SE: Senior Spotlight — Wesemann Stabilizes Emotions, Maximizes Basketball Potential at K-State
Feb 21, 2017 | Women's Basketball
“Get your hands up! Hands!”
Kindred Wesemann’s voice carries across a quiet Bramlage Coliseum on January 11. It’s quiet because K-State is up 25 points on Kansas in the fourth quarter, well on its way to a victory over its in-state rival. Wesemann is still yelling because, well, her passion doesn’t have an on-off switch.
Wesemann’s intense emotion for the game of basketball has always been noticeable. Her ability to channel it in positive ways? That’s a different story.
Before coming to K-State and developing into one of the best guards in the Big 12, Wesemann played for an AAU team called the Eclipse Basketball Club. Her coach at the time, Gary Brown, had a fitting nickname for the team: the Crybabies.
“I used to cry a lot. Our whole team would just cry if something bad happened, we would just lose it,” Wesemann said, laughing at the memory. “He pretty much told me if I wanted to keep playing basketball I would have to stop crying, and I think that just turned into screaming. Whenever good things would happen I would just scream and get really excited.
“I think that’s something our team thrives off of and they expect that from me. If I don’t bring that to the table, it’s not the same and they’ll be, like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”
Wesemann drew similar reactions from teammates early in her career at K-State. Her imperfect passion, K-State assistant coach Jacie Hoyt said, was “misunderstood” at times because of the way she channeled it.
“She’s just progressed so much,” Hoyt said. “It almost brings tears to my eyes thinking about how far she’s come because she went from sometimes her teammates thinking that she’s crazy to all of a sudden she’s really the glue to our team.”
Junior guard Shaelyn Martin, who lives with Wesemann, can attest to both the crazy and the glue parts.
“I still do (think she’s crazy), but that’s just part of the whole friendship thing. I am one of those people who gets really excited during games and it’s awesome having a person who’s even more so like that,” Martin said. “She just brings that energy, and sometimes you don’t know what she’s going to do, but you know she’s going to bring something to the table.”
Wesemann’s three-point makes are usually followed by, at minimum, a smile and a point to the teammate that helped make it happen. More often, her biggest moments include some screams, fist pumps, chest bumps, high knees, or all of the above.
“It’s great,” senior forward Breanna Lewis said. “She holds some traits that I don’t have and she brings out the passion in me when I don’t have it, along with the confidence that she brings out in the team.”
“She’s great to feed off of,” added sophomore guard Kayla Goth. “When something bad happens, she’s still right there to help everyone out, but when something good happens, she’s right there to emphasize it.”
This good-or-bad ability wasn’t innate for Wesemann. It took a few years of fine-tuning and some mental rewiring for the native of Pleasant Hill, Missouri. Fortunately, she had Hoyt to lean on for guidance.
“We have a lot in common,” said Hoyt, a third-year assistant coach at K-State who played point guard at Wichita State from 2006-09. “I’m very competitive; she’s very competitive. I was a gym rat; she’s one of the hardest workers and one of the biggest gym rats I’ve ever known. Right away we had a lot of commonalities.”
Because of the stark similarities, Hoyt felt an immediate connection with Wesemann, and vice versa. Hoyt viewed Wesemann’s “competitive spirit” as a raw ability that, with some work and a few tweaks, could greatly increase her value to the team.
Hoyt set out to help Wesemann utilize her on-court emotions as a consistently positive force. They went about this with frequent one-on-one discussions, where Hoyt would point out instances from practices or games to work on. The two would even re-enact how to respond to certain situations, roleplaying what to say or do on each occasion.
The goal, Wesemann said, was to bring her low levels up while maintaining her highs.
“Because I get pretty upset, but I don’t cry anymore,” Wesemann said, laughing. “But bringing my low levels up to where it’s more of a consistent. It’s kind of like a medium and a high, there’s not really a low.”
What transpired, Hoyt said, was Wesemann developed into an “elite leader.”
“We feel like her communication is elite,” Hoyt said. “It’s elite on the floor; it’s elite in the way that she’s taken some of our freshmen under her wing, in the way that she can go to each one of her teammates, talk to each one of them differently and get them all playing their best, and get our offense in the position it needs to be in and the defense in the position it needs to be in.
“Being a point guard is tough. You’re asked to do a lot of different things, and it’s no different than a quarterback for a football team. You have to wear a lot of different hats at different times. She’s really just come into her own. I can’t imagine a better point guard in the country in terms of leadership skills and communication skills.”
Added Kansas head coach Brandon Schneider: “Wesemann is the heartbeat of the team and she is as good of a leader as we have in this league.”
Wesemann’s more comparable basketball skills are better than most as well.
Through 27 games season, she’s averaging a team-best 14.2 points and has converted 71 of 83 (86 percent) from the free throw line, both helping her become the 40th player in program history to surpass 1,000 career points. With 1,205 career points, she currently sits in 22nd on K-State’s all-time scoring list. Only four players ahead of Wesemann were 5-foot-7 — Wesemann’s listed height — or shorter.
She also ranks fourth in school history for career free throw percentage (.814), 11th in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.23) and 11th in career steals (182). Even more, Wesemann’s recorded five or more steals in a game six times — fourth all-time at K-State. She’s done it three times this year, highlighted by recording a career-high six steals in a road win at TCU last Saturday, when she also scored 12 fourth-quarter points to fuel a comeback victory.
“I would put her work ethic up against anybody in the country,” Hoyt said, raving about Wesemann’s all-around improvement. “I can’t think of a better example of someone who’s maximized their time and resources to become better in each of those areas that we’re asking her to play for us.”
Her 75 treys this season boosts the senior’s career total to 249 — fifth all-time at K-State. It is another area Wesemann said Hoyt has been a major help.
“She just pushes me to make sure I’m keeping the big picture in mind,” Wesemann said, recalling a drill Hoyt put her through. In it, Wesemann had had to make two 3-pointers in a row without hitting the rim. At first, this became frustrating. “I was making like 90 percent of them but they weren’t swishes, so you’re thinking, ‘This is terrible.’ I was getting frustrated, but I began thinking, ‘Big picture, you’re making a lot of shots.’ She just helps me keep my head on straight and really focus on getting my teammates involved and not really worrying about myself.”
Despite playing more of the two-guard this season, Wesemann has continued to keep her teammates involved. Her 75 assists this season gives her 304 for her career, 12th all-time at K-State, and makes her the third player in program history with at least 300 assists and 200 career 3-point makes.
Wesemann is more than a free-firing 3-point shooter, too. She’s developed a midrange game and has become crafty enough around the rim to score despite her 5-foot-7 frame.
Her complete scoring arsenal was on display when she broke out for a career-high 34 points, including 26 in the second half, in a home win against Oklahoma State this season.
Afterwards, K-State head coach Jeff Mittie lauded Wesemann’s improvement as a player, but his praise went even further. Maybe more impressive than her highly touted scoring ability, he said, is how she tempers her emotions when shots aren’t falling for herself or when her team faces adversity.
“I saw Kindred from another bench when she was a freshman. She was a fighter then and she was a competitor, very emotional at both ends of the floor, though, and the growth of her to be less emotional when things go bad is big to see,” Mittie, who coached at TCU before coming to K-State in 2014, said. “She loves to play. I don’t think anybody could come into Bramlage and not see that Kindred Wesemann loves to play, and she loves everything about it.”
All of it starts with her passion, at one time an unpredictable force that is now a major asset.
“Nobody loves to play the game and nobody loves to work at the game more than Kindred. She’s here constantly, but her passion is something that’s infectious,” Mittie said. “She’s learned to channel that in better areas.”
For Wesemann, using her emotions in a positive way is still a work in progress.
“I think the second half of the TCU game was better,” she said. “I felt like I was giving enough energy, but the lows weren’t going below a midline. I thought that was a lot better for me. Obviously, I can still do a lot better than that and that’s what I plan to do.”
With two home games left on the schedule, including a battle with No. 19 Oklahoma on Tuesday at 7 p.m., Wesemann said the thought of her career nearing the end at K-State has popped into her mind. A Facebook post by Kelly Thomson’s father, with a picture of K-State’s five seniors, two of which are holding a piece of wood with the word “family” painted on it, was the most recent reminder.
“It’s kind of sad to think about, but it makes me happy just to know that I left an impact on, not only him, but my teammates and our fans,” Wesemann said. “I think I left a pretty big impact with our coaches and my teammates. I think that’s the best thing.”
As for her legacy, Wesemann wants to be remembered for a few things, none of which can be recorded statistically but all of which are at her core as a player.
“My energy and passion for the game, and my love for this university,” she said. “It’s given me so much and I couldn’t have asked for any more.”
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