01-26-2020, 08:27 PM
With Belibi being the leading scorer this game, now all four freshmen have had that honor this season. And in total, 8 different players have led our team in scoring this year and we haven't even reached the halfway mark of the conference season. And I'm sure it would have been 9 players if Carrington wasn't injured. I take this as a good sign, namely that we have a lot of different players who can contribute to the offense on any given night. This is in stark contrast to last year when only 5 players lead the team in scoring (Smith, Williams, Carrington, Dodson and Fingall). And Dodson and Fingall only did that once. Smith led the team in scoring 19.5 times (the 0.5 is when she tied with someone else for that honor). Part of our trouble last year was we were so reliant on Smith's scoring that teams would drive at her and try and get her in foul trouble to take her out of the game.
Here's another fun exercise, imagine last year's team and think what would happen if the top 3 scorers (Smith, Williams and Carrington) were off the court either due to foul trouble or injury. We would basically just never score. This year if our top 4 scorers are out (Lexie, Williams, Jones and Carrington) we could still field a team of Prechtel, Fingall, Jump, Lacie and Wilson which could do enough offensively to keep us in a lot of games.
Here's another fun exercise, imagine last year's team and think what would happen if the top 3 scorers (Smith, Williams and Carrington) were off the court either due to foul trouble or injury. We would basically just never score. This year if our top 4 scorers are out (Lexie, Williams, Jones and Carrington) we could still field a team of Prechtel, Fingall, Jump, Lacie and Wilson which could do enough offensively to keep us in a lot of games.