Hailey Van Lith remains a perennial winner, leading TCU to its first Sweet 16

On Sunday evening in Fort Worth, Texas – 2,000 miles from her hometown of Wenatchee and an incalculable distance of how far she has actually come in the last five years – Hailey Van Lith played the final home game of her college career.

Led by its (generously measured) 5-foot-9 point guard Van Lith, the TCU Horned Frogs vanquished Louisville 85-70 to advance to the program’s first Sweet 16.

They made sure to do so with dramatics, allowing the Cardinals to cut a 21-point third-quarter lead to a single-digits game late in the fourth.

Van Lith played all 40 minutes and finished with 16 points, 10 assists and five rebounds. As time expired, she bent at the waist, catching her breath before throwing her arms skyward to the chants of “T-C-U, T-C-U.”

But leading up to the game, the elephant in the room didn’t try to hide itself. For the second season in a row, Van Lith, who had spent the first three years of her college career at Louisville, had a potential opportunity to face the Cardinals in the NCAA Tournament. A season ago, the collision was avoided when Middle Tennessee sent Louisville home early. This season, Van Lith’s reunion with Louisville came to fruition in Fort Worth.

She understood the narrative: The game wouldn’t be billed as an upstart program and recently crowned Big 12 champs taking on a perennial March darling in Louisville. No, it was “The Hailey Van Lith Bowl 2.0.” In her final year of college basketball, she would either have her college career ended by the program with which she started, or she would send it packing. There was no third option in this binomial exercise.

“It doesn’t necessarily align with where I’m at mentally or emotionally, and that’s OK,” Van Lith said the day before the game. “It doesn’t matter if people don’t have the same perception as me, but I’m in a really good spot. I’m excited to play. This game is much bigger than me and what I’ve got going on.”

What Van Lith had going on was her singular focus on the goal of a Final Four run with her Horned Frogs. Despite the changing scenery, one thing that has remained consistent for Van Lith through her first four years is her seasons have never ended before the Elite Eight. She has one Final Four appearance on her résumé, during her sophomore season at Louisville.

The greatest potential contradiction to that seemingly inevitable end would be the fact that she chose TCU in the first place (or, technically, third). A dynasty the Horned Frogs are not. Last season, after a slew of injuries, TCU drew national attention by hosting walk-on tryouts midseason. In nine NCAA Tournament appearances, it had never advanced out of the first weekend. The Horned Frogs hadn’t even made the Big Dance since 2010. In coach Mark Campbell’s third season there, which coincided with Van Lith’s first, TCU was a program made up of journeywomen. Of its five starters, none began her career in Fort Worth. On a roster of 14, there are no freshmen.

And yet, Van Lith along with other NCAA Tournament-experienced transfers like Oregon State’s Donovan Hunter (who played in the Elite Eight with the Beavers last season) chose TCU.

“I’m thankful. For them to come to a program that a year ago was holding open tryouts, forfeiting games and was a year were removed from a 1-17 season,” Campbell said, “to have this level of talent … it’s humbling.”

Van Lith felt humbled herself. In the postgame media conference, she broke down in tears when asked about fans in the stands who wore her uniform. She credited her faith for getting her through “so much pain and suffering and confusion.”

She has never publicly disclosed the exact reasons she departed Louisville or LSU. When given the opportunity, she talks about fond memories she has of each spot. She points to the education – an undergraduate degree at Louisville in three years (joking about the mailings she has been getting as a graduate to donate money) and a master’s degree at LSU in a year.

Her final season at TCU, where she’s returned to her primary point guard position, has boosted her WNBA draft stock. She’s still a likely second-round pick, but it’d be shortsighted to bet against her making a roster if only she can find the right fit. It takes exactly five minutes – not five years – of watching Van Lith play basketball to see her grit and tenacity to imagine that coming through at a WNBA training camp.

But that’s still weeks ahead of where Van Lith is now. At this point in March, where she has been before, she’s taking it a game at a time. She has more NCAA Tournament experience (19 games) than any player competing, and the Horned Frogs will need her in a rematch with Notre Dame in Sweet 16.

For Van Lith, this is her comfort zone – advancing in March. Through three schools, three conferences and three coaches, this is where she has always been. But with the Horned Frogs, this is where she has pulled them in the final weeks of her college career. The journey has been long and circuitous.

The ball will stop bouncing at some point in the next few weeks (before the draft), and then she might spend some time reflecting on where she has been and from what she has come. How, in 2020, she left her native Washington for a freshman season at Louisville, punctuated by masks and 6-foot spaced benches during the pandemic. Five years later, she’ll leave a game – whenever the road ends for TCU – that has NIL, the transfer portal and units. She has worn a dozen different uniforms, both red and multiple shades of purple, and called three places home. She is, in many ways, the representation of the modern college athlete, but she’s also just a winner who has proven she can do that at every stop along the way, even one as seemingly unlikely as TCU.

“A lot of people may think I’m crazy, but I always knew what was coming for this team. I expected this type of outcome,” Van Lith said. “The intricate details, how it unfolded were not necessarily my idea of it, but the bigger picture of what we have been able to accomplish and do, I always knew that this was waiting for us.”

Even if she didn’t always know where the path would lead.