Joe DeLuca didn’t realize how ugly Emily Engstler’s jump shot was until Victoria got a hand on it. DeLuca didn’t even remember the defender’s last name. The last player on the junior varsity bench, Victoria made the team, but sometimes didn’t participate in drills. But Victoria helped DeLuca find the one thing he’d been searching for with Engstler: something wrong.

Before Engstler brought the ball up the court on the break during the third practice of her freshman year of high school, coaches Joe DeLuca and Bob Mackey had watched in amazement the year prior as she dominated in every facet of the game. Her passing was well beyond her years. She rebounded, blocked shots and put the ball on the floor. On the other end, she finished with ease. Despite her size, she had the skills of a guard.

So as she dribbled the ball down in practice, she immediately looked to the basket and fired a pull-up 3-pointer at the top of the key. It’s a shot she’d hit many times in her career. But this time, Victoria blocked it. Engstler looked to DeLuca in shock.

“We found your flaw,” DeLuca remembered he laughed.

To maximize her versatility, Engstler has spent much of her development working on retooling her jump shot. Now a freshman at Syracuse (5-1), her ability to shoot the ball from outside has added a dynamic element to the Orange’s 3-point heavy offense. Engstler has hit just 4-14 3-pointers so far this season on 50 percent shooting overall from the field. Spending little time on the elbow, many at SU believe Engstler can become a “game-changing” inside-outside player.

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Though Engstler said she feels most comfortable playing the power forward spot, SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said Engstler can play every position on the floor. Her shooting from the outside will be vital for the Orange to elevate to the NCAA championship heights Hillsman expects of his team this year.

“Shooting is about gift first. I think second is about working,” Hillsman said. “She came in shooting the ball, and she’s gonna get better as the year goes on.”

When Engstler was 11, she started playing pick-up basketball at Blackwell Park in Roosevelt Island, a small island on the east side of Manhattan surrounded by the East River. Though she was always big for her age, Sunday games brought men 18 to 50 years old. At first they didn’t want her to play — games could get rough. There was hand-checking, taunting and rough fouls to stop players who beat you off the dribble. Players had to call their own fouls, but no one wanted to be “soft.” So the then-youngest player on the court had to make her shots from the outside. And she did.

Until she turned 13, when she grew into her body and started to add strength to her eventual 6-foot-2 frame, she excelled as a catch-and-shoot player.

One of her friends who used to play with her, Hunter Morris, remembered Engstler used to “chuck” the ball at the basket, but it would go in. It wasn’t until Engstler reached high school where it was identified as a problem. DeLuca, who followed Engstler as an assistant coach at the varsity level when she was promoted from junior varsity to varsity halfway through her freshman season, used to film practices and games to go over with players on the team afterward. In one outtake from a game against Archbishop Molloy (New York) High School, Engstler’s shot was low and from her chest. Her arms were in, and her legs weren’t straight. She shot “as if she couldn’t reach,” DeLuca said, and had a pushed delivery.

DeLuca would ask: You want to take a bad picture? You want to look bad?

“You know how you have your own form and you can still make it?” Engstler said. “To an extent if it looks a little too crazy you might need to fix a little bit, because when you go to college you’re going to be televised and (you) want it to look a little decent then.

“That gave me the urge to, like, want to fix my form, but it also helped help me shoot a lot better 3-point wise.”

She worked on her form by shooting with one hand, stepping back after a few makes from each spot. She practiced in the park, at school and over the summers. The goal was to get her shot up and high as opposed to out and low. At Blackwell, the older men taught her how to tuck her elbow when she shot and encouraged her to keep working on establishing good form.

She picked up the arc on her shot by shooting over a 6-foot-9 Morris — even if he wasn’t always trying to block her. When it snowed, she practiced at the local LA Fitness. Morris remembered walking by Blackwell on rainy days only to see Engstler on the court, still shooting.

Even as Engstler added new combinations to her game — she could go baseline and spin the ball in backward or take flying one-handed shots through traffic — Mackey pleaded steadiness.

“Yeah, that’s nice,” Mackey said. “Okay. Stop. Take the jump shot.”

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Early in her career, due to fear of turning the ball over, Engstler neglected to put the ball on the ground to create her own shot. But as she developed guard skills, her shot became easier to come by. At St. Francis Preparatory (New York) High School, she continued her development through one-on-one drills, working on her step backs and between-the-legs dribble moves. As her level increased in high school, and she arrived to a St. Francis Prep team with less high-level options than Christ the King, she expected to face double and triple teams, St. Francis Prep head coach Kerri White said. She emphasized using her dribbles to create for herself.

After a while, Engstler hitting shots off the dribble and in the face of defenders became routine.

“She really got a consistent form,” DeLuca said. “She figured out what worked for her.”

Even as she grew taller and bigger, she said she noticed the way the game has progressed. She watched the NBA and WNBA and picked up skills and shot combinations from YouTube clips and television. Bigs can shoot, Engstler said. When she was younger, her height caused her to get stuck down low by coaches, but her mother Marilyn, said a big part of Engstler choosing Syracuse was the many different roles Hillsman projected for Engstler.

In her first career game at SU, an 85-49 season-opening win over North Dakota, Engstler hit three of her four attempts from 3-point range and tied the team lead with a career-high 13 points. When her shot is on, Syracuse is explosive. Many of SU’s most damaging runs have featured an Engstler 3-point attempt and increased scoring from the freshman.

“She’s going to get better as the year goes on, and obviously as freshmen start to figure it out, they get better,” Hillsman said, “so we’re looking forward to her getting better soon.”

Published on November 26, 2018 at 12:26 am

Contact Michael: mmcclear@syr.edu | @MikeJMcCleary