Steele Venters' Path to UW

Still, what's it like for you with your body and everything being an eight-year player, which I think is really rare for college basketball? I don't know if there's been another one. Yeah, yeah, it's been huge. This is my first healthy off-season in three years, so you know, being able to improve my body, get stronger, quicker, faster over this off-season has been a big goal of mine and I feel really good going into the season. And what kind of shape are you What are you doing now, do you think, eight years later? Yeah, this is the best shape I've been in in college, I think. I mean, conditioning-wise and just like overall strength and quickness, I feel really good. How old are you? 25. 25, wow. And you've played for almost every Washington University with the exception of, who haven't you played for? WSU, CSU. Yeah, there you go. And what brought you here to this one? I heard you say your sister had been here, and it wasn't that- Yeah, it's familiar, but I played against Coach Sprinkle when he was at Montana State when I was at Eastern. He had great teams when I was there, so I always admired the physicality his teams played with, and he's always been a winner at the other schools he's been at, and so we're trying to get to the March Madness here. Did you have a big game against him? Oh, yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Does he remind you of that, or did he give you a hard time? Oh, yeah. But he beat us a couple times, too, but yeah, I definitely had some big games. What would have been a high point if you remember anything like that? 30 something or? I think I had 20 at Montana State, and a game winner against them. Yeah, at Montana State, that one had hurt for them. But then they came to Eastern and beat us, so they got us back. So one of the attractions to you for these guys is that you're a shooter. Yeah. And they've had troubles with that for a long time actually, cuz I've been out here for decades. But outside shooting has not been one of the fortes of this program. So I think bringing you and Parker in was specific to try and fix that. Tell me a little bit about it. Yeah, I mean, I think that's been a huge emphasis. When you have shooters on the floor, obviously we're going to make shots, but it's overall just a spacing thing. Being able to get these guys like Les, LeJuan, Lathan, these guys, give them room to drive to the hoop or post spacing. So I think that's the biggest value we bring is being able to space the floor not knockdown shots.