With so much happening in the last couple of weeks, I decided to open up a special mailbag for our paid subscribers. We also will have the monthly mailbag but it’ll be slightly delayed to allow for questions relating to the Final Four and National Championship.
So, in the meantime, we got a few questions to answer and a pod to speak on. If you’d like to be a part of our mailbags and have the chance to ask any of our five staffers questions about what’s going on in the world of women’s hoops, consider a free trial or a subscription to the Ball-Knowers tier. We’ve got a ton of content coming up and a lot of really great stuff that makes the $10 a month worth it. But if you need to see a little more before you’re convinced, then just stay tuned!
Now…to the mailbag!
Written Questions:
Aaron asks… “Who are the Top 3 higher seeds whom are most likely to be upset?”
Because this was asked before the Tournament, I’m going to adjust the question just a bit to the top three higher seeds that are still in the running. There are still some compelling answers are. Of all the teams that are the most at risk, I’d say TCU, Texas and USC are all in some form of danger. Notre Dame is playing like they were earlier in the year even with a hobbled Olivia Miles and seem to have figured out their frontcourt rotation. Liatu King has become a better rebounder over the course of the year and I’d be surprised if she and Kate Koval didn’t frustrate Sedona Prince on both ends of the floor. The biggest question is how sound the Irish can be defensively against all that pick-n-roll and movement that the Horned Frogs use. While you could argue the 3 and 2 seeds should be flipped here, it’s still technically an upset so I’d put TCU in that tier.
Texas feels very in trouble in spite of the fact that they are playing great basketball. Tennessee is playing their best ball of the year and have basically walked to the Sweet 16 while running Ohio State off their home floor. They barely lost to the Longhorns during the regular season on the road at the Moody Center. That indicates to me that stylistically the Lady Vols won’t run into trouble with that lockdown Longhorn defense. Additionally, the worry that Texas should have is keeping pace with Tennessee’s scoring and star power. Who is on the other side of the floor that can go band for band with Talaysia Cooper? Madison Booker is going to have to have a legacy night, I think.
USC obviously is the easy answer without JuJu Watkins but I’m curious if we finally start to see Lindsay Gottlieb flex her coaching muscles a little bit. Kiki Iriafen may have played Robin all year but make no mistake she is an elite big that is one of the best in the nation when she’s on. You’re effectively talking about a player that models her game and look off A’ja Wilson. If everything runs through her, there’s a shot the Trojans don’t miss a beat given the amount of talent they have everywhere else on the floor. But Kansas State has Ayoka Lee and a surging Serena Sundell. If there’s a game to watch that feels like it could get crazy, it’s this one and the Battle of the UT’s.
Alexis asks… “Do you think Niele Ivey and Notre Dame overachieve (elite 8–final 4 run) or underachieve (sweet 16 loss)? Is this year Notre Dame’s only shot at a title? Sounds silly to ask when Hannah Hidalgo is on the team but they don’t return much production next year with tons of their rotation players moving on. They do however have a 5 star on the way, who may not even be available to play next season This team gives me 2024 UCLA vibes, who also dropped games in Pac 12 play towards the end of the season and played themselves out of a 1 seed…”
I’d say Niele Ivey is starting to enter the space of underachieving despite meeting expectations over the last few years. It’s a lot to ask a first time head coach to basically be Muffet McGraw immediately. That’s one of the best coaches in the history of the game we’re talking about. But we’re now in year five of the experiment and it feels like this is the roster where you really have to make something shake. Under Ivey, the Irish have never made it past a Sweet Sixteen despite loading up on elite recruits and transfers.
This is the best team, on paper, she’s ever had so it feels a bit like Cori Close this year in “if you can’t get it done with this roster, will you be able to get it done at all?” They aren’t 2024 UCLA, in my eyes, only because they have a lead dog. The Bruins had to have certain players learn that role and see it organically evolve over the course of a season. Hannah Hidalgo came out the womb angry. There’s levels to this. The issue they’ve had in the past is not having frontcourt balance to help the Miles-Hidalgo-Citron trio. Now they’re loaded up front and the bracket is laid out favorably for them. If they can’t win, we might be entering Wes Moore territory…
Elana asks… “Any players whose draft stock you think is really going to change based on tournament run? / players who might not be on one of the top seeded teams but have realistic draft chances?”
So far, I have a couple players that I’ve looked and thought “a scout probably loves what they’re seeing”.
Aziaha James has been a fixture on a lot of mock drafts, particularly in the mid-first round, but I feel like the question with her at the next level is going to be her size. But these first two rounds of the Tournament have displayed her ability to still get hers against taller and athletic defenders. The LSU matchup is going to be a great test of how she can do against a team effort on the perimeter. If there’s one thing Kim Mulkey does well is take away finesse teams’ ability to move, space and score. If James can have another legacy game here, we should probably start talking about her as a surefire first rounder with no question marks.
Kiki Iriafen has taken a lot of shit from people this year and, from the outside looking in, it’s understandable. But what people don’t know is that there’s a lot at play in terms of the Watkins machine and how it works at USC, from scheme to marketing strategy. I doubt Iriafen knew that she’d be signing up to be a legit Robin but even with that in mind she’s put up some of the best numbers of her career. Like I mentioned a bit higher up top, I think there’s a shot that she enters the second or third pick conversation if she has a dominant run here in the second weekend. Right now, Rashard has her as far down as 5 which the Golden State Valkyries would probably love. But there’s a legit shot, in my mind, that she could have a dominant next couple weeks and really push into that conversation for being the Storm or Mystics’ first prospect off the board.
As far as a high riser goes, I really think Deja Kelly earned herself a draft spot in the first two rounds of this tournament. I’ve been told that WNBA coaches and executives have concerns about her shooting efficiency and that Kelly Graves has worked hard to push her intangibles onto them. She’s an elite leader with a good mental makeup, does the little things well and is athletic enough to play at the next level. But the shooting was a fair question and it seems that some of that was alleviated in this Tournament. It really would’ve changed the discussion had she made that middy late against Duke and Oregon was still in the mix. Generally though, I think she proved a lot of doubters wrong and that could get her drafted and maybe even keep her on a roster.
Podcast Questions:
0:00 - Show Introduction
1:40 - Grace asks…“I went to the regionals in Portland last year and I am going to Spokane this year — it’s possible that the same two teams will get to the Final Four from this double region. Good or bad for the tournament? Also it’s the third year in a row it’s been held in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle in 2023)— what’s up with that? Spokane is not easy to get to - what’s the thinking behind choosing it? Are Spokane and Birmingham welcoming places for women’s college basketball?”
9:44 - Jo asks…“Question about friends of the pod Carly Thibault-DuDonis and Blake DuDonis Why do you think she’s turned down interviews for P4 jobs? If she wants to advance in her career is it not logical to at least take an interview with Wisconsin, Missouri, etc, she’s good at her job”
18:00 - Jo also asks… “Wisconsin WBB as an entity, like what are they doing…”