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Message: [QUOTE="Gurleyman, post: 3903831, member: 175"] Stanford is balanced. There’s a sliding scale. If you dominate for a team and carry them into the top 10, you can win over higher ranked teams that are balanced. But you historically have to lift your team to a high ranking. Kelsey Plum is one of two players to ever win the Naismith from outside the top 10 (Cheryl Miller did too for No. 11 USC in 1985 as a repeat winner). And she averaged 32 ppg and broke the ncaa scoring record for the No. 12 team to do it. Plus it was easy to win over the best player on the No. 1 team - since even this board wasn’t sure who that was. Collier and KLS both averaged 20 ppg, so which one do you take? Only 6 Naismith winners in 40 years have come from a team outside the top 6 - Plum (12), Gustafson (8) and Wilson (7) were three of them in three straight years. Miller and Sue Wicks (9) did it in 1980s. I forget the other. DT was one of the No. 6 winners of the Naismith, although Alana Beard of No. 1 Duke won most of the other NPOY awards. So it’s sort of an individual award, but not really. You need to be on a 1 seed or a 2 seed type team historically to really have much of a chance. [/QUOTE]