Moments earlier WSU coach Kari Hoffman had called Rylee Sagester off the bench and sent her onto the Nutter Center court in much the same fashion townsfolk in the Wild West once had sent their local gunslinger into the dusty street at high noon to face down the armed desperados laying siege to their town.
Within a minute, Sagester the 5-foot 7 redshirt freshman from Tri-Village High School — who remains the most prolific three-point shooter in Ohio girls’ high school hoops history — got a pass on the wing from Olivia Brown and, with a quick moment to set herself, she hoisted one of her long-range, left-handed shots that she ended with a follow through came with a flash of her trademark, long red fingernails and, on this night, marksmanship coated in good fortune.
“Yeah, I think the ball bounced around on every part of the rim and then bounced in,” Sagester said with a grin later on.
“When you come off the bench and hit your first three, you think, ‘Maybe it’s going to be a good night!’
“Shooters are different. Once you see one go in, then you see a second go in and then a third, you feel good.”
She had had some unfortunate bounces to start her college career: The coach at Marshall, where she first committed, left before she ever got there and then she spent her first season at Wright State as a redshirt relegated to the practice gym as she made the transition to the faster pace and defensive demands of Division I ball.
But Monday night felt like old times.
And by the time she was done — even though WSU fell 85-71 — she had the home crowd roaring as she made 8 of her 13 three-point attempts for a game-high 24 points.
Her eight treys were two off the Raiders record of 10 set by KC Elkins against Valparaiso, March 8, 2014, at the Nutter Center.
It’s too bad Monday’s game ended when it did. Sagester was on a roll. In the final 4:40, she made four three pointers in a row.
This was the best performance of her young college career. In her first nine games she’d made 18 of 44 treys — five of them in the last game at Oakland — for a 40.9 percent average. Monday night she shot 61.5 percent from long range.
Her bombs away effort ended up overshadowing the long-range marksmanship of Cleveland State’s Mickayla Perdue, who made 6 of 9 three-point shots and finished with 23 points.
Perdue, Springfield High School’s all-time leading scorer, is averaging 22 points a game this season. That’s tops in the Horizon League and was ninth best in the nation at the D-1 level.
With their Miami Valley roots, both of the bombardiers had family and friends in the crowd Monday.
Sagester’s parents — Traci and Josh, the boys head coach and the superintendent at Tri-Village — were joined by her grandma, Ginny Schenck, and other family members and friends.
“Having your dad also being a coach can be a blessing and sometimes a curse,” Sagester said with a grin. “He played Division I basketball too, so he knows what you have to do to be successful.
“And he’s the one who taught me how to shoot. When I was younger, he even traced my hand on the ball so I’d know where to have it when I shot.
“He’s been involved in a lot of this, but for me the best thing is afterwards to hear him say he’s proud of me for making it this far.”
Slow start in hoops
“It’s funny. We’d tell her, ‘If you could see your second grade self, you’d say you’re never going to be a basketball player,’” her mom said with a laugh, “She was small and not very aggressive.”
Rylee agreed: “I wasn’t very good when I was younger — not at all.
“My dad coached one of my AAU teams and he’d stick me in the corner. He barely played me, actually.
“It took me a while to become a shooter.”
Part of the problem was deciding if she was right-handed or left handed.
“She eats with her right hand and writes with her right hand, too,” her mom said.
But then her dad watched her at the hoop in the backyard of their home in West Alexandria and made a real discovery.
“He came in and said ‘You know what? She shoots the ball better with her left hand.”
Rylee said that’s when her dad drew the outline of his left hand on the ball so she’d know just where to hold it to shoot:
“After that it was just had to put in a lot of reps. Starting about sixth grade I had to make 500 shots a day.”
Asked how long that took, she thought a second, then offered: “Maybe an hour and a half or an hour and 45 minutes.”
Calculated out, that’s over five made shots every minute for 90 minutes straight!
Her shooting prowess actually surfaced a year earlier — in fifth grade — when she advanced through the rounds of Elks National Hoop Shoot, a free throw shooting tournament for youth ages 8 through 13.
She won the local, district and regional tournaments and in the national finals in Chicago she finished as the runner up to a girl from Iowa.
Counting two extra shootouts, she made 31 of 35 free throws and the other girl made 32.
Once in high school, she became a scoring machine, ending up with 2,001 career points and the all-time Ohio record with 401 three pointers. She finished as the runner up for Ohio’s Miss Basketball.
As a senior she led Tri-Village to a 30-0 season and the Division IV state title.
Soon after the tournament, her college plans went topsy turvy.
As a junior she had committed to Marshall — over her two other finals choices, UNC Charlotte and Wright State — but then Thundering Herd coach Josh Kemper left to take a different job, and the new coaches had a different approach to the game.
That’s when she reopened her recruitment.
Although WSU had been 8-24 the prior season, she said she liked the family feel of the program, as well as the fact that her own family would be a little less than an hour’s drive away. Most of all she loved the way the Raiders embrace of the three under Hoffman, who remains the all-time three point star of Cedarville University basketball.
Although being told she had to sit a year for development was a tough pill to swallow, she made the most of it and tried to quicken her release of the ball and better commit herself to playing defense.
“Looking back now, I feel it was the best decision for me,” she said. “I don’t know if I was completely ready coming from high school to college.
“Now I have more confidence and feel I can make an impact.”
Building confidence
About those long, manicured, red fingernails:
“She used to bite her nails when she was younger so junior year in high school she started painting them,” her mom said. “That nervous habit is gone now, and she’s kept the nails.”
After Monday’s game, she held her hand out and inspected them and saw they still were perfect.
Except for the loss — which dropped the Raiders to 2-8 going into a three-day tournament in Arizona which begins today with a matchup against Grand Canyon University — Sagester’s offensive effort Monday had been near perfect, as well.
“I remember last year wanting to pull that redshirt off her for this game,” Hoffman said of the matchup with the Vikings, who always give the Raiders fits inside.
To answer that, WSU hoped to be able to shoot over CSU’s oft-impenetrable zone.
“I’m proud of her for having the confidence to shoot the crap out of the ball tonight,” Hoffman said. “She’s obviously finding herself.”
The days of Dad tracing her hand on the ball may be long gone, but Monday night her fingerprints were all over the WSU effort.
And one of her dad’s practices would remain.
Afterward he would tell her how proud he was of her.
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