There is another gigantic difference between Sniezek and Lepolo: the team that surrounds them. In Sniezek's day, the rest of the team was frankly not nearly as talented as the rest of the team is that surrounds Lepolo. One of Sniezek's problems in the pre-Kiana era (when Sniezek was a freshman and sophomore) was that people could sag off not only from her but frequently from someone else as well. Bri Roberson was a talented defensive specialist who averaged 6.5 ppg, and so Sniezek's 4.5 ppg meant that two of our perimeter guards were not much of a threat. That allowed other teams to focus almost exclusively on Karlie, who was fabulous but against good teams was limited in how many shots she could get off. (This does sound like it could be a similar problem today if Emma-Nnopu plays alongside Lepolo and neither up their offensive game, allowing defenses to focus on Jump.) But McCall and McPhee were our top two scorers, but neither of them shot over 30% from the arc, so again Karlie could be mobbed on the perimeter while opposing teams clogged the paint to limit McCall and McPhee. Our bigs today, however, are all good jump shooters, which gives us a dimension that we lacked in the Sniezek era.
I think it quite likely that Lepolo's offense will come along and prove to be far superior to Sniezek's, and I think she has already proven that she is far less reckless with her passes.
But let's take a look and see how Sniezek did in her college debut, in a similar game.
On November 13 2015 against Davis, Sniezek started. She did not take a 3 point attempt. She was 1/2 for 2 points. She had 0 assists and 1 turnover.
The next week she started against a good Gonzaga team. She went 0/1 from the field. She had 0 assists and 2 turnovers.
A couple of weeks later we had our infamous loss to a JR Payne coached Santa Clara team. Sniezek scored 0 points, had 0 assists and 4 turnovers. In fact, she did not take a single shot in 25 minutes.
1) I think it likely that Lepolo will prove to be a much better offensive player than Sniezek proved to be. Sniezek was utterly incapable of three point shooting at first, and did not improve much over the years. She did not attempt them in practice or in games--Tara clearly wanted her to but there was something unmovable about that. She finally made 20 attempts her last year, making 6. Lepolo is already draining treys in practice and attempting them in games. This is significantly different from the Sniezek model.
2) In her first college game Lepolo had one of the best 20ish performances by a point guard in Stanford history. If she had one more assist (12) she would have been in our record book, and that is for numbers of assists without paying attention to turnovers. Getting 11 assists with a few turnovers would be remarkable, but doing it with 0 turnovers meant she did not throw a single errant pass. Last year, turnovers were sometimes a significant problem for our team.
3) On defense, it is so much harder for a fan to evaluate. Part of what makes it harder this year is that I am convinced--as others too have remarked--that we have installed a new defense. The amount of switching is much, much higher than previous years. It is rare for one of our players to try to go over or under a screen--we are so used to seeing Anna Wilson do that, it is a shock to see no one trying this year. This is in fact resulting in lots of imbalanced match-ups, where a shorter defender is matched against a taller attacker. But that is not just Lepolo--it is everyone getting scrambled, and seemingly by design. Yes, I can see how our shortest player could be victimized by a team that plans to provoke match-up problems, but this won't be a problem unique to Lepolo. I'm fascinated to see where Tara goes with this defense--I'm sure she has an idea of how to deal with the issues it will pose.
I think it quite likely that Lepolo's offense will come along and prove to be far superior to Sniezek's, and I think she has already proven that she is far less reckless with her passes.
But let's take a look and see how Sniezek did in her college debut, in a similar game.
On November 13 2015 against Davis, Sniezek started. She did not take a 3 point attempt. She was 1/2 for 2 points. She had 0 assists and 1 turnover.
The next week she started against a good Gonzaga team. She went 0/1 from the field. She had 0 assists and 2 turnovers.
A couple of weeks later we had our infamous loss to a JR Payne coached Santa Clara team. Sniezek scored 0 points, had 0 assists and 4 turnovers. In fact, she did not take a single shot in 25 minutes.
1) I think it likely that Lepolo will prove to be a much better offensive player than Sniezek proved to be. Sniezek was utterly incapable of three point shooting at first, and did not improve much over the years. She did not attempt them in practice or in games--Tara clearly wanted her to but there was something unmovable about that. She finally made 20 attempts her last year, making 6. Lepolo is already draining treys in practice and attempting them in games. This is significantly different from the Sniezek model.
2) In her first college game Lepolo had one of the best 20ish performances by a point guard in Stanford history. If she had one more assist (12) she would have been in our record book, and that is for numbers of assists without paying attention to turnovers. Getting 11 assists with a few turnovers would be remarkable, but doing it with 0 turnovers meant she did not throw a single errant pass. Last year, turnovers were sometimes a significant problem for our team.
3) On defense, it is so much harder for a fan to evaluate. Part of what makes it harder this year is that I am convinced--as others too have remarked--that we have installed a new defense. The amount of switching is much, much higher than previous years. It is rare for one of our players to try to go over or under a screen--we are so used to seeing Anna Wilson do that, it is a shock to see no one trying this year. This is in fact resulting in lots of imbalanced match-ups, where a shorter defender is matched against a taller attacker. But that is not just Lepolo--it is everyone getting scrambled, and seemingly by design. Yes, I can see how our shortest player could be victimized by a team that plans to provoke match-up problems, but this won't be a problem unique to Lepolo. I'm fascinated to see where Tara goes with this defense--I'm sure she has an idea of how to deal with the issues it will pose.