Stanford-bound Fran Belibi dunks -- again -- in high school game

[wbball novice]

I've been meaning to ask ... Having seen Olivia N-O in that dunk contest, and considering that she has the habit in UConn games of keeping her hands too low with the consequent stripping of the ball, why not actually encourage her to look for a dunk? Even if she doesn't do it often, it's an incentive to keep her hands high when she's close in. It would also give Danger many opportunities to execute the alley-oop pass that has been one of the Notre Dame weapons for some time. She's tall and has long arms, so she wouldn't have to go up as high, which would be a concern with shorter athletic players who have further to fall with greater impact.

 

[MilfordHusky]

Fran made some impressive dunks. I liked her variety and use of her large hands. However, note that she is only a few inches over the rim and most of the dunks hit the other side of the rim instead of going straight down. This is not to disparage what Fran has done, but the dunks would be cleaner and more impressive if she were about 2-3" higher.

 

[JellyBean]

Pretty awesome. I am just curious to see what Tara does with this group of talent. I mean getting all of this talent is nice but if you are getting bounced in the Round of 32 or the Elite 8s or Sweet 16s..what good is it? Especially if you are losing to teams that have 2 and 3 Star rated players.

 

[TheFarmFan]

Pretty awesome. I am just curious to see what Tara does with this group of talent. I mean getting all of this talent is nice but if you are getting bounced in the Round of 32 or the Elite 8s or Sweet 16s..what good is it? Especially if you are losing to teams that have 2 and 3 Star rated players.

Are you anticipating the future or describing the past? In the last two seasons we've gone to the Final Four (losing to eventual champs South Carolina) and lost to Louisville in the Sweet Sixteen - and neither of our senior classes those years featured a single top ten player or McDonald's All-American. They were average senior classes for a top 25 program, but nothing especially notable in terms of top players. Even this year our recruiting class was not highly ranked at all; Smith kind of came out of nowhere from Australia, but she was not considered a top ten prospect, and our senior recruiting class was the lowest ranked since at least the mid 2000s - not even in the top 20.

Stanford hasn't had even a top 5 recruit since Chiney Ogwumike in 2010 (and our only top ten recruit in that period was Kiana Williams at #7), and yet Stanford hasn't lost earlier than the Sweet Sixteen since 2007 - 12 straight Sweet Sixteen appearances. So if anything, I think Tara's teams have overachieved relative to her recruiting classes. That will change next year, but I think that's a really off-base description of the past decade.

 

[CamrnCrz1974]

Are you anticipating the future or describing the past? In the last two seasons we've gone to the Final Four (losing to eventual champs South Carolina) and lost to Louisville in the Sweet Sixteen - and neither of our senior classes those years featured a single top ten player or McDonald's All-American. They were average senior classes for a top 25 program, but nothing especially notable in terms of top players. Even this year our recruiting class was not highly ranked at all; Smith kind of came out of nowhere from Australia, but she was not considered a top ten prospect, and our senior recruiting class was the lowest ranked since at least the mid 2000s - not even in the top 20.

Stanford hasn't had even a top 5 recruit since Chiney Ogwumike in 2010 (and our only top ten recruit in that period was Kiana Williams at #7), and yet Stanford hasn't lost earlier than the Sweet Sixteen since 2007 - 12 straight Sweet Sixteen appearances. So if anything, I think Tara's teams have overachieved relative to her recruiting classes. That will change next year, but I think that's a really off-base description of the past decade.

Here are the recruiting rankings for a number of Stanford's players in the last decade (not an exhaustive list, so my apologies). Please note that I could not locate CGBR numbers before 2012. Also note that Prospects Nation's first published rankings were for 2013. Again, apologies for my list not being exhaustive.

CGBR (Dan Olson) rankings for recent Stanford players:
#6 -- Alyson Beebe (2012)
#8 -- Kiana Williams (2017)
#10 -- Kailee Johnson (2013)
#11 -- Maya Dodson (2017)
#13 -- Lexie Hull (2018)
#17 -- Jenna Brown (2018)
#18 -- Taylor Rooks (2014)
#20 -- Erica McCall (2013)
#25 -- Brittany McPhee (2014)
#27 -- Nadia Fingall (2016)
#30 -- Kaylee Johnson (2014)
#34 -- DiJonai Carrington (2016)
#38 -- Marta Sniezek (2015)
#42 -- Anna Wilson (2016)

Prospects Nation rankings for recent Stanford players:
#11 -- Erica McCall (2013)
#12 -- Kiana Williams (2017)
#13 -- Jenna Brown (2018)
#17 -- DiJonai Carrington (2016)
#20 -- Kailee Johnson (2013)
#23 -- Nadia Fingall (2016)
#24 -- Maya Dodson (2017)
#34 -- Anna Wilson (2016)
#45 -- Lexie Hull (2018)
#50 -- Brittany McPhee (2014)
#60 -- Taylor Rooks (2014)
#61 -- Marta Sniezek (2015)

ASGR (All Star Girls Report) rankings for recent Stanford players:
#8 -- Erica McCall (2013)
#14 -- Maya Dodson (2017)
#15 -- Alyson Beebe (2012)
#18 -- Kiana Williams (2017)
#19 -- DiJonai Carrington (2016)
#19 -- Jenna Brown (2018)
#21 -- Bonnie Samuelson (2011)
#24 -- Taylor Rooks (2014)
#25 -- Anna Wilson (2016)
#28 -- Taylor Greenfield (2011)
#29 -- Kailee Johnson (2013)
#36 -- Lexie Hull (2018)
#41 -- Amber Orrange (2011)
#44 -- Nadia Fingall (2016)
#47 -- Brittany McPhee (2014)
#52 -- Jasmine Camp (2011)
#53 -- Marta Sniezek (2015)
#60 -- Erica Payne (2011)
#83 -- Alex Green (2011)
#107 -- Kaylee Johnson (2014)

Blue Star Report rankings for recent Stanford players:
#4 -- Maya Dodson (2017)
#14 -- Erica McCall (2013)
#15 -- Alyson Beebe (2012)
#16 -- Kailee Johnson (2013)
#17 -- Amber Orrange (2011)
#19 -- Jenna Brown (2018)
#23 -- Taylor Greenfield (2011)
#27 -- Taylor Rooks (2014)
#32 -- Kiana Williams (2017)
#35 -- Bonnie Samuelson (2011)
#41 -- Lexie Hull (2018)
#42 -- Anna Wilson (2016)
#43 -- DiJonai Carrington (2016)
#45 -- Jasmine Camp (2011)
#47 -- Marta Sniezek (2015)
#77 -- Brittany McPhee (2014)
#84 -- Nadia Fingall (2016)
#126 -- Kaylee Johnson (2014)
#205 -- Alex Green (2011)

@JellyBean
@TheFarmFan

 

[CamrnCrz1974]

And your point is?

You were having a back and forth with @JellyBean about Stanford recruiting, player ratings, etc. You made a statement about recent Stanford history.

To bolster and continue the discussion, I did the research of the four major national recruiting services to provide the rankings for 2011 through 2018.

There was no "point" -- other than to continue the discussion and to provide the specific information for both you and @JellyBean , as well as the rest of the Boneyard.

Perhaps it was presumptuous of me, but I was expecting a "thank you" for taking the time (over an hour) to do this research and present it here, instead of the "And your point is?" response.

 

[TheFarmFan]

You were having a back and forth with
Perhaps it was presumptuous of me, but I was expecting a "thank you" for taking the time (over an hour) to do this research and present it here, instead of the "And your point is?" response.

Apologies for coming off churlish - when I first read your post, I didn't even notice that you weren't the earlier poster (read this on my phone); when I noticed, I had deleted it once I realized (before you posted). Genuinely, thank you for doing it.

This subject just makes me testy because Stanford's biggest hurdle has always been recruiting. It isn't about making a pitch for why Stanford is great that's the problem - it's that only about 5-10 Top 100 players per season are eligible to be admitted. Indeed, to our fans' knowledge, we have lost only three recruits to other schools who were admitted to Stanford in the past decade: KLS to UConn, Mikayla Pivec to OSU, and Skylar Diggins to Notre Dame (and it's not clear whether KLS was actually admitted or if it was just so clear she would have been but committed to UConn before that could have happened).

So the insinuation that Tara is rolling in top ten talent that she's squandering is not only kind of insulting to her, but also the complete opposite of the problem we have: we're generally able to admit maybe one or two top ten players in any given year (at best), and it's super rare the #1 recruit is admissible, so that's why having KLS go to UConn burned so many Stanford fans (esp. given her sisters both went to the Farm); it fundamentally altered the trajectory of our program for the subsequent four seasons. Throw KLS into our starting lineup for the past four years and I suspect we'd have been to more than one final four.

Tara has had to coach up players who weren't top recruits, and she's done a pretty amazing job of it. Any insinuation to the contrary is going to bring out the angry tree in me!