Pac-12 X-Factors in the NCAA Tournament
Who needs to step up for each of the six teams who made the NCAA Tournament?
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. You can also buy Her Hoop Stats gear, such as laptop stickers, mugs, and shirts!
Haven’t subscribed to the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter yet?
Every team has its star who is going to get hers on any given night, but relying on one player is usually a good way to exit the tournament quickly. Who else needs to step up for each of the Pac-12’s teams if they want to advance in the NCAA Tournament?
No. 1 overall seed Stanford (25-2, 19-2)
Perhaps the strongest aspect of the Stanford Cardinal’s roster is that they do not have a defined star. Kiana Williams was crowned the Most Outstanding Player of the 2021 Pac-12 Tournament, but she often gets lost in the crowd of Stanford players who average at least 10 points. After all, there are four of them.
Undoubtedly, the three most prominent players on the roster are Williams, sophomore Haley Jones and junior Lexie Hull. Cameron Brink has also emerged as a legitimate star for the Cardinal. Those four have the ability to carry the Cardinal a long way, but who else needs to have a strong showing if the team is going to take home a national title?
The re-emergence of Francesca Belibi would make the team nearly unstoppable. At the high point of her season, she was averaging 12.6 points and 6.8 rebounds per game. That was the night she went 10-14 from the field on the way to 23 points in 33 minutes against Arizona State.
Since then, Belibi’s minutes, points, and rebounds have steadily decreased. Her last game in double figures was on Jan. 24 when she scored 12 points in 18 minutes of play off the bench against Southern California. After starting the first 13 games of the season, she has played less than 10 minutes in four of the last 14 games. She has appeared as a reserve in all 14 of those games.
Yet, Belibi is still the Cardinal’s fifth-best scorer with 8.1 PPG. Her 5.1 boards per contest make her the team’s third-best rebounder although she only averages 15.3 minutes per game.
Those are valuable contributions for the Cardinal. But in order to help them become the last team standing, Belibi needs to cut down on her turnovers. She has 43 turnovers this year playing forward. Only Jones, who averages 27.3 MPG as a guard, has more.
Belibi becomes even more important if Brink struggles with fouls. The freshman forward has been whistled for at least four fouls seven times this season. She has fouled out five times, including in the Pac-12 title game. Her 71 fouls and five disqualifications rank first in the league in categories you would rather not be first in. The Cardinal need someone in the frontcourt who can step in if their star freshman is limited.
With Belibi firing on all cylinders, it would be difficult to think of a team that could defeat the Cardinal. Even without her at the top of her game, it’s difficult to think of many teams that could defeat the Cardinal.
No. 3 seed Arizona (16-5, 13-4)
“We spoke it into existence,” Pac-12 Player of the Year Aari McDonald said about the success the Arizona coaches and players have found over the past three years.
When McDonald arrived on campus, the Wildcats had one postseason appearance in the previous 12 years. That was a first-round exit in the 2011 WNIT.
Despite all the success since McDonald transferred to Arizona, one thing that they are still trying to speak into existence is reliable offensive depth. Lacking that, she has spent three seasons willing her team to victory on the offensive end of the floor.
McDonald’s career high is 44 points scored last year in Austin, Tex. Her career average in an Arizona uniform is 21.7 points per game. Since she started competing for Arizona, she has never scored fewer than 10 points. That streak of 87 games is the longest active streak in the nation and the longest streak in the Pac-12 for at least the last 21 years.
But against the best, like Stanford this year or Oregon last year, none of that has been enough. If the Wildcats hope to reach their first Elite Eight or beyond, they need to find something else.
Arizona needs someone to help spread the floor. Head coach Adia Barnes knows that the defensive playbook to beat Arizona is “ten feet in the paint,” limiting the options for McDonald to drive or Cate Reese to operate in the post. A good team will still struggle to beat the Wildcats using the tactic, but the best teams have done it consistently.
The X-factor for the Wildcats will be someone who can get hot from the 3-point line, forcing the defense to guard on the perimeter. That generally means one of two players: senior Sam Thomas or sophomore Helena Pueyo.
Thomas is hitting 39.7 percent of her 3-point attempts this season. That’s the highest of her career despite starting the season 0-9 from outside in her first three games. Since then, she’s hitting 45 percent from deep.
Pueyo has dropped from 38.3 percent last year to 36.7 this season, but that still makes her one of the Wildcats’ best options. Her attempts from outside have dropped from 3.7 per game last year to 2.5 this year which is the aspect of her game that both Barnes and McDonald have urged her to correct.
Ultimately, though, Barnes doesn’t care who it comes from. She knows that they need at least three or four players in double digits whoever those players might be.
“We're playing our best when Cate’s in double digits, when Sam's in double digits. We have productivity from Trinity (Baptiste) inside, from Bendu (Yeaney) attacking the basket, from Shaina (Pellington), Lauren (Ware) and Helena coming in off the bench,” Barnes said. “It's really, really key. You know we have to have balance inside-out. We're not just going to create all this offensive talent in like the next week. We are a very good defensive team. We are solid. Our defense creates a lot of offense. We're not going to change our personnel or all of a sudden be someone else. What we are has worked.”
No. 3 seed UCLA (16-5, 12-4)
Like most Pac-12 teams not named “Stanford,” the UCLA Bruins have two major stars they depend on. Michaela Onyenwere and Charisma Osborne do most of the heavy lifting for UCLA. And that’s quite a lot of lifting.
With only nine players who have appeared this season, the Bruins lean especially heavily on Onyenwere and Osborne. The short bench was made even shorter when sophomore guard Camryn Brown went down just five minutes into the Feb. 21 loss to Oregon State. She has not appeared in a game since.
Head coach Cori Close does not believe the depth issues are UCLA’s biggest hurdle.
“I don't care who you are,” she said after the Bruins lost the Pac-12 title game. “I don't care if you're really deep like Stanford or you're not deep like us. At this point in the year, everybody's banged up, everybody's trying to get rest, everyone is doing this. You have to make a mental decision.”
One player who has stepped up at crucial times this season is freshman Emily Bessoir. After the loss to Stanford in Las Vegas, she was one of three players who Close praised for leaving it all on the court and “really finish(ing) empty mentally, emotionally, physically.”
“Emily Bessoir really played hard and tried to give us a spark off the bench, her consistency in rebounding,” Close said.
To that point, Bessoir has grabbed at least five rebounds in 14 of the team’s 21 games this season. She has also been a key scorer on several occasions this season. The freshman has scored in double figures six times this season.
One of her biggest games came in the team’s biggest win. Bessoir scored 11 points on Jan. 22 as the Bruins handed the Cardinal one of their two losses this season. In that game, she was one rebound shy of a double-double.
Every game is a big game now. Bessoir can demonstrate what lies in UCLA’s future if she can rise to the occasion in San Antonio.
No. 6 seed Oregon (13-8, 10-7)
Oregon’s attempt to integrate five freshmen and three transfers has been an up-and-down process this season. It is especially down now that starting point guard Te-Hina Paopao is injured.
Even before Paopao was injured, the team had its inconsistencies. While the computers love the Ducks with the newly-minted NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) putting them at No. 10 in the country and our Her Hoop Stats rating ranking them 13th, the Ducks’ best recommendation is that they did not have any bad losses. The problem was that they also did not have any good wins.
Their best win came over Oregon State in December. That was before the Beavers went on pause for almost a month and returned as a much-improved team.
With Paopao out, the Ducks used Maryland transfer Taylor Mikesell at the point. That is just one reason Mikesell will be the critical X-factor for Oregon.
Mikesell started off her Oregon career on fire. Through her first two games, she was 11-16 from the 3-point line. The problem for her was that those games were against Seattle and Portland.
Once her team got into Pac-12 play, Mikesell made three or more 3-pointers only twice. A 5-8 game against the still-struggling Beavers in December and a 4-11 game against USC would be the shining moments. Considering that she had been brought in primarily for her shooting, that was a problem.
Mikesell still is not having a huge impact from outside, but she is contributing on the offensive end. After dropping to a season-low average of 8.7 points per game, she has pushed her season average back to 9.8. That’s good for fourth on the team and will be the third-best mark if Paopao is unable to play in San Antonio.
In her last five games, Mikesell has only shot below .429 once and has been better than .500 twice. She has seven assists against just four turnovers despite handling the ball more.
In the team’s loss to Oregon State in the Pac-12 quarterfinals, Mikesell scored 24 on 10-19 shooting, grabbed three rebounds, dished out two assists, had two steals and did not turn the ball over at all.
“I thought early on she was pressing a little bit, but then once she came back in and really settled down, she played well,” Oregon head coach Kelly Graves said after that game. “And hopefully that is something we can continue through the NCAA Tournament. We'll be playing in a couple of weeks but we've got to figure out a way to play better or that tournament's going to be short as well.”
No. 8 seed Oregon State (11-7, 7-6)
No one wants to go into quarantine for a month just weeks into the season. There is an argument to be made that it turned into a positive for Oregon State, though.
While the team did not play from Dec. 19, 2020 through Jan. 14, 2021, they were able to get some work in with players who were not in quarantine. They seemed to emerge as a completely different team.
One big reason was mid-season enrollee Talia von Oelhoffen. Von Oelhoffen has risen to the team’s number two scoring threat with 12.5 points per game. That officially makes her one of the team’s stars, not an X-factor.
The X-factor is redshirt junior Taya Corosdale. After missing almost her entire junior season with an injury, Corosdale has rebounded strongly both literally and figuratively. She is a Swiss Army knife, contributing in every aspect of the game.
The 6-foot-3 forward averages 4.4 boards per game, good for second on the team behind Taylor Jones. She puts 6.1 PPG on the scoreboard by shooting 41.7 percent from the field. Like almost everyone on the roster, she is effective from 3-point range with a 39.7 accuracy rate. She dishes out 2.2 assists while averaging just 1.2 turnovers per contest. On the defensive end, she manages 0.7 blocks and 0.8 steals per game.
Any part of the game that needs a little bit of a boost benefits when Corosdale is on the floor.
No. 9 seed Washington State (12-11, 9-10)
The Washington State Cougars did not have to wait long to find out if they would be included in the NCAA Tournament field for just the second time in program history. Within moments of the selection show tipping off, their name appeared and the celebration could begin.
Much of the credit for getting to the tournament after a 30-year absence can be laid at the feet of Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Charlisse Leger-Walker and her older sister Krystal Leger-Walker, but the team has improved across the board.
The team started 6-1 with their only loss being a late four-point defeat at the hands of Oregon. That run included a victory over a ranked Oregon State team. Still, people wondered if the team picked to finish last in the conference was for real, especially since the Beavers were not living up to their potential at the time.
Game number eight proved that the Cougars were for real as they defeated then-No. 7 Arizona by two in overtime. Their X-factor played a huge role in that victory.
Over the first half, Charlisse struggled to score. Someone needed to pick up the slack if the Wildcats weren’t going to run away and hide. That person was sophomore post Bella Murekatete.
The 6-foot-3 center, who is originally from Butare Huye, Rwanda, came to Pullman as a raw prospect. This season, she is fourth on the team’s scoring chart at 8.6 PPG, a mere one-tenth behind junior forward Ula Motuga. The two frontcourt players are tied for the team lead with 6.7 RPG. At 1.5 blocks per game, Murekatete ranks fourth in the league.
After scoring in double figures only four times in 31 games last season, Murekatete has done it 10 times in 23 games this season.
That is not to say that there have not been struggles. After scoring 17 against Stanford on Jan. 29, Murekatete went on a streak of five games with six or fewer points. She averaged just 3.2 PPG over that stretch.
She seemed to have found her footing again as the season wound down. While she scored just two points against Arizona in the Pac-12 quarterfinals, she grabbed 10 rebounds.
In the three games leading up to the game against the Wildcats, Murekatete averaged 12.3 PPG. In the opening round of the conference tournament, she contributed a double-double with 13 points and 12 rebounds against Utah.
That is what her coach needs from her if the team is to put together a good run in San Antonio. They have been working on getting her back to the basics in order to be a quality back-to-the-basket post player after her mid-season struggles.
“She needs to be a double-double machine for us every single time she steps on the floor,” Cougars head coach Kamie Ethridge said. “I mean, she's got to score in double figures and she needs 12 rebounds every single game out. So that's a big ask, but I really think she's prepared to go in and make some noise in the tournament.”
Making some noise in the tournament is the final goal on everyone’s wish list this season. Who can get it done?
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.
Seriously? That's all you could come up with for Oregon State?