In theory, sure, but the names on the First Team are all pretty solid themselves.
I feel like the Honorable Mention team maybe should have been smaller. Like, Sadia San Franciso, Azzi Fudd, and Denim Deshields are all pretty solid, but Wesleigh Ferguson and Fantasia James are justā¦ names. Wesleigh is spelled weird, but its not even in the same league as Mjericle and Sirviva.
Edit - Thelma Barbitch is my absolute favorite. Iām sure she or at least her parents are from another country, but in the US thatās a deeply unfortunate name.
Hmmā¦based off of previous stats alone I would have guessed Smith or Weimar to be more likely starting candidates than Amanze (or maybe Smith for Levy, what are positions anyway?). Hurd, Levy, McGhee, Brown are all in the same hat as wings who havenāt been efficient offensive players yet; I donāt see a lot of separation between them and Mox wants to play a deep rotation, so I expect minutes for all of them.
Smith wasnāt suited up. No idea why. Safe to assume sheāll start when sheās back.
Not sure why Weimar didnāt start. She got the bulk of the Q2 minutes, but Mox went back to the same starting lineup to start the second half. (And then Q4 was pretty much garbage time for both teams.)
I like Hurd. Its basically a meme at this point, but sheās a dawg and the team needs that.
O got her act together last season precisely when I was giving up on her, and probably has the widest range of outcomes on the team. Sheās got the talent and athleticism to be honorable mention all-ACC or she could fall out of the rotation by ACC play. Neither outcome would surprise me. She needs to fall out of love with 16ā fallaway jumpers. Also, given that she has decent size and plus athleticism, someone needs to fix whatever caused her to be literally the worst rebounder on the team per minute. She was worse than even all the little guards and miles worse than the front court folks. Mo grabbed 2x as many rebounds per minute as O. Thatās a little unfair because Mo is magic on a basketball court, but sheās also 4+ā shorter than O.
Could not be more psyched for Brown to be back. Last yearās team + Brown wins ~3 more games and is genuinely a bubble team, imo.
O has spacing value too, as all the other wing options have been not good from 3. The best version of the team probably has her playing at a quality starter level.
Yeahā¦ I half-joked at one point last season that the teamās best outside threats were Mo and Lauterbach. Andā¦ wow, now that Iām looking up the final results, Lauterbach did indeed finish the season tied for 2nd in 3FG% (albeit on really low volume) at 33.3%. She was tied with O, so thatās nice, but 33.3% is pretty bad for 2nd place. O got there by massively improving her outside shooting over the latter part of the season so Iām hopeful for next season. But Iām still not a fan of the off-balance mid-range jumpers she seems to want to build her offense around rather than the rare slashes to the hoop or catch and shoot 3s Iād like for her to build her offense around.
She was 2nd in 3s attempted, which would be fine, except that it feels like the rest of the roster (except Mo, obviously) is players who hit 25-30% of their 3s on moderate volume and bright green lights. They attempted them so frequently and confidently I assumed they must be hitting them in practice, but game results say otherwise.
And finally, yeah, I get why Mo averaged almost 4 TOs a game. Its a rare weakness in her game, but its not entirely out of line. But Lattimore averaging ~3 and Clark and Hurd each averaging 2+ is wild. And the team had 7 players average 1+ TOs/game. That by itself just crushes an offense. If they canāt fix the TOs and either get better at outside shooting or stop doing it, its going to be hard to improve the offense.
MOās TO rate was 20%, which isnāt bad. She just had a very heavy burden, played a lot of minutes, and the team played fast-ish, making that raw TO number high.
Hurd was first off the bench, for however much meaning you want to give that in an exhibition against Frostburg State. And O played a lot of minutes with what appeared to be the end-of-the-bench crew in Q4.