Back to Having Fun
Feb 28, 2024 | Women's Basketball, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
She is sitting in a booth at a Braum's in Great Bend, Kansas, one afternoon in late May. Gabby Gregory, a 2022-23 All-Big 12 Conference First Team selection, is talking about her first season at Kansas State while eating ice cream, and her impact for the Wildcats has been anything but vanilla. She was a 2022-23 Ann Meyers Drysdale candidate and a Dawn Staley Award candidate. She established career highs in every statistical category, and she was one of four players in the nation and the first player in K-State history with 625 points, 80 made 3-pointers and 160 made free throws.
She averaged 18.5 points on 41.1% shooting, including 32.7% shooting from 3-point range, averaging the second-most points by a Big 12 player.
She smiles. She's come a long way since her three-year career at Oklahoma.
"I got back to having fun playing basketball," she says. "That's the most important thing at the end of the day. If you're not having fun, why do it? I had fun. We have a lot of things to build off of. Everybody is super excited."
She pauses.
"I just want to have fun my last year in college."
On Wednesday, Gregory will be honored on Senior Night after the 15th-ranked Wildcats, 23-5 overall and 12-4 in the Big 12, face Iowa State, 16-10 and 10-6, at 6:30 p.m., at Bramlage Coliseum. She will be met by her parents, Gene and Sharon, at midcourt during a brief ceremony, and they will embrace, and they might shed a few tears.
It has been quite a fun ride.
"It's been a lot of fun, obviously," she says, standing inside Bramlage after practice one day in late February. "We had some expectations going into the year with the group of girls we had coming into this season. We've really put the country on notice, starting the season unranked and getting to No. 2 in the nation this season.
"I've had a blast."
• • •
Gabby Gregory sits on a black leather couch on the second floor of the Ice Family Basketball Training Center and begins to talk. It's June 2022. Gregory, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, hasn't been at K-State too long. She's dominating workouts. Most days this summer, her regimen involves weight training. Lifting weights is her favorite. At night, she enjoys hitting the basketball court in the training facility, cranking up her music, and getting up shots, just her and the basketball. On court during workouts, she's dribbling and passing and shooting and hustling with little regard for her body. That's just a part of her DNA. That's all that she's known.
"I actually have a few scars," she says.
She points to a scar below her right eye. "This one, I got bit by a dog when I was four years old."
She points to her forehead. "This one was when I hit heads with a teammate at an AAU practice."
She points to her upper lip. "It was the third possession of the all-state Texas versus Oklahoma game, and a girl shot a layup and elbowed me in the mouth. I had to get stitches. We went to an Urgent Care across the street. They stitched me up and I was back for the fourth quarter. We were losing. I got to play in the fourth quarter, and we won."
During a legendary career at Holland Hall Prep, Gregory grabbed Oklahoma's attention. She earned 2019 Oklahoma Gatorade Player of the Year and was just one of four high school players in state history to reach 2,500 points and 1,000 rebounds in a career. Her 2,701 career points were the eighth most points in state history. As a junior, she averaged 31.2 points and 11.6 rebounds per game.
A lifelong Sooners fan, she went to football games since she could walk, and grew up watching All-American Courtney Paris and the dominant Sooners women's basketball teams. When Oklahoma recruited her, it was a no-brainer.
Gregory averaged 10.9 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 1.3 assists in 72 career games with 46 starts with the Sooners. She scored in double digits in 41 games and had a career-high 30 points at Baylor on February 22, 2020. She had at least five rebounds in 24 contests.
However, she faced challenges along the way. She discovered she had asthma the summer before her freshman year. She managed to find the correct medicine her sophomore year, but always had a stuffy nose. Dental X-rays revealed something vastly out of the ordinary.
"The dentist asked, 'Do you have a hard time breathing? You have the worst sinuses I have seen in my life,'" Gregory says.
Following sinus surgery, Gregory still had difficulty breathing despite taking the proper medicine. Month after month she visited doctor after doctor that told her she was suffering asthma attacks or panic attacks. It grew quite frustrating. Then finally a doctor said, "You have vocal cord dysfunction. I've seen this many times before."
She had surgery but was unable to play for many months. And she was attempting her comeback under a new coaching staff.
Hall-of-Famer Sherri Coale retired in March 2021 after a legendary 25-year coaching career.
"It's hard when you play for a Hall-of-Fame coach who recruited you and who you always wanted to play for, then have a complete coaching staff change," Gregory says. "Just to sit for that long, I just thought it was in my best interest to move on."
She left everything that she had ever known behind for a new adventure.
Gregory entered the transfer portal on April 3. K-State head coach Jeff Mittie got on the phone and the next day drove to Norman, Oklahoma, to visit the Gregory family. The Gregory family took an unofficial visit to K-State and fell in love with Manhattan.
"We were blown away," Gregory says. "The town was beautiful. I went home and thought about it, and it was the perfect fit. I wanted to stay in the Big 12 because it's a great conference. The next day, I called Coach Mittie and committed. I was in the transfer portal for maybe four or five days.
"I just couldn't see myself anywhere else."
• • •
She will forever be linked to a legendary stuffed animal. Bill Snyder was known for his trademark Nike Cortez sneakers. Jacob Pullen was known for his beard. Collin Klein was known for his scraped-up elbows. And Gabby Gregory is known for Gap Goat.
It's a crazy phenomenon born prior to the 2023-24 season when Jeff Mittie instructed his team to force three consecutive stops on defense, which is referred to as a "gap," as he found that if teams force three consecutive defensive stops seven times in a game, it greatly improves that team's probability of winning.
The result? K-State leads the Big 12 in scoring defense (56.3), rank ninth nationally in field-goal percentage defense (.350) and 3-point field-goal percentage defense (.258).
Well, prior to the season, Gregory thought the team needed a mascot to signify and to celebrate such a "gap" accomplishment during the game. Her favorite animal is a goat. She found a stuffed goat on Amazon.
The Gap Goat was born. "Gappy" is the goat's name. Gappy is hoisted aloft when the Wildcats register three consecutive defensive stops. Gappy lives at the Ice Family Basketball Center and comes to Bramlage and on road trips. Gappy's apparel includes a K-State jersey and gold chains with one chain featuring a "7" pendant, which he is awarded when the team gets seven "gaps" in a game.
"It's just fun," Gregory says. "It just speaks to our team or the light-heartedness and the joy that we have within our team that we're able to do something like that. I've been on teams where everything was so serious, and we couldn't take a step back and realize we're playing this game because it's fun. At the end of the day, you play basketball because it's fun.
"Bringing in things like Gap Goat, it brings it back to when you're a kid and you're playing basketball in the backyard. It's fun and joyous. I've loved the way it's grown and blown up into this huge thing."
She pauses.
"I love the Gap Goat."
• • •
Back at Braum's in Great Bend, Kansas, Gabby Gregory sits with 2022 All-American Ayoka Lee, who is also eating ice cream, and who has joined the conversation. They laugh. They joke.
Exactly how much did Lee play a factor in Gregory deciding to come to K-State?
"A very large part of it," Gregory says.
"Aw, thanks," Lee says.
"She's just such a big piece to any team, and I knew the style that I played and she plays and thought we'd work really well together," Gregory continues. "Obviously, you want to play with great players."
Lee missed the entire 2022-23 season while recovering from offseason knee surgery, meaning that the Gregory-Lee duo had to wait one year.
Now they're together on the hardwood and it has been a blast.
"We've had a lot of fun, and we still have a lot of season left to play," Gregory says, standing inside Bramlage one day in late February. "We have Senior Night, but the season doesn't even feel like it's half over. We have so much ahead. It's been fun."
Gregory has scored 1,678 points in her career and is the first player to transfer to K-State and then reach the 1,000- and 1,500-point marks in her career. Gregory has scored in double figures 81 times in her career, including 40 times at K-State.
Lee's addition this year has prompted Gregory to alter her own game. Instead of being the go-to scorer like a year ago, Gregory has reached career highs in assists, so often lobbing difficult passes high into the hands of an awaiting Lee underneath the basket.
Last season, Gregory recorded 71 assists. So far this season, Gregory has handed out a career-high 97 assists (3.46 per game) and her assist-to-turnover ratio in Big 12 action is eighth in the league at 1.81. In her career, she has dished out five or more assists 10 times with seven of those games coming this season. Against Houston on January 3, she handed out a career-high nine assists.
Oh, she still scores the ball, as evidenced by her season-high 19 points and seven rebounds against UCF on February 17, but she's taken her all-around game to new heights.
"I obviously had to step into a different role," Gregory says. "Last year it was really on me to score the basketball a lot. Obviously, my game is a lot of inside and out, but I like to score the ball inside, so with Yokie this year I knew that load was being taken off me. I realized that I'm pretty good at a post-entry pass, so I've put that into my game. I've never played with a post player in my career, a true center, so it was obviously an adjustment.
"Just as the season has progressed, I've realized that it works if I can throw it into Yokie. I just do whatever the team needs of me, and if she's not out there and we need to score, it's more on me and Serena Sundell and Jaelyn Glenn to step into that space. It's just a different role that you take when you have a 6-6 All-American in the paint. It's been fun. I have more assists than I ever have in my life."
Life is an interesting thing. Little could Gregory had predicted that she'd embark on a wonderful basketball adventure in the Little Apple.
It feels like home.
"The city of Manhattan, something I've never experienced is going out to eat and people always recognize you and say hello and tell you, 'Great game,'" she says. "It's really, really cool. I tell any recruit it's something that's unique and you don't see that with women's basketball teams other places. I've just absolutely loved the K-State fans and have loved playing at Bramlage."
And there's at least one more game at Bramlage left to go, as the Wildcats play on Wednesday and also carry hopes of hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament in March.
"It's crazy, the opportunities we have going into postseason," she says.
And one day, it'll come to an end. And when it does, years from now, she hopes everyone remembers her for three things.
"I want be known for playing with a lot of passion and joy," she says, "and I want to be known for the Gap Goat."
She is sitting in a booth at a Braum's in Great Bend, Kansas, one afternoon in late May. Gabby Gregory, a 2022-23 All-Big 12 Conference First Team selection, is talking about her first season at Kansas State while eating ice cream, and her impact for the Wildcats has been anything but vanilla. She was a 2022-23 Ann Meyers Drysdale candidate and a Dawn Staley Award candidate. She established career highs in every statistical category, and she was one of four players in the nation and the first player in K-State history with 625 points, 80 made 3-pointers and 160 made free throws.
She averaged 18.5 points on 41.1% shooting, including 32.7% shooting from 3-point range, averaging the second-most points by a Big 12 player.
She smiles. She's come a long way since her three-year career at Oklahoma.
"I got back to having fun playing basketball," she says. "That's the most important thing at the end of the day. If you're not having fun, why do it? I had fun. We have a lot of things to build off of. Everybody is super excited."
She pauses.
"I just want to have fun my last year in college."
On Wednesday, Gregory will be honored on Senior Night after the 15th-ranked Wildcats, 23-5 overall and 12-4 in the Big 12, face Iowa State, 16-10 and 10-6, at 6:30 p.m., at Bramlage Coliseum. She will be met by her parents, Gene and Sharon, at midcourt during a brief ceremony, and they will embrace, and they might shed a few tears.
It has been quite a fun ride.
"It's been a lot of fun, obviously," she says, standing inside Bramlage after practice one day in late February. "We had some expectations going into the year with the group of girls we had coming into this season. We've really put the country on notice, starting the season unranked and getting to No. 2 in the nation this season.
"I've had a blast."
• • •
Gabby Gregory sits on a black leather couch on the second floor of the Ice Family Basketball Training Center and begins to talk. It's June 2022. Gregory, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, hasn't been at K-State too long. She's dominating workouts. Most days this summer, her regimen involves weight training. Lifting weights is her favorite. At night, she enjoys hitting the basketball court in the training facility, cranking up her music, and getting up shots, just her and the basketball. On court during workouts, she's dribbling and passing and shooting and hustling with little regard for her body. That's just a part of her DNA. That's all that she's known.
"I actually have a few scars," she says.
She points to a scar below her right eye. "This one, I got bit by a dog when I was four years old."
She points to her forehead. "This one was when I hit heads with a teammate at an AAU practice."
She points to her upper lip. "It was the third possession of the all-state Texas versus Oklahoma game, and a girl shot a layup and elbowed me in the mouth. I had to get stitches. We went to an Urgent Care across the street. They stitched me up and I was back for the fourth quarter. We were losing. I got to play in the fourth quarter, and we won."
During a legendary career at Holland Hall Prep, Gregory grabbed Oklahoma's attention. She earned 2019 Oklahoma Gatorade Player of the Year and was just one of four high school players in state history to reach 2,500 points and 1,000 rebounds in a career. Her 2,701 career points were the eighth most points in state history. As a junior, she averaged 31.2 points and 11.6 rebounds per game.
A lifelong Sooners fan, she went to football games since she could walk, and grew up watching All-American Courtney Paris and the dominant Sooners women's basketball teams. When Oklahoma recruited her, it was a no-brainer.
Gregory averaged 10.9 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 1.3 assists in 72 career games with 46 starts with the Sooners. She scored in double digits in 41 games and had a career-high 30 points at Baylor on February 22, 2020. She had at least five rebounds in 24 contests.
However, she faced challenges along the way. She discovered she had asthma the summer before her freshman year. She managed to find the correct medicine her sophomore year, but always had a stuffy nose. Dental X-rays revealed something vastly out of the ordinary.
"The dentist asked, 'Do you have a hard time breathing? You have the worst sinuses I have seen in my life,'" Gregory says.
Following sinus surgery, Gregory still had difficulty breathing despite taking the proper medicine. Month after month she visited doctor after doctor that told her she was suffering asthma attacks or panic attacks. It grew quite frustrating. Then finally a doctor said, "You have vocal cord dysfunction. I've seen this many times before."
She had surgery but was unable to play for many months. And she was attempting her comeback under a new coaching staff.
Hall-of-Famer Sherri Coale retired in March 2021 after a legendary 25-year coaching career.
"It's hard when you play for a Hall-of-Fame coach who recruited you and who you always wanted to play for, then have a complete coaching staff change," Gregory says. "Just to sit for that long, I just thought it was in my best interest to move on."
She left everything that she had ever known behind for a new adventure.
Gregory entered the transfer portal on April 3. K-State head coach Jeff Mittie got on the phone and the next day drove to Norman, Oklahoma, to visit the Gregory family. The Gregory family took an unofficial visit to K-State and fell in love with Manhattan.
"We were blown away," Gregory says. "The town was beautiful. I went home and thought about it, and it was the perfect fit. I wanted to stay in the Big 12 because it's a great conference. The next day, I called Coach Mittie and committed. I was in the transfer portal for maybe four or five days.
"I just couldn't see myself anywhere else."
• • •
She will forever be linked to a legendary stuffed animal. Bill Snyder was known for his trademark Nike Cortez sneakers. Jacob Pullen was known for his beard. Collin Klein was known for his scraped-up elbows. And Gabby Gregory is known for Gap Goat.
It's a crazy phenomenon born prior to the 2023-24 season when Jeff Mittie instructed his team to force three consecutive stops on defense, which is referred to as a "gap," as he found that if teams force three consecutive defensive stops seven times in a game, it greatly improves that team's probability of winning.
The result? K-State leads the Big 12 in scoring defense (56.3), rank ninth nationally in field-goal percentage defense (.350) and 3-point field-goal percentage defense (.258).
Well, prior to the season, Gregory thought the team needed a mascot to signify and to celebrate such a "gap" accomplishment during the game. Her favorite animal is a goat. She found a stuffed goat on Amazon.
The Gap Goat was born. "Gappy" is the goat's name. Gappy is hoisted aloft when the Wildcats register three consecutive defensive stops. Gappy lives at the Ice Family Basketball Center and comes to Bramlage and on road trips. Gappy's apparel includes a K-State jersey and gold chains with one chain featuring a "7" pendant, which he is awarded when the team gets seven "gaps" in a game.
"It's just fun," Gregory says. "It just speaks to our team or the light-heartedness and the joy that we have within our team that we're able to do something like that. I've been on teams where everything was so serious, and we couldn't take a step back and realize we're playing this game because it's fun. At the end of the day, you play basketball because it's fun.
"Bringing in things like Gap Goat, it brings it back to when you're a kid and you're playing basketball in the backyard. It's fun and joyous. I've loved the way it's grown and blown up into this huge thing."
She pauses.
"I love the Gap Goat."
• • •
Back at Braum's in Great Bend, Kansas, Gabby Gregory sits with 2022 All-American Ayoka Lee, who is also eating ice cream, and who has joined the conversation. They laugh. They joke.
Exactly how much did Lee play a factor in Gregory deciding to come to K-State?
"A very large part of it," Gregory says.
"Aw, thanks," Lee says.
"She's just such a big piece to any team, and I knew the style that I played and she plays and thought we'd work really well together," Gregory continues. "Obviously, you want to play with great players."
Lee missed the entire 2022-23 season while recovering from offseason knee surgery, meaning that the Gregory-Lee duo had to wait one year.
Now they're together on the hardwood and it has been a blast.
"We've had a lot of fun, and we still have a lot of season left to play," Gregory says, standing inside Bramlage one day in late February. "We have Senior Night, but the season doesn't even feel like it's half over. We have so much ahead. It's been fun."
Gregory has scored 1,678 points in her career and is the first player to transfer to K-State and then reach the 1,000- and 1,500-point marks in her career. Gregory has scored in double figures 81 times in her career, including 40 times at K-State.
Lee's addition this year has prompted Gregory to alter her own game. Instead of being the go-to scorer like a year ago, Gregory has reached career highs in assists, so often lobbing difficult passes high into the hands of an awaiting Lee underneath the basket.
Last season, Gregory recorded 71 assists. So far this season, Gregory has handed out a career-high 97 assists (3.46 per game) and her assist-to-turnover ratio in Big 12 action is eighth in the league at 1.81. In her career, she has dished out five or more assists 10 times with seven of those games coming this season. Against Houston on January 3, she handed out a career-high nine assists.
Oh, she still scores the ball, as evidenced by her season-high 19 points and seven rebounds against UCF on February 17, but she's taken her all-around game to new heights.
"I obviously had to step into a different role," Gregory says. "Last year it was really on me to score the basketball a lot. Obviously, my game is a lot of inside and out, but I like to score the ball inside, so with Yokie this year I knew that load was being taken off me. I realized that I'm pretty good at a post-entry pass, so I've put that into my game. I've never played with a post player in my career, a true center, so it was obviously an adjustment.
"Just as the season has progressed, I've realized that it works if I can throw it into Yokie. I just do whatever the team needs of me, and if she's not out there and we need to score, it's more on me and Serena Sundell and Jaelyn Glenn to step into that space. It's just a different role that you take when you have a 6-6 All-American in the paint. It's been fun. I have more assists than I ever have in my life."
Life is an interesting thing. Little could Gregory had predicted that she'd embark on a wonderful basketball adventure in the Little Apple.
It feels like home.
"The city of Manhattan, something I've never experienced is going out to eat and people always recognize you and say hello and tell you, 'Great game,'" she says. "It's really, really cool. I tell any recruit it's something that's unique and you don't see that with women's basketball teams other places. I've just absolutely loved the K-State fans and have loved playing at Bramlage."
And there's at least one more game at Bramlage left to go, as the Wildcats play on Wednesday and also carry hopes of hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament in March.
"It's crazy, the opportunities we have going into postseason," she says.
And one day, it'll come to an end. And when it does, years from now, she hopes everyone remembers her for three things.
"I want be known for playing with a lot of passion and joy," she says, "and I want to be known for the Gap Goat."
Players Mentioned
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