Recap of D1 Action from Sunday plus a second look at Saturday games.
D1 HIGH FIVE
Paige Bueckers, UConn, Hopkins 23
Macy Smith, Oakland, Spring Lake Park 20
Alyssa Ustby, North Carolina, Rochester Lourdes 19
Alayna Contreras, Kansas City, Hopkins 17
Liv McGill, Florida, Hopkins 15
Totals: 94
Once again Hopkins comes up with three players in the top five. All five made the state tournament at one point in their career. Wait a second….Spring Lake Park??? Nope. Smith made it to state with Maranatha early in her career. BTW this is her third D1 college with stops first at Cal State Northridge outside of LA and then Utah State. Smith isn’t the only player at multiple schools. Contreras got her start at Cochise CC in AZ. KC is her only D1 home. Both Bueckers & Ustby are 2020 HS Grads. McGill is the only first year player just graduating in June 2024 from HS.
A SECOND LOOK…
Yesterday I posted the pp100s for the six games I charted on Saturday at the Granite City Classic. What if we looked at the pp100s without the turnovers factored in? Who leads?
- Hopkins 137.21
- Rochester Mayo 130.77
- WHA 128.57
- Crosby-Ironton 128.57
- Duluth Marshall 120.69
- Providence 119.74
- Prior Lake 117.54
- Maple Grove 117.02
- Wayzata 116.98
- BBE 116.33
- Minnetonka 113.79
- Goodhue 98.44
With these numbers WHA and Duluth Marshall, who both lost, would have beaten their opponents. The only non-centurion team with the adjusted numbers was Goodhue. Also, Goodhue was the team that had the highest touch per point scored at 7.46. The team with the lowest touch per point (indicating a quicker offense) was Crosby-Ironton at 3.63. The only other team sub-4 in that category was Providence at 3.82. Speed kills. The only team that had a lower touch per point than their opponent and lost was WHA.
The team with the biggest improvement (they all improved obviously, no one’s pp100 got worse when eliminating turnovers) was Hopkins with a bump up of 43.51. The smallest improvement came with Providence at 12.64, but when you are scoring 91 points and had the best real pp100 at 107 it will be hard to generate a higher ceiling.
I also looked at starters and the pp100s. The best starting five pp100 was Crosby-Ironton at 110.1 with Rochester Mayo nipping at their heels at 108.6 and Providence right behind at 106.4. The team with the better bench was Prior Lake whose starters were 13.4 behind the team’s real pp100 at 83.7. Teams also with a stronger bench were WHA and even Providence’s bench had a better pp100 than their starters (which is a hard thing to do considering all five were centurions and were within an eyelash of getting all five starters in the 31 Club).
The lesson learned: Value the ball. Make strong decisions. Receivers and passers need to read each other and the changing environment constantly. And the ceiling for pp100 appears to be near 140. Ball handling/ passing—how to get open and how to create space was always the first item on my skill development program. Too often I see teams unaware of or unable to get open when being pressed. I see a lot of fifth grade traveling ball entries (or I guess now it is third grade traveling) where the receiver gets the ball about an inch from the baseline and has to negotiate 94 feet of court. Yechh.
DAY AHEAD
13 games on tap today. Closest to the metro is at Lake City with Dover-Eyota paying a visit. Winona State wraps up their tournament event with two games. Aitkin hosts four teams in their tournament.