Just because the team she was on built the offense around her does not mean she would not be amenable to playing in a more balenced system. She obviously was not happy in a system where she was the offense or she would not have entered the portal. Her focus might now be to win which the system she was in did not accomplish. She might want to be on a team with better players who the defense would have to cover. She still might not fit in many systems, but not necessarily because she would want the ball all the time.
I predict whoever shells out the $ to get her (and it certainly won’t be UConn) will rue the day. Actually, there
may be a scenario where she brings good value. If she chooses somewhere that will be satisfied with a repeat of Iowa State, where they clearly benefitted (for a period of time) from the publicity her scoring talent generated, perhaps it would be worth it.
However, any team that has a realistic chance of a Final Four or a title will/should beware! Why would you essentially agree to play four on five on defense in exchange for 25+ points on the other end? 25+ points furthermore that will require a fundamental reshaping of your offense to one that focuses primarily on getting the ball deep inside to the exclusion of everything else?
This is team killing by proxy, similar (though even more egregious) to when Gottlieb at USC built her entire team strategy around feeding JuJu Watkins over and over to the point where her highly rated freshman class became so disgusted that they left! JuJu however, was at least viable on both ends of the court. (It will be
very interesting to see the extent to which
two additional #1s + Sarah Okeke impact that philosophy and how JuJu deals with no longer being able to shoot the ball 25-30 times a game.) In the end though, I have far more confidence in USC’s chances of figuring their ball sharing strategy than those of whomever lands Crooks. With JuJu (a far more well rounded player, as I said) it was a choice in pursuit of a goal ( scoring titles, great publicity, the reflected glory of JuJu herself, a mostly classically perfect player) while not crippling the team on the defensive end. As flawed as the whole concept was, USC remained a very good team as, (even though the end result was inevitable, players leaving, not winning at the very highest level), JuJu and co were good enough at both ends to be able to beat virtually everyone but the elites.
With Crooks it is not so simple, first, you are having to face playing four on five at one end, second; barring one of the elite teams, UConn, South Carolina, Texas?, LSU, Vandy?, Michigan, Kentucky, Duke, etc acquiring her, Crooks will not have elite talent around her. This is important not only because the rest of the team will be less capable of covering up her defensive deficiencies but also because those same players will not likely be making enough money to entice them to stay on in an obviously flawed and undemocratic system in which the star player is not only raking in all the cash, being given the
glory job of top scorer, but who also
gets to coast on the most physically demanding portion of the game! No, I
do wish her well, she
is an imposing talent offensively, and has a compelling personal story, but I do not want to see her at UConn!
Finally, as to your comment that “she obviously was not happy in a system where she was the offense or she would not have entered the portal”, I would simply say, she entered the portal because she essentially had
no teammates left! With everyone leaving, the coach has very little chance of putting a competitive team around her next season. Perhaps if Iowa State had scads of money, they were an elite program with an elite, legendary coach, and the entire team had not just entered the portal. That however, is not the case. Again, I wish her well but she is not the answer for us.
