Born to play
Growing up in Canton, Ohio, Poole was raised in basketball by a family filled with basketball players.

Looking back on her youth, Poole said there was no question about what her path would be.

“I feel like I had no choice in liking basketball,” she said. “My whole family played it. … My mom played, my dad played — that’s really what I grew up around, and I (grew) to love it, and I still do.”

With her mom, Victoria DeGraffinreed, as her best friend and practice coach, the two spent hours in the gym working on her game and DeGraffinreed said it was their relationship that she believes made the difference in helping Poole become the first in her family to fully maximize their talent.

“The only one that really did anything with the talent is her,” DeGraffinreed said. “(I was) in her corner, … standing by her side, leading her and pushing her in the right direction to stay with what she loved.”

Success came quickly for Poole in high school as a four-year starter at McKinley High and the school’s all-time leading scorer with more than 1,300 career points, but the transition to college was unlike any challenge she’d ever experienced.

Jumping in the Poole
In her first two years on campus, Poole struggled to crack head coach Suzy Merchant’s rotation, averaging less than five points and 15 minutes per game, and DeGraffinreed said it led her daughter to question if she belonged.

“It was rough for her,” she said. “She always felt that she should have been out there getting more minutes. I knew she had it in her, but she wasn’t giving her all. She thought she was, but she wasn’t and she couldn’t see it. … She had things holding her back (and) would talk herself down.”

Poole said she has always struggled with shyness and often would stick to herself, never confident enough to speak out.

It wasn’t until she saw her team suffer a fourth straight loss to Illinois on Jan. 26 that Poole knew it was her time to step up.

After catching up with Merchant — who left the court to momentarily be alone after the loss — the two spent about a half hour talking about what the team needed to do and came up with a plan to right their season.

“It’s just about maturing, and that’s what a senior has to do,” Poole said. “You have to grow up, I wouldn’t say quick, but you have to definitely grow up. You’re here on your own, the team is your family, coach Merchant is the head of it, and you have to grow up on your own.”

Poole’s maturity was on full display by topping her career-high 28 points from the game before by scoring 32 points in a victory over No. 11 Penn State, becoming the first player in program history to score 60 points in a two-game span.

MSU has now won five of its last six games, and Merchant said the team’s success is tied to Poole’s growth into the vocal leader Merchant had been trying to bring out of her for four years.

“She came (to MSU) as a very reserved, kind of introverted, maybe shy in some ways type of personality, and to watch her in interviews now, to watch her with little kids, to watch her with her teammates, I think her communication skills have just gone through the roof,” Merchant said. “A lot of that is really the product of what Michigan State has helped her do, and in the same time, she’s invested in improving herself as an individual.”

Yet as proud as Merchant is of her senior, there is no one prouder than DeGraffinreed, seeing her daughter develop into the player and person she always knew she could be.

“It’s been wonderful to see,” she said. “There were times she wanted to give up because she didn’t know why things weren’t going the way she wanted to and to see her happy and not regretting if she should have come to this school … this is what I’ve been longing for.”