Sarah Strong Maya Moore stat comparison through 56 games

[CL82]

I love how the people drilled down on the data in the original post. Well done everyone.

FWIW, I think it's tough to compare players across eras. My intention in the original post wasn't to create a ranking between Sarah and Maya. Instead, I wanted to point out that Sarah is playing basketball at a level of one of the greatest players ever to play the game. Sometimes it's hard to appreciate that when it's happening, but that's what we're watching right now.

 

[Skeets]

It's scary how spoiled we are. What would this forum be like if we never had Geno and CD? Would we be a perpetual 12-18 team with 100 people in the stands? Instead, we have, with a bunch of obvious exceptions, the most talented players in the past 30 years.

HuskyNan would have a much easier job keeping the 3 or 4 people who would bother posting in line.

 

[jazz]

In Maya’s freshman season, there were 6 Big East teams in the preseason rankings (DePaul wasn’t in the BE then). In addition, UConn played then #4 Stanford, #11 Duke, and #4 North Carolina during the regular season.

2007–08 NCAA Division I women's basketball rankings - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

View attachment 115842

ok but didn't uconn beat the heck out of these teams most of the time. I know ND gave them a couple good games and maybe rutgers. .

 

[jazz]

That’s a good question that forced me to go back and review which of the 16 or so different universities that, at various times, constituted the OBE & NBE were affiliated with the conference when Maya played from 2007-2011.

During those years ND, Louisville, Rutgers, Syracuse, Cincinnati & WV were all basketball playing members of the BE in addition to UConn & the Catholic 7. Through Maya’s years, UConn made it to 4 FF’s. ND made it twice & Rutgers once. Just 2 years after Maya graduated, the BE had 3/4 of the FF: UConn, ND & Louisville.

Games against teams like Rutgers, Villanova & WV were typically low scoring, physical battles that often came down to the wire. Going back to that 2013 season, UConn lost 3 times to ND by a couple of points before finally beating them in the national semifinal game.

there were two really good teams so im not sure it was brutally tough. but it had better overall teams but I think we still beat the living hell out of most of them.

 

[oldude]

there were two really good teams so im not sure it was brutally tough. but it had better overall teams but I think we still beat the living hell out of most of them.

Again, during those years UConn, ND, Rutgers & Louisville, to name a few, were all nationally ranked as well as making it to the FF. You are correct that UConn “beat most of them”, but many of the games were single-digit wins. The Rutgers games, particularly in NJ, were absolute wars, and Harry Peretta’s Villanova teams were almost always competitive.

The BE had finally become what Dave Gavitt had envisioned: a dominant men’s & women’s basketball conference covering all the major Eastern media markets. Unfortunately, within a few years, the football schools left the conference for greener pastures.

 

[HuskyNan]

ok but didn't uconn beat the heck out of these teams most of the time. I know ND gave them a couple good games and maybe rutgers. .

Rutgers beat them that year

I think it’s a common Boneyard mistake to judge how good a team is by how well they play against UConn. Look at the 2025 Final Four - were UCLA and South Carolina bad teams? If you were only looking at the score you might think so but that’s far from the truth

 

[browns]

Comparing stats is fun but when I watch Sara play she looks like the smoothest player I've seem since Maya..Everything just looks so easy for her just like Maya

 

[Bone Dog]

Comparing stats is fun but when I watch Sara play she looks like the smoothest player I've seem since Maya..Everything just looks so easy for her just like Maya

I second that emotion.

 

[CL82]

The BE had finally become what Dave Gavitt had envisioned: a dominant men’s & women’s basketball conference covering all the major Eastern media markets.

I doubt Dave Gavitt gave any thought whatsoever to women's basketball. At the time it was a little more than a club sport. Remember the NCAA did not have women's basketball championships until 1981. (Historical fun fact the first NCAA women's basketball sports championship game was field hockey and happened right here at the University of Connecticut. We won.)

Woman's college basketball owes a huge debt of gratitude to Geno, Chris, Rebecca, Lobo, Jen Rizzotti and the rest of the charismatic 1995 team that it is now considered a "revenue sport" at all. If it doesn't happen here, maybe it happened somewhere else, but the 1995 team definitely was an inflection point for the game.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are an awful lot of other people and teams who contributed to that process, including very recently, Caitlin Clark, but the 1995 team was special in a lot of ways. That in the fact that it was approximate to the ESPN headquarters in Bristol, and thus easy to broadcast created, a paradigm shift in which women's basketball became more visible and as a consequence more profitable.

Unfortunately, within a few years, the football schools left the conference for greener pastures

Actually, it was the basketball only schools that left the conference in 2013. The conference ended up "selling" those exiting teams the big east name in what was, in my opinion, a colossal marketing failure, and the scale of the "new coke" debacle.