Aces draft pick Lauren Manis reaps benefits of long practice time

Lauren Manis’ set shot wasn’t going to be good enough.

Sure, it had been working at Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro, Massachusetts. And it might even work at Holy Cross against Patriot League competition. But it wouldn’t suffice in the WNBA, where she hoped to play. She needed a jump shot, and her father, Gregg, knew it.

“We would spend hours in the driveway, and she’d say, ‘Dad, I’m not strong enough to do this. This is really hard,’” he said. “To her credit. She worked really hard.

“She put in the hours.”

Manis’ jumper is perhaps the reason the Aces selected her Friday with the No. 33 overall pick in the WNBA draft. The 6-foot-1-inch forward spent the past several years reconstructing and developing her shot while starring at Holy Cross, where she eclipsed the 2,000-point and 1,000-rebound plateaus.

“I’ve proved to myself that I can do anything I set my mind to,” Manis said. “My confidence really grew throughout my four years at Holy Cross.”

Manis, 21, hails from Franklin, Massachusetts, where she remembered falling in love with sports before she could talk. She and her older sister, Katherine, now a nurse, played sports together with guidance from their parents, Gregg and Allison, both former college athletes.

Lauren Manis honed in on basketball, though, and began distinguishing herself from her peers in junior high and receiving scholarship offers in high school.

“She was a sleeper, as they called them at the time,” Holy Cross coach Ann McInerney said. “The moment she stepped foot on our campus, we knew there was something special about her.”

Manis committed to the nearby Crusaders during her junior year and stayed true to her word despite late interest from high-major programs such as Boston College. She averaged 13.3 points and 7.6 rebounds as a freshman to capture Patriot League Rookie of the Year honors and resisted the allure of bigger programs, to which she contemplated transferring.

She often practiced by herself at the school’s gym — sometimes staying after midnight — and reached her collegiate zenith last season after working extensively last summer with famed sports psychologist George Mumford.

“I truly believe the mental side of the game is just as important as the physical,” Manis said. “I think that’s what helped me take a huge step from my junior year to senior year and get me to where I am today.”

Manis averaged 18.6 points and 11.5 rebounds and shot 46.3 percent from 3-point range last season, earning All-Patriot first-team and defensive-team honors. She said Mumford’s tutelage helped her as much as any of the shooting drills she devoted herself to last summer.

Aces general manager Dan Padover said he was seeking a specialist with the team’s lone draft pick and praised Manis’s quick, compact release.

Those hours in the driveway paid off.

So did those four years at Holy Cross.

“I put the work in and always had faith,” Manis said. “It means that much more coming from the Patriot League to get drafted to the WNBA. It sounds crazy even saying it.”

Contact reporter Sam Gordon at sgordon@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BySamGordon on Twitter.