04-22-2026, 12:58 AM
(04-21-2026, 07:37 PM)2006alum Wrote: Well at least the homerism is back in action. The idea that either of these pickups is better than Somfai is pretty funny, but I understand the value of motivated reasoning on a fan board. To the extent MAS seems worse than de Vries, one might ask why MAS was more successful on an equivalent stage to Stanford (the Big Ten) as a freshman than she was two years later as a junior with us. I suspect the honest answer is lack of player development and X's and O's. Will be very interesting to see how the half of last year's team that fled develops next year compared to our lot. If they aren't announcing any changes to the coaching roster, there is no rational reason to think things are going to be different next season.
There have been quite a lot of comments about Stephenson being freshman of the year in the Big 10 - but, context matters in assessing that season for her. She played for a really bad Purdue team that was 5-13 in conference. Somewhat as a consequence, she got to put up a lot of shots and play a fair number of minutes as a freshman - 29.7 mpg while starting 33 games. But, her stats were not great, particularly shooting - she had a eFG of 41.8 and overall shooting percentage of 41.4%. eFG close to 40 is fairly poor, particularly for a post. Compare her eFG to freshman seasons for Eschmeyer (51), Agara (54.2), Sotelo (53.1), and de Vries (47.2).
The other piece of context is that Stevenson seemed to come in as a last-minute transfer - the result of some departures and recruiting misses. I think she was recruited late for a position of need after we were unexpectedly depleted in the post as a result of the departures of Iriafen and Betts. So, we took Stevenson despite some evident limitations (size, shooting, athleticism).
Sophomore year, she took fewer shots because she wasn’t asked to be a primary scorer, but her shot selection improved (probably because she didn’t have the green light a lot) and so her eFG improved to something at least decent for a post (47.8 as a sophomore, and 50 as a junior). And it was reasonably predictable that once Eschmeyer and Somfai arrived, Stevenson wasn’t going to get a lot of shots junior year. I don’t think the best explanation is bad coaching; I just don’t think Stevenson had a lot of potential to improve on the offensive end. (I appreciated her defense, screening, and smarts though. She seemed to understand the read action better than most.)
I do think it’s unlikely that either Sotelo or de Vries have Somfai’s upside, but it’s entirely possible that one or the other of them might fit in better and be more efficient. de Vries eFG as a sophomore was a really great 57.9. Sotelo’s regressed to 47.6 but her got more shots and more minutes compared to her freshman year. (One of the reasons why de Vries eFG is so good is that she’s a good shooter, and eFG credits you for shooting 3’s well.) (Another comparison: Somfai’s eFG was 46.3, but with an overall shooting percentage of 40.9%, so eFG gives her some credit for 3-pt even though we would not ideally want a player shooting 29.3% from 3 to be throwing those shots up.) I think it’s more likely than not that Somfai matures and her game gets more efficient, but it would not be all that surprising if it doesn’t. With her evident rebounding skills, TCU might not care, but she’s going to be in competition for shots there…