I guess the burden of being #1 in the country is a new bevy of bandwagon Monday morning point guarding - where were you all when we were fighting and scraping over the past half decade! (But seriously, it's really lovely to have so many folks focused on our women's team again.)
Work has kept me too busy to watch the games in anything close to real time, and I'm only halfway through the Arizona game now, but while Prechtel has some gorgeous offensive moves and can be a great low post shot blocker, but she's still a bit of a liability in a motion offense (both in terms of moving screens and in terms of quickness) and not especially deft at handling clogged paint on either offense or defense. Right now, I view her as a slightly improved Shannon Coffee who is best situated at the high post on offense and the low post on defense. She's also very good at set plays, which this offense doesn't run a lot of (with that Colorado last-second clutch shot the perfect example of what Prechtel excels at!)
The problem is that we don't need her much on at the high post given our exceptionally strong contingent of guards, and she's still a liability in the low post on D. Indeed, as I now pay closer attention to it thanks to everyone's focus on her play, I've noticed a number of "freshman mistakes" that she's still making around the basket on both sides of the court, ones that for the most part Fran is working her way out of, and Brink has largely transcended altogether already.
That's not to say Prechtel doesn't still have brobdingnagian upside, but she's on a team where the starting lineup features recruits ranked #1, #7, #14, #18, and #40 (Wilson, who was underranked because she changed schools and coasts but was still a McD's A-A). And that doesn't even count Brink! So she's facing exactly what I'd expect from a sophomore ranked somewhere around 20-25 in the country in a slightly weaker than average recruiting class coming into #1 team led by some very, very seasoned top players. When I think of other similarly situated players in their sophomore years, her level of game time is pretty similar to someone like Nadia Fingall, who averaged 11.7 minutes her sophomore year. And unlike Fingall's sophomore year, we have a far more stacked lineup these days!
In short, I'm not surprised that with this much talent on the court that she's fighting for minutes; the bigger surprise is simply my delight that we have such a problem, because for the longest time Tara has been trying to make lemonade out of lemons with large recruiting gaps, so this has been a welcome issue to be facing! Watch teams like UConn, Baylor, South Carolina, and Oregon, and it's the exact same kinds of problems: players who are somewhere around 7th or 8th of the bench could make a very reasonable case that they're not being utilized enough.
Work has kept me too busy to watch the games in anything close to real time, and I'm only halfway through the Arizona game now, but while Prechtel has some gorgeous offensive moves and can be a great low post shot blocker, but she's still a bit of a liability in a motion offense (both in terms of moving screens and in terms of quickness) and not especially deft at handling clogged paint on either offense or defense. Right now, I view her as a slightly improved Shannon Coffee who is best situated at the high post on offense and the low post on defense. She's also very good at set plays, which this offense doesn't run a lot of (with that Colorado last-second clutch shot the perfect example of what Prechtel excels at!)
The problem is that we don't need her much on at the high post given our exceptionally strong contingent of guards, and she's still a liability in the low post on D. Indeed, as I now pay closer attention to it thanks to everyone's focus on her play, I've noticed a number of "freshman mistakes" that she's still making around the basket on both sides of the court, ones that for the most part Fran is working her way out of, and Brink has largely transcended altogether already.
That's not to say Prechtel doesn't still have brobdingnagian upside, but she's on a team where the starting lineup features recruits ranked #1, #7, #14, #18, and #40 (Wilson, who was underranked because she changed schools and coasts but was still a McD's A-A). And that doesn't even count Brink! So she's facing exactly what I'd expect from a sophomore ranked somewhere around 20-25 in the country in a slightly weaker than average recruiting class coming into #1 team led by some very, very seasoned top players. When I think of other similarly situated players in their sophomore years, her level of game time is pretty similar to someone like Nadia Fingall, who averaged 11.7 minutes her sophomore year. And unlike Fingall's sophomore year, we have a far more stacked lineup these days!
In short, I'm not surprised that with this much talent on the court that she's fighting for minutes; the bigger surprise is simply my delight that we have such a problem, because for the longest time Tara has been trying to make lemonade out of lemons with large recruiting gaps, so this has been a welcome issue to be facing! Watch teams like UConn, Baylor, South Carolina, and Oregon, and it's the exact same kinds of problems: players who are somewhere around 7th or 8th of the bench could make a very reasonable case that they're not being utilized enough.