Week 12 with the Pac-12: How Much Does Lack of Exposure Hurt Pac-12 Players?
Will it hurt their opportunities in the name, image and likeness arena? If so, will that eventually drive players to other leagues?
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The question of national exposure dogs the Pac-12 in all sports. The fact that the Pac-12 Networks air more women’s sports on TV than other leagues–and offers events that are not on TV for free via streaming–doesn’t outweigh the fact that most traditional carriers outside the conference footprint don’t carry the network. For those reluctant to cut the cord or unwilling to part with DirecTV, the Pac-12 Networks might as well not exist.
How much does this hurt players and teams in the Conference of Champions? Does the lack of exposure hurt in recruiting? Does it hurt teams when it comes time for media members or coaches to vote in polls? Does it keep players from winning national awards?
There are certainly advantages to being on carriers or networks that are widely available back East. There are advantages to being promoted by such carriers or networks, too. Muffet McGraw reminded us that even coaches and players in the Central and Eastern time zones feel like they are shunted aside by the biggest players in the media game, particularly ESPN.
McGraw had a point that ESPN and other national organizations have a bias towards Connecticut. Just looking at social media, ESPN posts about women’s college basketball will often highlight UConn over teams that are having more success than the Huskies this season. For fans of the likes of Notre Dame or South Carolina, even being in the preferred part of the country doesn’t always overcome the shadow that Connecticut casts over the game.
The Pac-12 has emerged from the shadow on the recruiting path. The league’s teams have commitments from 11 of the 24 McDonald’s All-Americans announced last week. That’s more than double the next-closest conference. The SEC and ACC each have five, Connecticut has two for the Big East, and Baylor has one for the Big 12.
What happens to those players once they get on campus, though? With the exceptions of Kelsey Plum and Sabrina Ionescu, few players from the Mountain and Pacific time zones have been the talk of the college sports media centers back East in recent times. That’s especially egregious considering the opportunities last year.
The season started with two Pac-12 players on the Associated Press Preseason All-America team. Aari McDonald and Michaela Onyenwere were dynamic, high-scoring, and led two of the best teams in the country. It’s not like they weren’t compelling women with great stories.
Onyenwere had the feel-good story of carrying a UCLA team that was beset by injuries and COVID-19 opt-outs all the way to the Pac-12 championship game. She is very easy to interview and gives quality quotes, making her an easy player for the media to cover.
McDonald was the transfer who came to Arizona to build something out of nothing and did it. She spent four years as a Wildcat including her sit-out year. She debuted for the team on Nov. 9, 2018 with 22 points. Over the next three years, she never scored fewer than 11 points. She did it while also being a two-time Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year.
While she was much shyer and reserved with the media early in her Arizona career, by her senior year McDonald had found her voice and was a compelling interview. That journey was part of what made McDonald a compelling story in women’s college sports, and it went largely untold to the national audience.
“My parents are like, ‘You know, you're getting older, you need to start talking. You can’t be quiet forever,’” McDonald said in January 2021. “And so I'm kind of like, ‘Well, yeah, I can’t be quiet anymore.’ And just, I know that my teammates look for me a lot to say something. So I mean, I just got to get out of my comfort zone and start talking. I know I have good things to say, and so I had to get out of my comfort zone. I mean, it's hard. Sometimes I revert back to my old self, but I mean, I got to do it for the best of the team.”
Prior to their senior years, both McDonald and Onyenwere had been lost behind the hype machine of Ionescu. Some members of the media and women’s basketball community complained that Ionescu only got the attention because she was a white player.
If that was true, those who gave Ionescu that attention didn’t learn their lesson, because Onyewere and McDonald would be overshadowed as seniors, too. This time, it was for a white player from the East. Some of the same people who dismissed the argument that Ionescu got that attention because she was a unique player were suddenly making that same argument for Paige Bueckers.
When the season ended, both Onyenwere and McDonald were nowhere to be seen on the AP All-America first team. McDonald held on for second team. Onyenwere slid all the way to third. And, boy, did they soon make the voters look very silly.
McDonald finally got the attention on the big stage at the NCAA Tournament. It wasn’t anything that Pac-12 fans hadn’t seen before. It was what Arizona fans had watched for three years in McKale Center. Seeing their star dominating while the freshman from Connecticut had to work extremely hard for her points felt like so much vindication.
Just a few months later, it was Onyenwere getting her moment in the sun as she became a dominant force for the New York Liberty in her WNBA rookie season. The former Bruin was drafted eighth, but went on to win the WNBA Rookie of the Year award and join forces with Betnijah Laney and Ionescu to take the Liberty to their first playoff appearance since 2017.
After the 2021 Final Four victory over UConn, McDonald told the national media, “My name is Air-E, not Are-E. Sorry. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you.” It was representative of how many Pac-12 fans, current and former players, and coaches feel.
“We would go to the tournament, and the (national) media wouldn’t know who Nicole Powell or whoever our best player was,” Arizona State head coach Charli Turner Thorne told me three years ago.
Turner Thorne spent four years as a player at Stanford in the late 1980s, the last three under Tara VanDerveer. She is in her 25th year at Arizona State this season. She has been around long enough to know that Pac-12 players and programs missing out on accolades they earned is nothing new.
Current events represent the unfortunate possibility that it’s not going away. They also suggest that even when Pac-12 players are represented, exposure on ESPN can help a player’s chances.
Voters for various national awards are more likely to see Stanford than any other team in the conference. The Cardinal will play on ESPN networks six times during the regular season if all of its remaining games are played. In contrast, USC will not play on ESPN in the regular season. Even Arizona, which played Stanford for the national title last year, was only scheduled to play on ESPN networks twice–and one of those games was against Stanford.
That may have been relevant to a national award that comes with its challenges: the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year. Two interesting things happened on the way to the compilation of the Defensive Player of the Year Top 50 Watch List. First, just two Pac-12 players were named to the list. Compounding the first, neither of them was Arizona’s Sam Thomas or USC’s Rayah Marshall, Pac-12 players I would have voted for.
Marshall’s absence is a head-scratcher because she seems to be an easy choice for a voter who doesn’t really watch these players. Her defensive counting stats–blocks, steals, defensive rebounds, fouls–are all positive. Where is the logic?
Thomas’ absence from a watch list that requires voters to really watch players to get an adequate read on how they perform the relevant task might be the best evidence yet that the lack of regular national exposure by the Pac-12 is hurting its players. When the best defensive player on the best defensive team in the conference doesn’t make the list for national defensive player of the year, it calls into question whether players are being promoted as they should be.
That could become an issue down the road in the world of NIL deals. Thomas has launched her own athletic apparel line with the help of former Arizona player, Danielle Adefeso. Would that be more lucrative if she went to a school that was regularly on ESPN? It’s hard to argue otherwise. If a player thinks she cannot get enough exposure from the Pac-12 to make it worth her time, will she consider going somewhere that gets on TV in the media centers of the East Coast?
The Naismith Trophy DPOY watch list consisted almost entirely of post players. Both of those from the Pac-12 were posts with very impressive block numbers. Cameron Brink blocks 2.3 shots per game and Nancy Mulkey a huge 3.3 shots per game. That seems to have impressed the voters a great deal.
What didn’t seem to impress them was versatility. Even going from a perspective of pure counting stats, the panel ignored USC freshman Marshall. Not only does Marshall match the blocks per game of Brink, but she also gets 1.2 steals per game. That is considerably higher than Brink (0.7) or Mulkey (0.8). She does this while committing far fewer fouls (0.9 per game) than either Mulkey (1.4) or Brink (2.7), suggesting that she’s employing better defensive principles than others in the conference.
Offensive player awards are less complex. A close look at statistics is liable to tell you how effective a player is. Does she score regularly? How many shots does it take her to get her points? How efficient is she? Is she able to share the ball effectively? Assists, field goal percentages, points per 40 minutes. There are enough different types of stats to tell an observer not only who is scoring, but who is doing so in a way that actually helps her team.
Defensive stats are a bigger problem. The stats available on a per-player basis make it very difficult to tell how much better one defender is than another. A steal is recorded for one player, but what if that steal came as the result of a deflection or a good trap by other players? A post gets a block, but what if she got it because the only path the on-ball defender allowed led directly into the post’s wheelhouse?
These are the kinds of issues players like Thomas face. She regularly draws the toughest defensive assignment for parts of or entire games. At 6-feet tall, she can defend 1-4 effectively and has defended the 5 well, too. Without her, Arizona would not be leading the conference in scoring defense, giving up just 55.8 PPG.
Like Marshall, Thomas is able to both steal and block the ball. So far this season, only six Pac-12 players average at least one steal and one block per game. Some of these players do all of these while strictly working in the post. Washington State’s Bella Murekatete with her 1.5 steals per game and 1.7 blocks per game is this kind of player. Players like Thomas and Colorado’s Mya Hollingshed are able to shift between the two more easily.
That ability isn’t new for Thomas. Last year, despite the pandemic-shortened season, she had 60 steals and 33 blocks. Two years ago, 47 blocks and 53 steals–making her the only Pac-12 player to have at least 40 of each. In 2018-19, she was the only one in the league to average at least 1.4 blocks and 1.4 steals per game. She had 60 steals and over 50 blocks that year. Her 241 steals make her the active career leader in the conference, and she has done it while fouling out of just four games in 4.5 seasons.
“She's one of the most underrated defensive players in the country, and I'm gonna keep on saying that until someone listens,” Arizona head coach Adia Barnes said. “She continues to lock down her opponents. She continues to play good basketball, continues to show up when we need her.”
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