Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="Dillon77, post: 4899881, member: 6620"] As noted, at one point early in her ratings career, she was the #1 recruit. A turning point of sorts in the ratings seemed to come when she made a U.S.A. National Team and was relegated to mop-up duty. The "slip" started then... 1) Haley Jones 2) Jordon Horston 3) Aliyah Boston 4) Zia Cooke 5) Rickea Jackson 6) Sam Brunelle 7) Ashley Owusu. Sam's best year, individually, at Notre Dame was her freshman year, when she played for the coach who recruited her, Muffet McGraw and MM's modified Princeton offense which took advantage of Sam's catch and shoot abilities. During that season: [LIST] [*]Sam started in all 31 games, averaging 33.9 minutes. [*]Brunelle led all freshmen in the ACC in scoring with her 13.9 ppg. Among freshmen at power-five schools, Brunelle’s scoring average ranked 6th. [*]Her scoring average ranked 4th all-time at ND for a freshman. [/LIST] Sophomore year saw injuries and the arrival of Coach Niele Ivey. [LIST] [*]Sam played in 17 games, averaging 22.8 minutes off the bench. [*]However, she made big shooting improvements: Sam went from shooting 31.5 percent from three as a freshman to 38.3 percent. She also went from 39.7 percent overall to 48.4 percent. [/LIST] And in 2021-2022, her junior year: [LIST] [*]Sam played in 32 games and averaged 16.5 minutes off the bench. She averaged 6.8 points, which ranked 6th on the team. [/LIST] What happened? Well, she was plagued by injuries and the effects those had on conditioning. Plus: [LIST] [*]Coach Ivey abandoned the modified Princton offense which could feature Brunelle and went with an offense that largely focused on individual shot creation. While Sam has some interior moves, her specialty is the catch and shoot. [*]Plus she became something of a tweener: 6'2" but not really quick enough to guard wings. But she wasn't a banger in the post, either. [*]And ND had/still has someone who could do all of that: Maddy Westbeld, who has remained a lynchpin of Ivey's program. [/LIST] All said, Sam was still a contributor off the bench and, from all accounts, a solid team leader and very active as a student in many areas. Perhaps most importantly, she's got an ND undergraduate degree to go with what will now probably be a UVA grad degree. Pretty decent deal. Look forward to see where and what she does next. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

Forum statistics

Threads: 164,443

Messages: 4,396,435

Members: 10,209

Latest member: gemini*trvl