the portal, she looked at Siena and Radford, but chose WSU — which had recruited her out of high school — because she liked the “family feel” in Hoffman’s program.
“For me, it’s kind of a mixed bag,” Bryce said. “Selfishly, it’s kind of nice to have her back home every couple of weekends and getting to see her play more. But I also hate that she didn’t get more of a chance to see the big city, the country, and grow from that.”
Family business
When she goes back to Germantown now, she’s involved in the family’s business.
Her parents opened The Creamery at Market & Main coffee shop in town about five years ago. They also have a tanning salon and, in the fall of 2023, they took over the Florentine, Ohio’s second oldest inn that dates back to 1814.
She sometimes works as a server in the Florentine’s restaurant, but she’s really made her mark at the coffee shop.
“As good of a basketball player as she is, she’s just as good as a barista,’ her dad said.
Hoffman talked about the former after the game:
“She’s a three-tier scorer and has the ability to make big-time plays for us. She definitely turned the game around for us at Evansville.
“She can do a lot, and I do believe we have all the pieces to build this up. We just have some things to figure out.”
One other question presented itself after the game.
With her family pressed around her and Cobe’s flower in her hair, you wondered about the artwork her little brother said they’d brought for her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I never got it. My mom told the kids to go get in the car.”
Actually, that was apropos.
Where Wright State was concerned, there was nothing artistic about this night.
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