Hometown Heroines: Part Five
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By Amari Dryden
Some players can’t wait to leave home to go to college. Others can’t wait to represent their city and be the hometown heroine they aspired to be when they first picked up a basketball. This season, there are over 100 Division I players competing for their hometown teams. In this series, we’re narrowing the list down to players ranked within the top 10% nationally or in their conference in at least three different statistics and who whose hometowns are within a ten-mile radius of their college. We’ll tell you about a handful of players each week through the end of the regular season. Here is our last installment.
Conference tournaments started as early as Wednesday, March 4th, but these four players still have one game left in the regular season.
Becca Hittner, Guard, Senior
School: Drake
Hometown: Urbandale, IA
Becca Hittner is one of the top players in the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC). She leads the conference in points per game (20.6), usage rate (31.7%), free throws made (115), three-pointers made (43) and total points (350). She’s ranked in the top five in total defensive rebounds (106, 4th), total rebounds (122, 5th), three-point percentage (46.7%, 4th), defensive rebound rate (24.3%, 5th), defensive rebounds per game (6.2, 4th), points per play (1.16, 3rd), points per scoring attempt (1.35, 5th) and free throw rate (37.5%, 2nd).
Hittner has had six double-doubles this season. She’s also had double-digit free throw attempts in eight games. Perhaps her most impressive game was a win against Northern Iowa on January 3rd, when Hittner had 37 points, including a perfect 18-of-18 from the free-throw line, and tacked on seven rebounds and four steals. Hittner's free throw total was the most by a player in the NCAA at that point in the season and is the second-highest single-game mark in Drake history.
Hittner went to high school at Dowling Catholic, just four and a half miles west of Drake’s campus. She helped Dowling Catholic win the Iowa 5A State title in 2014 and had a runner-up finish in 2013. She averaged 19.0 points and 8.0 rebounds per game as a senior. Hittner plays fellow hometown heroine Cynthia Wolf on Friday, March 6th at 6:30pm EST.
Cynthia Wolf, Center, Sophomore
School: Northern Iowa (UNI)
Hometown: Cedar Falls, IA
Like Hittner, Wolf ranks highly in the MVC in several statistical categories. She’s sixth in blocks per game (1.0), sixth in total blocks (17), seventh in total rebound rate (15.2%), eighth in block rate (4.9%), 10th in total offensive rebounds (27), 12th in total rebounds (93) and 13th in total defensive rebounds (66). Wolf is one of the main reasons why UNI is ranked second in the MVC in defensive rebounds per game, total defensive rebounds and total rebounds. Her height is also a factor: she’s the tallest on the team at 6-foot-3 the tallest player the Panthers have had since the 2015-16 season. She’s had one double-double this season, a career-high 14-point and 13 rebound performance against Indiana State on January 19th, and was one point shy of another against Loyola Chicago on January 31st.
Wolf went to Cedar Falls High School, practically walking distance from UNI’s campus. She had a standout career, making the state tournament all four years in not just basketball but volleyball as well. She was a three-time All-Metro and two-time First Team All-Mississippi Valley Conference girls basketball honoree along with All-Metro and All-MVC recognition as a senior.
Kyra Collier, Guard, Senior
School: Little Rock
Hometown: North Little Rock, AR
Kyra Collier has been showing up big in all aspects of the stat sheet since she was in high school. She put up 18.2 points per game, 6.7 rebounds per game, 5.3 assists per game and 2.3 steals per game at North Little Rock High School and led her team to a state championship in 2016.
Collier’s impact at the college level was felt immediately as she finished her freshman season first on the team in rebounding and fifth in scoring. In the Sun Belt Conference, she was fifth in assists per game, sixth in steals per game, ninth in free-throw percentage and 11th in rebounds per game. Her 180 defensive rebounds tied for fourth-most in a single season in program history and her 63 steals were seventh-most in a single season in program history. She missed 15 games due to injury her sophomore year but picked up where she left off in her final two years of eligibility. She led the Trojans to back-to-back Sun Belt conference tournament championships, scoring 21 points in last season’s tournament championship game.
With the regular season coming to a close, Collier is ranked in the 95th percentile nationally in steals per game (2.1), field goals made (161), two-pointers made (137), total points (400) and total steals (58). Her career steals total is up to 210, ranking her third on Little Rock’s career steals list. She’s had three double-doubles so far this season, the most impressive being a 16-point and 13-rebound performance in a loss against Troy on February 20th.
Taylor Edwards, Guard, Senior
School: Old Dominion
Hometown: Portsmouth, VA
Edwards went to Woodrow Wilson High School, the same school as previous Hometown HeroineMikaela Jones of Norfolk State. Edwards averaged 16.6 points, 9.5 rebounds, 8.5 assists and 3.3 steals per game her senior year and scored over 1,000 points in her high school career. She’s gotten back to being as prolific as in high school, especially during conference play these past two seasons. She ranked fourth in ODU history for assists in a season by a junior, dishing out 139 last season.
This season,, Edwards is ranked first in Colonial Athletic conference (CAA) play in assist rate (33.0%) and assist to turnover ratio (2.13); fifth in free throws made (60); sixth in total assists (64) and assists per game (4.0); and ninth in two-pointers made (77), total points (226) and total defensive rebounds (80). She flirted with a triple-double on January 30th in a win against Southern Mississippi with 14 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.
Over the past month, we have featured 23 players who have represented their hometown and college well. We will continue our Hometown Heroines series next season featuring plenty more. If you missed any of the other installments, you can take a look here:
All stats are from Her Hoop Stats for games through March 3.
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.