A fun discussion with a few days off.
Things could change, but I think the race right now is Bueckers, Evans, Naz Hillmon, and Charli Collier. I think other candidates are hurt by being on teams with too much balance or are putting up good numbers, but the team success isn’t good enough. I could be wrong, though. Rhyne Howard in particular I feel like has dropped out of contention recently, but she could play her way back in.
Analyzing it, really the only negative on Paige is you can argue that schedule strength doesn’t test her often enough, since we lost the games with Baylor and Louisville (a little bit of a counter: DePaul beat KY and lost to A&M by two, so those two blowout wins are against a team that fared well against the top half of the vaunted SEC). And the awards usually favor older players. You could nit pick and say she’s not a lockdown defender, but she has as many steals as turnovers so she’s had an impact on that end as well, and since she plays 40 minutes, you don’t want her chasing the other teams best scorers. There’s really not much on her actual resume that you can point to as a flaw - she can’t help that she’s a freshman and she can’t help that some marquee games got canceled.
Evans is up there with very similar PPG and APG averages to Paige and Ville is 19-1, plus she’s had clutch moments, so she clearly has a strong case. Her negatives (when I say “negatives” we are picking nits, since we are talking about the sliver of difference between POY candidates) would be that she isn‘t necessary inefficient but Bueckers has her beat comfortably (Bueckers has shot over 50 percent for the last seven games, Evans has shot under 50 percent for the last nine - and her only game over 50 in the ACC was against BC). As a team, they got beat pretty bad in their one chance for a signature win against NC State (Evans had 29, but her team wilted in the 4th), and they’ve underperformed a bit with some close games against unranked teams, but they’ve won them. A strong finish could put her over the top though, and we don’t have the DePaul counterpoint to the schedule when comparing her to Evans, since Louisville crushed them.
Collier is considered the No. 1 pick in the draft and has big numbers (22 ppg, 13 rpg). Her negatives would be that she’s probably the worst passer in college basketball - 9 assists total on the year - you could put a tackling dummy out there and the ball would have probably bounced off it for assists more than nine times. And she has mostly been terrible in Texas’ 5 losses (games with 2-12 and 5-20 shooting as a 6-5 forward). She still has two games left with Baylor to make a big statement, though. If she dominates those games, I could see her getting some support with “the best pro prospect = the best player” argument.
Hillmon is interesting. She matches Paige in efficiency (effective FG percentage and doesn’t turn it over much), but does if from five feet and in. Outstanding offensive rebounder where she gets a lot of her points. Unlike Collier, who has been awful in Texas losses, Hillmon dropped 50 in the only game Michigan lost. There’s not much to nitpick with her - she doesn’t have a statistical impact defensively (less than 10 steals and blocks), but Michigan as a team is giving up less than 60 ppg, so she’s anchoring a great defensive team and probably doing a lot of things that don’t show up in stats. If they win the Big 10, no complaints from me if she wins.
There’s still time for someone else to get in this. Howard had a strong three-game stretch for Kentucky (including 32 in a loss to SC) and was rated the best player in the country a month ago, but she has been slumping bad lately. She’s only shooting 33 percent in her last five and her overall splits (43-34-78) are now pretty meh. Another couple good games and maybe she can be a factor again. South Carolina and Stanford seem to have too much balance. Paige is also in a bit of a no win situation with this closing stretch - if she puts up big numbers, they’ll be pooh-poohed because of the competition. If she lays low, has a quiet 12 point, 5 assist game or two and her numbers drop, then that could be used against her.
Right now, though? Best player on No. 1 team, 57-55-81 shooting splits, 91 assists to 41 turnovers, an epic signature performance in a win, a great effort in the only loss, a dagger in the only bad game she’s had. I really think you can’t not vote for Paige, unless you have anti-freshman (or anti-UConn) bias.
