(09-03-2022, 03:37 PM)warren65 Wrote: Two of Stanford’s signature programs face a deep issue. Deep as in the “deep depth” that Yogi Berra attributed to his beloved Yankees. Both women’s basketball and women’s soccer have lots and lots of talent, making it really tough to break into the starting lineup.
Over at Maples, coach Tara VanDerveer has seven extraordinary players who can play one or both of the two post positons. Two of those players were number-one ranked in their high school class (Haley Jones and Lauren Betts); a third was ranked number three (Cameron Brink). The two with the lowest class rankings (both number 19) can dunk a basketball (Fran Belibi and Kiki Iriafen). Some of these players (Haley Jones or Brooke Demetre) can and likely will play substantial time in the three position, but that still leaves seven outstanding players fighting for three starting positions. I have posted a story about the Magnificent Seven on the Stanford Fast Break Club site. https://fbccardinalnews.blogspot.com/202...e-and.html
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It should be an exciting season watching Coaches Ratcliffe and VanDerveer wrestling with a problem that every coach would love to have: figuring out who amongst the many gifted and motivated players should get the playing time.
I think your article about the "problemmatic" deep post depth situation of Stanford's WCBB pretty much points to the solution -
use JONES and DEMETRE exclusively at the 3, while leaving 6'7 BETTS / 6'5 PRECHTEL / 6'4 BRINK / 6'3 IRIAFEN / 6'1 BELIBI
to battle it out for the 80 minute allotment at the 4 and 5.
Also, the great thing about this Magnificent 7 is that 4 of them (PRECHTEL, BRINK, DEMETRE and JONES) are reliable threats
from beyond the 3-point arc. This could potentially further alleviate the logjam of minutes at the post, since I would challenge
Tara to even give PRECHTEL or BRINK minutes at the 3 when BETTS is at the 5 and IRIAFEN or BELIBI is at the 4, and with
the versatile JONES slotted at the 2.
Yes, this Magnificent 7 also happens to be the 7 with the highest recruiting rankings in the team (#1 BETTS, #1 JONES, #3 BRINK,
#11 DEMETRE, #15 PRECHTEL, #19 BELIBI and #19 IRIAFEN), so it makes great sense not limit all of them at the 4 and 5.
In order to maximize the individual utilization of this group, I can imagine the following rough configuration of positional duties
for this Magnificent 7:
BETTS: 5 (12.5-15 minutes)
JONES: 3 (20-22.5), 2 (10)
BRINK: 4 (10-15), 5 (10-12.5), 3 (5)
DEMEMTRE: 3 (12.5-15)
PRECHTEL: 5 (12.5-15), 3 (0-2.5)
BELIBI: 4 (12.5-15)
IRIAFEN: 4 (12.5-15)
So many possibilities!