Minch ready to run with the Racers
WBB: The 6'3 forward transferred to Murray after playing at DePaul last season
College basketball is a relationship business. The relationship seeds that got Ellery Minch to Murray State were planted more than two years ago.
“Ellery is a kid we recruited out of high school, so we had a previous relationship with her,” Murray State Head Coach Rechelle Turner said. “One of the final games that July was her and (current Murray State guard) Brax (Baker) going against each other in a battle for a championship in the AAU world. The whole time (Murray State Assistant) Coach (Wyatt) Foust and I were sitting there, we're like, ‘Man, we would have loved to have had her.’ Those are relationships that you keep, and they’re relationships that you make sure that you don't burn when they choose somewhere else.”
The somewhere else was DePaul.
After playing 21 games her freshman season, where she averaged 1.7 points in 5.7 minutes per game, Minch entered the transfer portal where she was looking for, in her words, “a family aspect and coaches I can trust.”
Two years later, those seeds that were planted by Murray State’s coaching staff finally bore fruit.
“I came here on my visit, and I already knew Coach Foust from past recruiting, so I had a relationship with him,” Minch said. “On my visit, everyone was just so nice. The girls all told me that the coaches are really what I'm looking for, and that's just kind of a vibe that I got.”
Due to DePaul’s academic calendar, Minch couldn’t join the Racers until later in the summer once she finished up her school responsibilities in Chicago. Once she finally arrived in Murray, Minch took to her new program like a duck to water.
“It was like she's always been here,” Turner said. “She's just one of those kids, again, that fits culture first. Then her ability to do the things that she does on the basketball floor put her as a great fit for our system.”
“It feels like I just finished school, so to be starting again (already) is insane,” Minch laughed. “The coaches have been really good at helping me kind of reacclimate and get back into the stuff that they'd already kind of been over. (I’ve been) putting in extra workouts where needed. It's been big.”
At DePaul, Minch took 44 shots from the field — all 44 were from beyond the arc. This season, Turner is looking to diversify the offensive game of the 6’3 Minch.
“Her size is huge for us, along with her ability to stretch the floor, which we love for our posts to be able to do,” Turner said. “She's just now getting back to playing inside-out. Her explanation to us is that she didn't go inside the three-point line at DePaul when she did play. We're going to utilize her in a lot of different ways, because she'll have matchups that we hope to be able to gain the most out of. She's been great.”
“In high school, it was kind of like what I'm doing here,” Minch added. “I was more versatile, able to play more (positions), both in AAU and high school. Getting back into that after not being able to do it for a year, it's definitely been an adjustment. I'm getting there, and I feel a lot more comfortable doing some of the stuff that I used to do. I’m just rebuilding that up and knocking some of the dust off.”
In her first college season, Minch played more than nine minutes in a game just three times. She has bigger expectations for herself this season, but she knows playing more, along with shouldering more of the burden, will require a shift in her mindset.
“It's definitely going to be something I have to get used to,” Minch said. “I think just having a good support system, like a coaching staff that I trust enough to come in and talk to about whatever's on my mind — whether it's basketball or school or social or whatever. Just to kind of keep my life in check, my parents are a big part of that. Just having people that I can talk to throughout it and just kind of make sense of it.”