“We’re pretty much in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, ‘cept we’re still in Wisconsin,” she told me some 21 years ago in an interview. “Our town’s small, unincorporated. We don’t even have a mayor. But we do have a lot of trees, a lot of woods and forests.
“We live outside of town, and you name it, we got it. A bear rips up our bird feeder every night. We got coyotes, deer. And since I was a little girl, I’ve hunted them all with my dad. I’m an outdoors person. I go out and chop wood every Saturday. I drive a tractor and … I play ball."
Those last couple of words were an understatement.
She didn’t just “play ball.”
She was a hoops sensation at Florence High, where she scored 1,951 points in her career, won all-state honors and senior year, she led her 25-1 team to the state semifinals.
Back then her dream, like most schoolgirl hoopers in the state, was to play for the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay or, as they are better known, the Green Bay Phoenix.
When she was in grade school, Green Bay went to the NCAA Tournament, and it did the same in each of her last three years of high school.
“I wanted so badly to be recruited by them. I went to their camps. I talked to their coaches a little bit,” she recalled Tuesday night after Green Bay routed her team 89-55 at the Nutter Center.
“Back then (in high school) I knew people who went there; girls who played there. They were always on the news.”
Around home she wore those camp t-shirts with pride…though they had come with no promise.
The Phoenix didn’t recruit her.
“Because you were too small?” I asked.
“And probably too slow,” she said with a laugh in that trademark, don’t-polish-the-truth way that she also learned back home.
She got other college offers and had committed to an NCAA Division II school in Michigan when Cedarville University – where her older brother was a science student – made a push to get her.
Kirk Martin, the Yellow Jackets coach, flew up to Florence to recruit her and tells the story of taking a bumpy flight on a little “puddle jumper” from Chicago that left him throwing up in the plane; and on the drive into “the boonies” where she lived; and then throwing up some more in her front yard as she and her high school coach waited to greet him.
‘I learned a lot’
She ended up one of the greatest players in Cedarville history.
She was a three-time NAIA All-American guard who set multiple school records at the time, including: most career points (2,275), three-pointers made (338), best three point percentage (45.8) and assists (644).
Her senior year she led all of college basketball – men and women in the NCAA, the NAIA and the NCCAA – in three-point accuracy, making 50.3 percent of her shots.
With her in a Yellow Jackets jersey, the team went 106-38 and twice made it to the NAIA national title game.
And yet her Green Bay dreams were still alive.
She became the director of basketball operations for the Phoenix and during her two-year stint, the team played in the NCAA Tournament both seasons.
“It was cool to be in such a good program,” she said. “I learned a lot.”
Eventually she ended up back at Cedarville, where she served as Martin’s assistant for six years before taking over the program herself.
From 2016 to 2021, her teams went 106-38, made the NCAA Division II Tournament once and twice she was named the Great Midwest Athletic Conference Coach of the Year.
She took over the Wright State program after Katrina Merriweather left in the spring of 2021.
‘A bunch of fighters’
There have been some struggles since and that especially was the case Tuesday night when Green Bay came to town and treated the Raiders the same way those bears used to treat the Flunker birdfeeder back home in Florence.
With the 89-55 victory, the Phoenix have now beaten Wright State 13 times in a row and have a 76-7 all-time record against the Raiders.
WSU last defeated the Phoenix six years ago.
Tuesday night, Wright State held the lead for just 18 seconds. Green Bay led for 37 minutes and 59 seconds of the 40-minute game.
Hoffman said the game plan had been to try to deny the far-bigger Phoenix – they had seven players who stood 6-feet or taller, WSU had two in uniform – from getting the ball inside.
That plan didn’t work.
Green Bay scored 52 points in the paint; outrebounded WSU 40-22; and made 61.4 percent of its shots, an accuracy rate that’s not surprising when most of your field goals are lay-ups, tip-ins and short jumpers.
Meanwhile, Wright State — which attempts more three-point field goals than any team in the Horizon League — connected on just two of 13 shots (15.4 percent) from beyond the arc in the first half and finished the game just a little better, making 8 of 32 attempts (25 percent) overall.
Two Raiders had decent games.
Point guard Breezie Williams finished with 20 points, three assists and two steals and Abbie Riddle added 15 points.
But Claire Henson, the team’s second leading scorer (10.7 ppg) was held scoreless and Rylee Sagester, who leads the team and is third in the Horizon League in three pointers made this season, missed all three of her long-range attempts and finished with two points.
The loss was the fifth in a row for the 5-10 Raiders and their eighth in nine games. This one was especially hard to take for a gritty competitor like Hoffman because the Raiders were bullied inside and confounded outside.
“We just weren’t tough enough and that’s frustrating because I think we have a tough group,” Hoffman said. “I think we have a bunch of fighters. But this turned into a clinic on scoring interiorly and that’s how you win basketball games old-school wise.”
While there were plays that were especially galling to her – Green Bay’s little-used guard, Julianna Ouimette, scored the game’s final points on an uncontested drive along the baseline for an easy lay-up – nothing was more disturbing than the end of the first half.
Green Bay’s Madison Hoffmann, an end of the bench player for the Phoenix who had never scored in a college game before, had just gotten the ball across midcourt as the first half time was about to expire from the clock.
She heaved a deep three with just 4/10ths of one second left. The ball went in and she was fouled by WSU’s Olivia Brown.
Hoffmann made the free throw too, her four-point play putting Green Bay up, 51-28.
As the Green Bay players swarmed their beaming teammate for a victorious walk to the dressing room, Kari Hoffman looked ahead stonily as she made her way off the court.
She’s a hard-nosed competitor and what she just had witnessed had shown neither hardness, nor competitiveness from her team.
As she was passing beneath the upraised stands, suddenly you heard the voices of little kids yelling down to her.
“Mom! ... Mom!
“Hi Mom!”
It was two of her three young children.
And for just an instant Kari Hoffman showed a bit of a smile as a nightmare briefly turned back into a sweet dream.
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