Positives From a Weekend Split: WAT-KIN-S-top A Player Like That?

 

Warren Grimes

JuJu Watkins is an amazing player-- the best USC has ever had.  She is more versatile and has more finesse than either Lisa Leslie or Tina Thompson.  She is a wonderful point guard who can battle with the bigs on the inside.  Quite simply a phenom who can shoot inside and out, block, defend, board, and assist.  She emphatically documented this by scoring 51 points against Stanford, a national best for the year.  As a freshman, she is well positioned to be the conference player of the year. 

The disappearing Pac-12 has had some fantastic players, including Washington’s Kelsey Plum and Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu.  If I get to choose first, it’s an easy choice:  I’ll take Juju Watkins any day of the week.    

Watkins scored all but 16 of USC’s 67 points in the upset win over Stanford on Friday night.  Stanford still won the interior battle:  Brink had 19 points and 15 boards; Iriafen had 16 points and 9 boards.  But both shot poorly – their collective 31% is well below either player’s average.  USC played tough on the inside, in the process fouling out 3 of its interior players.  They had enough, however, to disrupt Stanford’s offense and limit the team to 58 points on 31.6% shooting. 

The game was a disappointment because, Watkins notwithstanding, a team that exploited USC’s defensive choices could have prevailed.  On any given day, USC can challenge anyone.  But a team that relies so heavily on one player is vulnerable when the star has an off day.  We’ll see.

Would Stanford be able to bounce back against number-7 ranked UCLA?  Any doubt seemed resolved when Stanford converted its first six shots.  The team never looked back.  Stanford more than doubled its shooting percentage from the previous game – from 31.6% to 63.5% - the best percentage in a decade.   37 of those points came from Brink and Iriafen, but contributions came from Jump (10) and four other players with 5 or more points.  There were 17 turnovers, always an issue when playing UCLA, but Stanford compensated by blocking 10 UCLA attempts and outrebounding the Bruins 43 to 29.

UCLA played without its pivotal inside player Lauren Betts and missed a bunch of other talented bigs.  Emily Bessoir, a 6 -4 big who can shoot the three, is injured and will miss the entire season.   Izzy Anstey,  6 -4, was also out for medical reasons.  Lina Sontag, 6 -3 and from Germany, started against Cal but left before the Stanford game to join the national team for Olympic try outs.  That left Angela Dugalic, also 6-4 but relatively inexperienced.  She scored 6 points in 22 minutes on the floor (and now leaves for Serbia to play with the Serbian national team). UCLA has superior guards but is quite unexpectedly short of tall talent.  The Bruins desperately need Betts to come back, or at least for Olympic try outs to end.

Stanford is still favorably positioned to win the conference.  They are tied with Colorado, each with two losses.  But Colorado will face Utah, UCLA, and USC, all on the road.  Stanford’s toughest road game, at least on paper, is against Oregon State.  Of course, as VanDerveer constantly reminds her team, any conference team can knock you down.

Brink now has four consecutive games with 15 plus points and 15 plus boards.  Even more critical for the defense, Brink had 15 blocks in the two weekend games.  Her 3.6 block average for conference games makes it easier for Stanford to focus on perimeter defense.  It’s no surprise that Stanford is 1^st in the conference in three-point conversions allowed and second in conference percentage field goal defense.  Brink makes any opponent rethink their offense.  Meanwhile, no Stanford opponent has been able to stop Kiki Iriafen.  The two players make one another better.  Stanford is first in the conference in rebounding margin. 

For Stanford to improve further, the perimeter players must add to the offensive diversity of this team. More than anything else, to win, Stanford must maintain focus and intensity for every minute in every single matchup.