The meme was fun, don’t get me wrong, but Hailey Van Lith deserved a better ending. She couldn’t be remembered like that: perplexed, ashamed, frozen in a shrug. In the span of 40 minutes against Caitlin Clark’s Iowa team in last season’s Elite Eight, a newly timid Van Lith had supplanted the old one. Gone was the little but fierce guard who skittered to the rim and had never looked down on herself in three seasons at Louisville. In her place was a sad imitation, foundering in her first season at LSU, where she’d transferred to play point guard full-time.
I struggled to preserve the happier memories. She used to be cool, I reminded myself all season long, as SEC ball pressure ate at her confidence. She was aggressive and self-assured! I promise! I swear! When Van Lith futilely chased Clark through screens on that infamous night, and Clark answered with 41 points on 64 percent true shooting, it felt rather like a mercy killing.
The transfer portal may be regarded as a hub of lawlessness in college sports these days, but in Van Lith’s case, it has restored some order to her career. After one season at LSU—which Van Lith called a lesson in “how to make work something that isn’t necessarily perfect for you”—she re-entered the transfer portal and wound up at TCU. Under second-year head coach Mark Campbell, the No. 9 Horned Frogs are 9-0 this season, already with some impressive ranked wins to their name. The 5-foot-7 Van Lith, once more the focal point of her offense, has become the kind of playmaker she always wanted to be. Through nine games this season, she’s averaging 6.6 assists and 1.7 turnovers. (For comparison, at LSU she averaged a then–career-high 3.6 assists per game to 2.6 turnovers.)
“It’s a 2,000-point scorer that’s still learning the game and becoming an unbelievable playmaker in our spread pick-and-roll,” Campbell said two weeks ago, when a then-unranked TCU upset No. 13 NC State, 76-73. In the meeting room after the win, Van Lith cried while Campbell pointed out some stats to her: It was her first career double-double with assists, and she’d recorded 19 assists in her last two games. “You’re just getting started, kiddo,” Campbell said. Van Lith wiped the tears away with her jersey and thanked her teammates.
If there was any lingering doubt about how real HVL 3.0 and the Horned Frogs were (and I’ll admit, my doubt was lingering), a game against an elite Notre Dame team would make a perfect test of TCU’s cred. The Fighting Irish had just upstaged JuJu Watkins on national television to earn a No. 3 ranking when they began a Thanksgiving weekend tournament in the Cayman Islands. Not that anyone particularly enjoys playing against Notre Dame, but the team’s athletic backcourt poses some obvious matchup problems for a small point guard. Sophomore Hannah Hidalgo, the NCAA steals leader last year, is quite possibly the most annoying on-ball defender in the history of basketball. Hidalgo has said her favorite part of the game is creating crises of confidence in opposing ballhandlers. “Their body language, their sigh,” she said, smiling, in a recent interview. If anyone could single-handedly resurrect Sad Hailey Van Lith, it would be her.
Instead, Van Lith recognized TCU’s advantage in the post and fed her teammate, the also well-traveled 6-foot-7 center Sedona Prince, who finished the game with 20 points, 20 rebounds, and eight blocks. As for the Hidalgo problem, it helped that Van Lith’s teammates could space the floor enough to keep the Notre Dame defense honest and open up driving lanes for an excellent finisher. The Horned Frogs trailed by 11 when the fourth quarter started. When Notre Dame took a two-point lead with four minutes left after Van Lith had tied it up, she kickstarted another mini-run to ensure it would be the last lead of the game. Nineteen of her 21 points came in the second half, and she turned over the ball just once as she logged seven assists.
This TCU team was built through the portal—all its starters began their college careers elsewhere—so it naturally skews older. Van Lith turned 23 in September. Sharpshooter Madison Conner is a fifth-year senior. Prince graduated high school in 2018 but, for injury and redshirt reasons, is still playing college basketball, now for her third team. (Prince and Conner missed extended time last year; so bad was the injury bug that after a 14-0 start, the Horned Frogs had to forfeit games and even hold open tryouts.) Campbell, ironically, made his name as maybe the nation’s best high school recruiter when he was an assistant at Oregon, where he was credited with bringing in the recruiting class of Sabrina Ionescu, Satou Sabally, and Ruthy Hebard. The Ducks’ rocky seasons since he left have only added to his shine. But he’s proving now, with his presence and not just his absence, that he can develop too, that a player can grow at any age. Van Lith’s size and iffy outside shooting might foreclose a real WNBA career for her, but she can at least leave a stronger last impression.
