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Message: [QUOTE="diggerfoot, post: 2252356, member: 1673"] Two things. 1. Play hard. Play smart. Have fun. The UConn WCBB mantra applies to the three major contenders, but I think each player was the GOAT for a different one. Moore played harder than anyone else; Taurasi played smarter; Stewart had the most fun. This doesn't settle the matter for me, rather it complicates what would be my choice further. 2. I don't think losing the NC as a freshmen should be held against Taurasi. Taurasi's forte was leadership, but that clearly was Bird's team to lead; Bird, the player whose fault it was if anything went wrong (so said Auriemma). In retrospect we learned there were chemistry issues on that team (though they played better after the roster shrunk via injury); given Taurasi's nature and strengths I don't think she could have fixed that as a freshmen, she may even have been an unwitting cause. I do think a freshman Moore could have fixed it. Because of the different intangible Moore brought to the table I think the team would have performed better in the semi-final game than with Taurasi, not just in that game they lost but for the whole year that team probably would have had better chemistry with Moore rather than Taurasi. Yet I also think a senior Taurasi would have led Moore's senior team to a championship. She would have rallied and instructed her younger teammates to do what they needed to do, to do more than what they thought they could, much better than could Moore. I don't think either the freshman Stewart or Taurasi could have won where the freshman Moore failed, so that's a wash. Yet, while I'm not certain, I think the freshman Stewart would have at least done better than the freshman Taurasi in that situation, not for the whole season but for that one tense game, and the senior Stewart might very well have done better than the senior Moore at keeping her teammates in the game to win that one. I guess I just talked myself into voting for Stewart, though up until writing this sentence that was not the case. [/QUOTE]

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