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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 4494289, member: 12088"] I could have spoken more clearly, I suppose. I wasn’t articulating a general rule, but merely thinking about these two players… and trying to make sense of the fact that Paige won NPOY two years ago even though Clark had superior numbers in all the direct stats. Clark and Reese are in odd situations on their teams, since broader success has eluded them. Reese played well on Maryland but didn’t put up NPOY numbers last year and was thwarted by Stanford in the tournament. She left a perennial top 25 team to seek a better framing of her talents with a rebuilding program. She said she sought a coach who would know how to get the best from her. This is an athlete’s code for “a different style of team play.” She seems to have found this at LSU, but the cost is she has yet to play much against serious competition, leaving room to doubt the value of her dazzling stats. Given this admittedly rough and ready analysis, which one could easily quibble with, I was casting about for a way to recognize that Reese had found the sort of competition to really show how great she is. Success in post season play would be a suitable framing for her talents. And yes, I am aware the final four comes after the voting. It’s a similar story for Clark: awesome stats every year means she deserves to be in any NPOY discussion. Unlike Reese’s LSU, Iowa has played against better competition and, at least this year, seems to be in a more competitive conference. But their success in this tougher schedule has been mixed and some teams, including UConn, have showed they can beat Iowa despite Clark’s offense. It’s not a good look for her, which is too bad given the magnitude of her talents. I suspect none of us would say that merely being able to hit deep 3s is enough to win NPOY. We all look for something more, and 2 years ago Paige had it. How can Clark or Reese demonstrate that they have that elusive quality we’re hoping to find in an NPOY? Post-season success is an obvious place to look for it. But it’s not the only possibility. Imagine someone like Haley Cavinder putting up tremendous numbers when she was at Fresno St — just a thought experiment, not real facts — and ask could such a player be so talented as to win the NPOY in that situation. Seems exceedingly unlikely but not impossible. By the way, a case for Morrow as NPOY would be sort of like this. DePaul is not so different from Fresno St, an uneven team unable to succeed in an uneven conference. It’s not just that Morrow plays against uneven competition. She doesn’t regularly make her team win against this competition despite her great production. Could Clark or Reese or Morrow turn their situations around and make it clear their talents are unmatched against any competition? Yes, and it would be wonderful to watch it unfold this season. I think any one of them has a real shot at this prize. No one else is having so great a season as to lock them out of consideration. [/QUOTE]

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