Sounds like you’re suggesting I should modify my “No Azzi or Sarah” rule to include Ash. I’ll take that under advisement. … But if I rule out that many players on the grounds that they are pretty much always badasses (and they mainly are) it may defeat the purpose of the award. This strikes me as the most democratic of the awards in the sense that anyone has a shot at earning it on any given day, not just the superstars, the aristocrats of basketball. And it can recognize any sort of achievement. I mean, you can get it for hitting 6 three-pointers in one quarter, as Ash did against Iowa State. But you can also get it for hitting clutch free throws down the stretch, or for making a tremendous steal on a single play when it really turns the tide.
So maybe my rule is flawed from the start. Azzi is such a great shooter that it’s tempting to discount the achievement (“That’s just what she always does”). But when she chokes off an opponent with a barrage of scoring in a single half, as she did to UCLA, effectively putting the game out of reach before halftime, that is clearly badass. Just like Paige raining 40 points down on OU was. Or like when Dawn said that seeing one of Ash’s 3s just before a buzzer, her heart sank because it meant the drought UConn was going through was over. That one shot was badass. Or Azzi picking Milaysia’s pocket twice in the NC game, in plain sight of the world — now that was badass.