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Message: [QUOTE="Littlemin, post: 3758888, member: 10363"] If the premise is you award 1st team AA status for stats, the argument for Walker deserving that is strong. If you award for the “eye test” it becomes a different argument. Certainly her play gave the impression she was somewhat a “selfish” player but really only she knows if it was conscious, by design. I believe it hurt the team last year in the chemistry department but tend to think it was not “intentional” because I think if Auriemma and Dailey thought so, she would certainly have been benched at some point. Walker was a great all around stat player but IMO, I would not consider her a great all around player using the “eye test”; there is a robotic aspect to her game, a lack of “feel” if you will that prevented her from making the instinctive, correct play in the moment, AT TIMES. The other aspect, her play in the 3 “elite” games would have more credibility to me had the tourney been played and that trend continued. Walker was in a completely different role last year and IMO, should get the benefit of the doubt of having learned from those experiences. Without having the season play out we will never know; Uconn certainly grew, seemingly significantly, as the season progressed. The defense and chemistry improved and Walker was certainly part of that growth. If she can be criticized for the early season “problems” she needs to be acknowledged as part of the solution. Unfortunately, with the truncated season, no one knows how that improvement would have manifested itself in the tournament. Now having said that, she certainly had a terrific season, no one can argue that. Criticisms of her are at the highest levels of WCBB, namely should she have been in the top 5 or relegated to the top 10 of players in the entire nation and that opinion is in the eyes of the beholder. One last comment, this discussion is symptomatic of the problems with naming All Star teams; without the ability of seeing players play all, or the majority of their games, which no one can possibly do, stats and highlight reels are the only gauges and they are not really reliable ones. I can minutely dissect Walker’s game because I saw all of them but can do that for no other player than a Uconn one. I am sure given the opportunity, virtually all players except for the very few, Stewart, Moore, Taurasi, DelleDonne, the guard who played for Oregon last year whose name old agedly is escaping me, etc. could have their games examined and criticized for something. [/QUOTE]

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