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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 4415232, member: 12088"] I'm with you most of the way. My optimism leads me to hope she'll get two healthy seasons and win two NCs. [B]If she does that[/B], I think she belongs in the conversation for Mt. Rushmore, since she'd no longer be a "coulda" but a "did." And in that conversation, she'd would then (and only then) be compar[B]able[/B] to Diana. An NC is the ticket to that dance. As for the "carrying the team" question, we absolutely get to disagree on that one. Disagreement is healthy... and fun. Personally, I think there was no way we could have made it to the FF either year without her, or the NC game last year. That's why I say she carried us. She didn't make every key play along the way. But I can't imagine that group getting to either FF without her. I mean, in her freshman year, I don't even see us winning against Tennessee or SC in the regular season. We just didn't have the spirit to take those games. That win over Baylor, I think Paige stole that one from Fate, since we were outplayed for long stretches of that game. For as long as Didi was able to play deny D on Paige, we floundered. As soon as Didi went down, Paige torched them like a screaming Valkyrie. Aari was more successful at playing deny D in the next game, and the rest of the team floundered even worse. As a team, we had reached our limit -- not Paige's limit, the team's limit. I suspect if Didi hadn't suffered that injury, we would have lost the Baylor game. Every team we played in that tournament focused on stopping Paige. If the rest of the team managed to step up, that strategy failed. They didn't step up against Arizona, and almost didn't against Baylor. The win over Stanford that got us into the NC game last year wasn't entirely Paige's doing. But I can't really imagine us achieving it if she weren't on the floor. Partly it was Stanford folding under the pressure -- I mean, we made several near-fatal errors near the end and still held them off. But mainly the threat of Paige opened things up for the others to do great things. So yes, my claim about "carrying" the team is debatable, and that's where all the fun is. But none of it matters in the Mt Rushmore discussion if she doesn't win a NC or two. [/QUOTE]

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