Is A'ja Wilson a center, guard or power forward..??

[DavidinNaples]

Cam...74 had a good post on another thread w/ great insight about A'ja Wilson that concluded she is a "power forward" as opposed to a true center. He went on to describe her game as similar to Stewie's. ie: The height of a center w/ the shooting range of a guard w/ the rebounding of a power forward. Both his post and my response are buried, so I thought we could discuss on a new thread. We basically agree....

Wilson is similar to Stewie, however, she is light years behind Stewie in shooting range and passing. She is very young and will obviously develop much more. What better place than in Storrs w/ Geno? That said, in Lithuania, Wilson took zero 3 pointers, Stewie took 24. FIBA stats during the games had a "shot location chart" and Wilson seemed to be shooting from inside the lane 90-95% of the time. In addition to her 3's, Stewie took about 40% of her other shots from outside the lane.

Wilson had only 5 assists in 150 minutes vs 19 turnovers during the tournament. Lots of work is needed in the ball handling department. While Stewie is not an assist machine, she had 13 vs only 9 turnovers in 222 minutes. I'm not trying to dump on Wilson, she is truly a great, great talent. But, if she comes to UConn, she will arrive with far fewer skills than Stewie did. On the other hand, she is a rebounding machine, getting 71 for Team USA in those 150 minutes. (Stewie was 2nd w/ 56.) She is at her best as an offensive rebounder, w/ 31 or 44% of the total boards. Wilson also used her athletic ability to lead Team USA in blocked shots w/ 15. (Stewie was 2nd w/ 12.)

One final observation about Lithuania, Wilson had 4 points in each of the last two big games against true centers. Stewie had 39 pts in those last two games w/ the opposition defense trying to stop her. By the way, Stewie also led both games in rebounds w/ 8 and 9 respectively. Important games, big time performance!!

Is Wilson another Stewie? Not right now, but there is plenty of raw talent there for some great coach(es) to develop.
Go Huskies..!!

 

[blake]

Great post, I couldnt agree with you more!

Cam...74 had a good post on another thread w/ great insight about A'ja Wilson that concluded she is a "power forward" as opposed to a true center. He went on to describe her game as similar to Stewie's. ie: The height of a center w/ the shooting range of a guard w/ the rebounding of a power forward. Both his post and my response are buried, so I thought we could discuss on a new thread. We basically agree....

Wilson is similar to Stewie, however, she is light years behind Stewie in shooting range and passing. She is very young and could obviously develop much more. What better place than in Storrs w/ Geno? That said, in Lithuania, Wilson took zero 3 pointers, Stewie took 24. FIBA stats during the games had a "shot location chart" and Wilson seemed to be shooting from inside the lane 90-95% of the time. In addition to her 3's, Stewie took about 40% of her other shots from outside the lane.

Wilson had only 5 assists in 150 minutes vs 19 turnovers during the tournament. Lots of work is needed in the ball handling department. While Stewie is not an assist machine, she had 13 vs only 9 turnovers in 222 minutes. I'm not trying to dump on Wilson, she is truly a great, great talent. But, if she comes to UConn, she will arrive with far fewer skills than Stewie did. On the other hand, she is a rebounding machine, getting 71 for Team USA in those 150 minutes. (Stewie was 2nd w/ 56.) She is at her best as an offensive rebounder, w/ 31 or 44% of the total boards.

One final observation about Lithuania, Wilson had 4 points in each of the last two big games against true centers. Stewie had 39 pts in those last two games w/ the opposition defense trying to stop her. By the way, Stewie also led both games in rebounds w/ 8 and 9 respectively. Important games, big time performance!!

Is Wilson another Stewie? Not right now, but there is plenty of raw talent there for some great coach(es) to develop.
Go Huskies..!!

 

[UcMiami]

Interesting stuff, but ... Wilson was also the youngest player on a team with much more experienced leaders, and a very short training camp. Meier installed (by necessity) very rudimentary systems and assigned specific tasks to players, especially her bench. It is a little hard to truly evaluate Wilson and her skills based on what we saw in the last two games and the box scores from the other games. I suspect the instruction to Wilson when she was put in games was simple - crash the offensive boards. And she carried that out quite well! I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't also told, or figured out for herself, that she could take open shots but that generally she should defer to the more experienced players in the offensive sets. I only remember seeing her take one shot early in an offensive set - a wide open foul line jumper. The scoring we saw was off rebounds and one drive late in a set with a nice feed.

Hard to judge range when a player doesn't take shots, so I am not prepared to say what range she has or what her jump shot looks like. Stewart on the other hand had the green light to hunt her shots and to fire from anywhere at any time. But this was also her 5th gold medal winning team, and she already has a year of college and an NCAA title - not a comparison that A'ja is likely to come off well in.

What I saw was an athletic long basketball player who is a skilled rebounder and who deferred to her teammates. I felt she was physically overmatched by some players (Gaye - FRA) when playing defense, but had the length and leaping ability to compensate somewhat. She seemed to have a good BB IQ and to be a good teammate. I could see her playing a wing or power forward position and also a non-traditional center. How effective she would be as a wing would depend on her shooting touch from 15' out (she doesn't really need a 3 pt shot) and I just didn't see enough in these games to comment on that - someone who has watched some of her high school games may be able to add insight here. I expect her to add strength over the next 18 months before she reaches her first college game, and wouldn't be surprised if she enters college stronger than Stewart. The rest of the Stewart comparison - its like expecting any high school kid to be like DT or Maya - too high a bar to set. People have been raving about Stewart for 5 years and she has been 'playing up' in competition for quite a long time. This was Wilson's first chance and she carried it off quite well and I suspect learned an immense amount that she will use over the next year to speed her development.

 

[Icebear]

I think her dribbling and ball handling was significantly better than some others think.

 

[VAMike23]

I thought she handled the ball and scored well, although she is not at Stewie's level when it comes to overall perimeter play and "multiple-threat" status when facing up.

Having said that, I disagree with anyone that concludes her interior defense is weak. First of all she's 16, and second of all I saw her play very strong body-up defense behind some opposing bigs. She is not going to get pushed around easily at the next level. In fact, she can excel more as a classic 4 than Breanna can. Breanna is a hybrid player, really a freak of nature (in the most complimentary way!), but her base is not as naturally strong as Wilson's, IMHO. In ways similar to Maya, Breanna plays her best defense in space, at least against teams with good talent and size. Wilson appears to me to be just fine when playing behind the opposing bigs and not giving ground.

Breanna is more likely to play the 3 in some schemes and be OK when that is called for. I still see Wilson as a true 4. This could change as she gets more skilled/polished going forward. Her wingspan is quite close to Breanna's, btw. And I think she has Bre by an inch in height, tho not sure.

 

[HGN]

I think A'ja is a lot like Stewie.......And thus, will be able to play the 2/3/4/5. It depends upon where her team needs her that game. Important thing is she is going to get serious playing time no matter where she goes.

 

[UConnCat]

She's certainly not a guard or a wing despite what she may have said. She doesn't handle the ball well enough and I don't think has mobility to be an effective wing. I think she could play center or power forward, but it seems she objects to playing center. She's not a stretch 4 like Stewie is (there is no other in the women's game) but she could become one if she develops a consistent three-point shot. I didn't see that shot in the U-19 tournament.

 

[Icebear]

Why do folks think she didn't handle the ball well? I thought she handled it very well.

 

[UcMiami]

Left out ball handling from my analysis above - but I would put it into the same category as her shooting range - not enough data to really come to a conclusion - the assist/turnover is such a small sample size and the scoring on that was a little odd I thought anyway - if a player got a fingertip on a pass it was usually assigned as their turnover even if it was a really bad pass. She didn't seem uncomfortable with the ball in her hands, but also didn't generally surprise me with anything she did with it. And again, that wasn't really her role on this team. I would have liked to see the game she scored 20 in - no way to tell if it was all off rebounds or if she was more of a go to player on offense in that game.
As for not being overpowered - (and again she is 16 and still growing into her height) Gaye was moving her around at will in the final - the only player I saw physically match up in that game was Graves and she really impressed me with it as she is not a true center. As I said earlier - I expect she will come into college stronger than Stewart, but I doubt she will ever be mistaken for a Sylvia or Tina type center.