Poock hoping to build on 'special' season
WBB: The sophomore guard earned 2nd Team All-Missouri Valley Conference honors
It’s been nearly two months since Murray State won their first Missouri Valley Conference championship and earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008.
“I’ve had a little while to reflect after the season,” Murray State sophomore guard Halli Poock said. “I think it's been super exciting. I've built a lot of good relationships with all the girls, and these girls are some of my best friends, so it's been super special.”
A year ago at this time, life was coming at Poock pretty fast. She had just decided to transfer to Murray State from Bradley, and for the second year in a row, she was having to try to get acclimated to a new school, a new coach and new teammates.
“It was weird,” Poock said, looking back to coming to Murray last spring. “It's like you've been there before, but you're also new. Learning the system and everything, how we play, was really a struggle just because it's so fast. Especially as a point guard, you have to make decisions really fast.”
“I don't think it took Halli very long,” Murray State Head Coach Rechelle Turner said about Poock fitting in with the Racers. “I said all through last year, it was like she'd always been here. I think as she went through the season and got acclimated to the speed of the game and to her teammates and to me coaching her obviously different than she's had before, that she was just able to really take another step forward. I thought that she played her best basketball in the Missouri Valley Tournament.”
In Murray State’s three games in Evansville at the conference tournament, Poock averaged 20.3 points while shooting 54.3% from the field and 45.0% from beyond the arc. That performance punctuated a season where the sophomore guard earned 2nd Team All-Missouri Valley Conference honors. So how can the Waterloo, Iowa product find another level to take her game to next season?
“You can always improve on offense and stuff like that,” Poock said with a sly smile. “But also just having more focus on defense, just focus on defending a little more, so I can help the team more on that side of the ball.”
Poock’s head coach had a few notes to pass along as well.
“I’d just like to see her get better at taking care of the basketball,” Turner said. “Obviously, we need to cut down on turnovers from our pushers. (She can get) more confident in her mid-range game. Sometimes we're either threes or layups, and with the size of our guards, sometimes it would be nice to see them pull up a little bit early to maybe not get a shot blocked or not have to take a more difficult shot. Analytically, we're all about threes and layups, so there's got to be a fine line in, ‘When do I go all the way, and when do I pull-up?’ Shooting off the dribble is a point of emphasis for both of our guards going into the summer.”
From her freshman to sophomore season, Poock saw her scoring average go up from 14.9 to 17.0 points per game, her shooting improved from 40.3% to 42.8% and her assists jumped from 2.9 to 4.3 a game. While so many of her countable stats grew from her first season to her second, Poock admits she did grapple with one particular aspect of her game in a Racer uniform.
“I think my biggest struggle sometimes was, me and (Assistant Coach) Monica (Evans) talked a lot about it, I didn't really have (to deal with) expectations my freshman year,” Poock said. “So just playing with expectations all year, I think, was honestly the hardest thing for me. It's expected out of us. We're expected to be pretty good this year.”
“I don't know that she didn't know that there were expectations throughout,” Turner said, “but I think that when you go through a season like we had, and you're able to win the regular season and win the conference tournament, that they all feel bullseyes on their back and it's a great place to be — but it's a tough place to be. A lot of people tell you it's really, really hard to get to the top. It's even harder to stay there, so I think the expectations in their minds are, ‘What are we going to do now?’ We’ve got to make sure we go out and do everything we can to repeat this.”
Looking forward to another great year!!! Even better!!