Draft Prospect Profile: MB Khori Louis
Louis combined her elite athleticism with an improved mental game last season and it produced exceptional results.
“She is the most gifted athlete that I've ever coached.”
Those were the first words out of Coach Chris Poole’s mouth when I asked him about middle blocker Khori Louis, who is entering her senior season with his Florida State Seminoles.
“Just from the time she walked into our gym at a camp in seventh grade and touched 10-3, I knew she was going to be special. We have made great strides with her here, but that's to her work habits because she comes in every day to try to learn and she still wants to learn. She knows that she can be so much better than she is now and just wants to continue to learn and get better.”
The faith that Poole has placed in Louis has been richly rewarded over the course of her three-year career, culminating in a tremendous junior campaign in 2023. Although middle blockers are often not a staple of the offense, the Noles didn’t hesitate to send the ball her way. She was one of just 18 players in DI volleyball who hit over .400 last year, coming in fourth with a scorching .432 hitting percentage on 490 total attacks.
That kind of success has been a long time coming, says Poole. He credited her work ethic repeatedly and cited a few areas where Louis has grown tremendously over the last season or two, starting with her willingness to play in a faster offensive system.
“Her setters in both high school and club typically just set high balls, even in the middle. It was just ‘Set it high and let Khori go up and hit it,’ so, timing for her was her biggest thing that she had to learn. She had to be confident to go faster, be in the air and let the setter find her, things like that, because it was completely foreign to her. She had never experienced any of that as a high school or club player growing up here in Tallahassee,” he explained.
Her discomfort with the speed of the college game was not just caused by her lack of playing time with a quick setter — Louis lacked experience of any kind, compared to many of her peers. She was primarily a basketball player through most of her school years, only committing to volleyball as a teenager.
“Her first year we were trying to get her just to run a faster one or a faster shoot. We finally had to give up because she just wasn't comfortable doing it yet, and she would keep telling the setters, ‘Can you set me higher? Can you set me higher?’ Well, it's because that's what she had always done. She didn't really know how to have any kind of timing coming in quicker, and that caused her to be nervous about it. You know, she wanted to set the same way.”
Helping players cultivate a skillset they’ve never needed before while simultaneously playing against the best competition of their life is no easy task. For Poole to help Louis reach her potential at the ACC level, he needed to help her not only grow in skill, but also in confidence.
“There was times during her freshman year to where if she got blocked or, you know, messed up or something like that you know, she would really lose confidence quick because she just didn't have enough experience to build from there,” recalled Poole. “We would just have to be able to tell her, ‘Khori, you're amazing, don't lose confidence because you make a mistake. It's okay. It's gonna happen,’ and just try to get her to understand, you know, there's other ways to be able to score points if you're struggling in some way.”
These days, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Louis can be a lethal player in the middle. She and FSU running mate Kiari Robey were the most potent pair of middles anywhere in D1 volleyball, both placing within the top 20 in hitting percentage, with Robey also finding herself on the blocks leaderboard. Once Louis got her mindset right, things fell neatly into place for her, in large part because she’s such an explosive player at the net.
“She is one of those that just glides when she jumps. She's an easy jumper. So, because of that she can be you know one step from the net or not even take a step from the net and can pop up about the net without any problem. That gives her a special advantage over a lot of kids that need a little bit more pop to be able to get up,” raved Poole.
From the perspective of the coach, putting Louis and Robey in the same gym has only helped them both get better as iron sharpens iron. Robey, who transferred in from Oregon, redshirted her freshman year, and has had more time to refine her touch. Squaring her off against Louis in practice has helped Louis adopt some of the things Robey does well into her game.
One way that relationship has manifested itself on the court is how willing Louis is to switch to a tip shot when the moment calls for it. In Poole’s estimation, her ability in that area was “zero, before coming in.” Many players of her age and especially ones with her degree of physicality are extremely hesitant to change speeds due to a lack of confidence, or frankly, a lack of skill. However, it was a skill that Robey already possessed when she transferred to Florida State. Since working together, it’s something Louis has picked up on as well.
As terrifying an offensive weapon has she has become, Poole would like to see Louis continue to improve on the defensive side of the net in her final season with the Seminoles.
“I would say the biggest thing that she continues to work on a lot is blocking. Again, because she's physical she can go up and just roof you straight down but part of it is still learning to have good vision with her eyes and being able to read setters and things like that better. So some of that is just experience. She just has be able to understand the situation she's in and and be able to see the setter and where she's going to release it, be able to stay still, be able to stay loaded, so those are all things that sometimes as a player that's a little more undeveloped, they don't see the game quick enough,” said Poole.
The argument for belief in her chances to become amore well rounded player is rooted in the fact that she’s plenty physical enough to compete with anyone on the court of she con connect the dots mentally. As someone who has taken massive leaps forward in her time at FSU, she gives the impression of someone who isn’t done getting better.
Poole was point blank in his belief that Louis has a future in pro volleyball.
“There's no doubt she can play professionally. There's not any doubt in my mind. I believe that she can play for USA National team. I mean, she's that good,” he said.
Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity. To read the full transcript of my interview with Coach Poole, click here. To watch a full game, click here or here.