"I have some of the big ones, Tesla and Amazon and AI companies," Addi Mack told Basket Under Review. "But then I also try to do some fun ones like Under Armour, because we're an Under Armour school, and Lululemon."
That's Maryland's sophomore guard on her stock portfolio. She's a finance major with somewhere around eight to 10 companies in it, and she keeps a closer eye on them than you might expect from someone with a Big Ten schedule.
It started at home.
"My dad is one of the smartest people that I know in my life," Mack said. "He used to be a CFO. He just really got me into finance."
Rich Mack played college basketball and golf before that career in finance, and he started teaching his daughter about money early.
"We tried to instill the concept of the time value of money by investing even small amounts of money at an early age," Rich Mack told Basket Under Review. "You let them select the companies they are interested in, and it is a fun learning experience for them to watch the stock price. What makes it go up? What makes it go down?"
On November 2nd, Addi scored 35 points on #1 South Carolina in Paris. That's the game everyone saw. The work behind it looks a lot like the lesson her dad described: she found the weakest part of her game, kept working on it, and let it grow.
The Weak Spot
Mack came to Maryland with plenty of reasons to believe in her shot. She scored 4,687 points in high school, which ranked second in Minnesota history when she graduated, and passed Jalen Suggs as Minnehaha Academy's all-time leading scorer. She once scored 53 in a state tournament game.
Basketball wasn't her only option, either. She was a competitive swimmer, a softball player, and a golfer, and her dad saw the same traits in all of it.
"Very athletic as a youngster," Rich Mack said. "Great motor skills, eye-hand coordination, a non-stop motor, very quick, competitive drive, and an insatiable appetite to learn and win. We knew she was special."
Basketball won out. A clip of a young Mack talking about wanting to play like fellow Minnesotan Paige Bueckers has been making the rounds again.
"That video is just so funny," she said. "It was actually my first ever TV interview in seventh grade after one of my varsity basketball games."
Maryland didn't need a ranking to see what she could become.
"I have never evaluated based on rankings. It's always about fit for me," Maryland head coach Brenda Frese told Basket Under Review. "Addi could score, and I believed she would be perfect in our transition game."
College started well. She scored 23 points in 19 minutes against Georgetown in her third game, with 17 of them in the fourth quarter. She made her first start against Princeton two games later and finished with 15 points, six rebounds, and four assists.
The three-pointer never came along with the rest. I went back through her freshman game log, and through her first 24 games, Mack shot 14-of-62 from deep. That's 22.6 percent, from a player who made a habit of hitting them in high school.
"In high school I was a great three-point shooter, and I don't think I really showed that as much last year," she said.
The Big Ten was hard on the rest of her game, too. She shot 55.1 percent from the field in 10 regular-season nonconference games, then 37.3 percent in 18 conference games. On January 11th, she had three points and five turnovers in a home loss to #19 Ohio State. That was about as low as it got.
There was more to it than a freshman adjusting.
"She's always shot it well," Frese said. "She was also battling an ankle injury for most of conference play last year, which really impacted her."
That changes how you look at the 14-of-62 start. A cold stretch from a healthy freshman might show you how their game translates. The same stretch from a freshman playing through an ankle injury for most of the Big Ten schedule says a lot less about her shot. She still made the All-Big Ten Freshman Team and started every one of those conference games.
"I think it's just a ton of learning," she said. "When you come in as a freshman, you don't really know what to expect."
The Turn
Five weeks after that Ohio State loss, Maryland went to Columbus to play the Buckeyes again, with Ohio State now up to #8. Mack had 14 points, went 3-of-6 from three, and turned it over once in a 76-75 win.
That's where the numbers start to change. Over her final seven games of the season, she shot 12-of-25 from the arc, which is 48 percent. She hit 3-of-5 in Maryland's last game, an NCAA Tournament loss at North Carolina.
Seven games isn't much of a sample, but it seemed like a point in the season where things might have started to flip. And Mack noticed it, too.
"I did get better towards the end of the season," she said.
Frese pointed to her confidence.
"She is comfortable and confident now, year 2," Frese said.
Some of that came from the people around her. Last year's team had three seniors in Saylor Poffenbarger, Yarden Garzon, and Mir McLean.
"I think they just taught me a lot about leadership," Mack said.
Another voice came from the end of the bench.
"Having someone like Bri McDaniel on the bench, just being able to be in my ear, telling me what she sees, just helping me in that part of the game was super helpful as well," she said.
The summer had one priority.
"A big thing for me was just working on my three-point shooting," Mack said. "I put in a ton of time throughout the summer working on that."
That part didn't surprise the person who had watched her the longest.
"Very few people will outwork her," Rich Mack said.
The Return
For two quarters in Paris, there wasn't much sign of any of this. South Carolina led 61-33 at halftime. Mack had four points and had missed both of her threes.
"I think a big adjustment at the half was that South Carolina, they were kind of dictating how we played," she said. "I think when we're successful, we're the ones that dictate how the other teams play."
A Tessa Johnson three to start the third quarter pushed the lead to 31. Mack answered with a three of her own, and then she went to work off South Carolina's mistakes. A jumper, a fast-break layup, and a pull-up all came off turnovers. Then she hit a pull-up three, another three, and another fast-break layup. She finished the quarter with 17 points on 7-of-7 shooting.
"She's had that mentality all summer," Frese said. "When she started raining in her threes in that second half, I knew she was in the zone. She also is at her best when she's playing free."
Frese called it playing free. Mack had her own word for it.
"Just for me, going out there trying to be fearless," she said.
South Carolina pushed the lead back to 19 early in the fourth quarter. Mack hit two threes in 36 seconds. She added a third less than two minutes later, then an and-one layup off another turnover. She finished with 35 points on 14-of-20 shooting, 6-of-10 from three, with six assists and two turnovers. After halftime, she went 12-of-14, and her only misses were threes, including one from 33 feet.
My favorite stat from the game: Maryland scored 60 points in the second half, and Mack scored or assisted 43 of them.
That wasn't all shot-making, either. Her coach recruited her for the transition game, and in Paris, Mack ran it well.
"Just for me being the point guard, I can decide how fast we play as a team," she said. "South Carolina's getting out and they're running on us and getting a lot of transition, so let's try to beat them in their own game and let's get out and run in transition."
Maryland lost 101-93, but it got as close as 96-90 on a Trinity Jones three, off a pass from Mack.
Her dad still had one complaint.
"The only thing that could have been better would be completing the amazing comeback and winning the game!" Rich Mack said.
The Dividend
All six of her threes in Paris were assisted. Oluchi Okananwa threw three of those passes, and Bri McDaniel threw the other three.
"My teammates did a great job of finding me to get threes, and I think that just kind of got momentum for all of us throughout the rest of the half," Mack said.
McDaniel is the same player who was in Mack's ear from the bench last season.
"Being able to have that open line of communication with her already last year just makes us trust each other so much more on the court this year," Mack said.
She had been putting time into that relationship for a year before it ever showed up in a box score.
The ball moved the other way, too. Five of her six assists came after halftime, and they went to four different teammates: McDaniel, Okananwa twice, Lea Bartelme, and Jones. On a night when she could have hunted her own shot every trip, Mack's 35 came inside the offense, not around it. That matters on a roster with this many new faces, including freshmen Jones and Jordyn Jackson, many of them playing with her for the first time.
For her dad, the night was the payoff for years of work.
"Seeing that hard work turn into incredible results, especially in a game of that magnitude, is just very gratifying," Rich Mack said. "It was priceless."
The Long View
Mack isn't treating Paris as a finished product. The second half was the story, but she still brought up the first.
"We're definitely not content with how we got ourselves in that hole in the first place, in the first quarter specifically," she said.
That sounds a lot like the player her coach describes. Frese called her "never satisfied."
"You can challenge her in any area. She wants to be elite," Frese said. "It's a blast coaching her. She's so mature."
That applies away from the court, too.
"I think that's something that not only can help me in a career, obviously after I play basketball, but also can help me just be smart with my money," she said of finance. "I try to save my money. I try to invest it in the stock market."
That brings it back to the lesson she learned at home. Put something in early, even something small, and give it time. Mack spent last winter and this summer doing that with her jumper.
She won't shoot 60 percent from three every night, and defenses will spend the rest of the season adjusting to her. But she went 3-of-6 from three in Sunday's 81-62 win over George Mason, and she's now 21-of-41 from three over her last nine games, going back to last February. The return was building well before most of the country noticed.
She already knows what she wants it to become.
"I want to be that knockdown sharpshooter," she said.
