Players do go pro early, and I don’t know what Naz Hillmon’s intentions are, but if she were to return, next year’s team would retain most of it’s current contributors - all we’d lose is Hailey Brown, our third leading scorer and top three-point shooter. But everyone else would return - be pretty stacked.
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I work at an elementary school and the high school we feed into played Naz’ team in the state finals a few years ago. Went to the game and Naz was the second best player (Zia Cooke, that starts for South Carolina was the best) on the floor but you could tell she would be a great college player. She played fantastic, but her team didn’t win.
She’s progressed a ton since then and she could be a back-to-back B1G player of the year. Lucky to have her.
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Would love to see regular commentary about the women’s hoop squad here. Watched a couple of games with my daughter last year, and she got into it. . . think they’re a pretty entertaining team from glimpses so far this year.
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I’ll be at tomorrow’s game, shooting for another site that shall remain nameless, so I’ll give my two cents afterwards. My analysis won’t be that comprehensive but I’ll do my best!
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Dylan just said it was okay to share photos, so here’s my gallery from Sunday’s game. By the way, I have to give some love to Dustin. He’s been a resource for me since even before I shot my first sporting event and has been kind enough to loan me his 100-400mm lens (which isn’t a cheap one) for when I shoot softball. Great guy!
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Hooray for time for M womens hoops here. 2020 team is really good. Kim Barnes Arico has done a tremendous job.
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Yeah I really like how Kim Barnes Arico has continued to build her program up and seem to be moving towards being one of the elite Big Ten Womens programs.
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I was ready for her to be fired in 17/18 when we almost choked away an NCAA tourney appearance. Her teams had a tendency to fall apart late in the regular season. Would have been five straight years without a tourney bid. But they beat a ranked Maryland team and I don’t have many complaints since. Recruiting has picked up and we could turn a corner this year.
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Michigan women destroyed Butler this afternoon at Crisler, 93-54. Looks like Butler is terrible but beating a power conference team by 39 points can’t hurt. Naz had 25 and 7 and Leigha Brown scored 19.
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I guess I typed Butler too fast…
Something odd that I’ve noticed the last two games:
Both times, the Fab Five cut-outs have been placed on the floor in front of the seats they occupy. I’m not sure why. Every other cut-out is up.
Looking ahead, our first three conference games are against the teams that finished in the bottom three spots of the conference last year. Wisconsin already lost their opening conference game to Iowa by 7. Iowa is typically a decent team, but I don’t know much about them this year. Penn State lost to ranked Syracuse by 10 and Illinois lost to Valparaiso. I’m guessing that’s a 3-0 start to conference play, 8-0 overall.
After that, we get N’W, who is usually pretty good but has yet to play a game this season. But after them, another stretch of very winnable games - Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin and MSU. So we are set to have a fantastic start to the season. We luck out and only play Maryland and Indiana once each. But the second half of the conference schedule is much tougher than the first half. First half features two currently ranked teams but almost all the doormat games. The second half features only three, but other potentially solid programs.
KBA’s best conference records here are 11-5 in '16-17 and 11-7 in '18-19. Looking at the schedule, I’d be pretty disappointed in not getting at least 12 wins in conference this year, especially since the women have moved to a 20 game conference slate and our schedule. Obviously with the pandemic, who knows how many of those we’ll play.
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Yeah I think Flaherty was in many ways a career savior for her (also an incredibly fun player to watch - she’s really why I first started watching the women’s team).
I think Michigan should actually contend for the conference title this year - Maryland lost quite a bit, it seems (looks like they’re being driven by a grad transfer from Harvard at the moment) - only one member of this year’s rotation was on the team last year. They have had some good results though (two top 25 wins so far).
Iowa has had a bunch of close calls - a two point win to Iowa State, 6 point win over Drexel. They return they’re 2nd - 4th leading scorers but lost their #1. We have a shot!
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Maryland still has Diamond Miller and Ashley Owusu. They were the tandem that impressed me the most in their win here last year. Owusu was Tractor Traylor-like in a way. Fairly big but super nimble. I’d guess they’re still the team to beat.
Oh- I did say I’d give my analysis about yesterday’s game. The short version is: Michigan is good. Butler isn’t. Pretty insightful, huh?
Digging a wee bit deeper, Butler was never in it. I think Michigan may have scored the first 16 points of the game. They were getting anything they wanted and Butler couldn’t hit a shot from anywhere. Naz and Leigha were the leaders, as usual, but Michelle Sidor also chipped in 16 points off the bench. I’m guessing that’s a career-high for her.
Everyone except Emily Kiser played. I don’t know if she’s hurt or not (she participated in warm-ups) but she was getting some spot minutes last season. Currently, the back-up bigs are Freshman and I’d say that on offense, they’re a little behind where Varejao was at this point last year. Hopefully, Naz stays healthy, the Freshman progress, and Kiser joins the mix.
It looks like they’ve been shooting extremely well from 3 - Hailey Brown was really the only asset they had there last year, but now Johnson, Sidor, and Nolan are off to good starts. I still feel like Amy Dilk has the talent to give more than she has to this point (not that she’s ever going to lose her spot now, but I think she has it in her to be more than a role player).
Last year they were really really turnover prone (Dilk especially) - more turnovers than assists. They’re on the right side so far this year.
She almost made an incredible no-look reverse-layup yesterday.
I think she went a little deeper behind the backboard than she expected.
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That’s a good shot. Thanks for sharing your photos!
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