Back for the 2018-19 women’s college basketball season, here are 12 things that stood out from the first week-plus in the world of Pac-12 women’s basketball.
1. Here’s to hoping we see Kristine Anigwe top her previous career high of 11 3-point attempts this season
Just give us one or two per game! Maybe a couple more if she’s feeling it. Many opponents will probably cede those. Anigwe is much quicker than the majority of the people that will be checking her this season. Extra attention on her jumper would serve a purpose, giving Cal’s star chances to show more of this:
2. Absurd early season stat that won’t continue: Recee Caldwell’s turnover rate
The grad transfer has turned it over on 42.4 percent of possessions used through three games. That won’t persist.
Cal’s watchability will skyrocket if their support players score enough to allow them to play through Anigwe inside. Caldwell functioned more as a distributor at Texas Tech. The Golden Bears will need more of the player that made 4+ 3-pointers ten times in the 2016-17 season to reach their full potential.
3. It took less than a quarter to begin to understand how Destiny Slocum raises Oregon State’s ceiling
I don’t care who they’re playing. That’s Kat Tudor being spoon-fed a wide open triple! I hope an after basket cutaway catches Scott Rueck just smiling at some point this season at the absurdity of some of the lineups he’s going to be able to trot out there. Tudor, Katie McWilliams and Aleah Goodman were 40+% 3-point shooters last year without a distributor of Slocum’s caliber around. Mikayla Pivec and Taya Corosdale were above average, and are now sure bets to get even more open looks.
Slocum has looked fantastic. Even the finest and most talented defenses in the country will have serious problems sticking in a man-to-man without ceding a boatload of open threes. And if Slocum begins hitting this shot on a regular basis, OSU is headed to Tampa.
4. The big winners in Slocum’s arrival are…
Pivec and Goodman.
They just fit really well as secondary engines next to Slocum or can play together to carry the offense when she rests. Pivec will get to attack scrambled defenses on the backside all season long. Goodman can really shoot it, and is already a threat to drill threes off the dribble on a regular basis.
5. Stanford’s thicket of arms
Nadia Fingall and Maya Dodson look ready to absorb Kaylee Johnson’s 23-some minutes per game. Either one is an awesome fit next to Alanna Smith on defense. That trio is way ahead of dozens of others thanks to their activity level and discipline to defend with their arms straight up.
I think the other end of the floor is where the Cardinal will need some time. I expect their defensive efficiency to take a step forward from last year’s respectable mark of 89.8, which placed them in the 70th percentile nationally per Her Hoop Stats.
6. Amber Melgoza working to a spot
Melgoza was a revelation last season for the most entertaining 1-17 power five team in conference play that you’ll ever see. With some talented newcomers on board, I have no idea how this team will look two months from now. They could put some interesting combinations out there to do some switching. Multiple players can get down into the post and go to work.
As they begin sorting some of that out, you can bank on Melgoza showing up every night to keep them in games. She doesn’t jump out of gym or have a massive size advantage. But she reads the defense to get to her spots and knows how to finish plays once she’s there. (She also gets to the line a decent amount, giving them more chances to set up their full court pressure.)
7. Idaho State gets an easy one on an under out
Sue Bird and Jewell Loyd did the same for the Seattle Storm this past WNBA season. It isn’t all that uncommon for the person guarding the inbounder to creep elsewhere to cover up a looming threat on a baseline out of bounds play. A quick inbound and a pass back to the inbounder is a great way to combat it.
8. Aari McDonald gettin’ tricky
Last season was an absolute slog for the Wildcats. I’ll go out on a limb and say their fans have forgotten all about it since McDonald’s U of A debut.
The conference ought to change its slogan to Pac-12: Conference of Really Awesome Lead Guards. It’d be more accurate. But if Bill Walton is going to say utter it on air 10,000 times per broadcast, I guess they are better off with something more concise.
This season’s crop is absolutely stacked: Sabrina Ionescu, Slocum, Asha Thomas, Kiana Williams, Minyon Moore, Kennedy Leonard, Melgoza and McDonald with room for more. I’m not going to entertain the ‘What if Jordin Canada were a year younger?’ because, you know, rings.
McDonald is a blur. My favorite plays so far have been the ones where she snuck up on you. In the play above, she isn’t really involved in the possession. But if you think that way, you won’t stand a chance when the ball does find her.
And in a great bit of trickery here she pretends to stroll into a handoff before turning on the jets to knife to the rim.
9. Smooth like Satou
It’s really easy to forget how special a player Satou Sabally is. She’s (listed at) 6’4! That’s taller than actual rotation centers in the WNBA with the game of a two guard!
It’s disappointing that we’ve already lost one potential season of seeing Satou with her sister Nyara, who will miss 2018-19 due to a season-ending knee injury. The latter is all fast-twitch, a true grab and go nightmare. Oregon head coach Kelly Graves has referred to the former as the clarinet to this Ducks orchestra — smooth in everything she does.
10. The other Moore is here
Mariya Moore arrived at just the right time for the Trojans. (Insert cliche about the importance of guard play in college basketball.) The Louisville transfer will get to bomb plenty of open threes — she’s up to 23 attempts through three games. Fittingly, she’s the perfect complement on the wing to younger sister Minyon, USC’s starting point guard.
There are a lot of ripple effects worth watching for with Mariya’s arrival. The biggest one: what kind of burden she’s able to handle offensively. Minyon and Aliyah Mazyck had to do all of the heavy lifting from the perimeter last season. To their credit, they remained the most potent defensive guard combo in the conference while logging ridiculous minutes totals.
Any little bit of creation relief will help. Anybody who watched USC closely last season should have come away saying the same thing in some form: That’s a slam dunk NCAA Tournament team if you gave them eight points to sprinkle anywhere they wanted. Having lived that lesson, they may now have the right mix of experience and firepower to be sure it doesn’t happen again.
11. Pac-12 Freshman of the Week: Utah forward Dre’una Edwards
Oh man.
Let’s get the important stuff out of the way before conference play begins. The Pac-12 needs to appoint a flopping czar. If a player ruins any potential Edwards drive with what turns out to be a flop, they should run that player right back out there and just give Edwards a free shot to run them over for real with a full head of steam.
Edwards is going to give this Utah team a fun jolt. They return some really solid role players. Having somebody to puncture defenses in a more unconventional way could really open things up.
12. Prediction: Multiple teams from the bottom half will upset the top half
The record of last season’s bottom six teams in the standings (USC, Utah, Colorado, Washington State, Arizona, Washington) against the top six (Oregon, Stanford, Oregon State, UCLA, Cal, Arizona State), including the Pac-12 Tournament: 3-59.
Ouch.
As referenced before, USC came painstakingly close on multiple occasions. Other than the Trojans as an obvious pick to pull off an upset or two, I see Arizona and Washington as the teams to put somebody on high alert. McDonald and Melgoza are explosive enough that they’ll be too much, even for the class of the conference, to contain with the right help.