COLUMBUS, Ohio — Long before Saturday, when Kelsey Mitchell experienced the rarest of occasions when she wasn’t a scoring sensation, her father knew she could love the game without shooting the ball.
She was 12, Mark Mitchell recalled, when he arrived at the rec center in Woodlawn, Ohio, one evening after finishing up work in Cincinnati, a 20-minute drive away, where he coached boys’ basketball at Robert A. Taft Information Technologies High School. Through glass doors, he watched his daughter, scrimmaging with the guys, in a predictable dribble-heavy flurry of fast breaks.
“Didn’t score, didn’t even touch the ball for maybe 15 minutes, but she ran up and down every time,” he said.