2022-23 Big Ten Women's Basketball Preview: Minnesota
Can the Gophers Youth Project actually work?
Before I talk Minnesota, a reminder and a slight change involving these upcoming Monday posts.
Reminder: There will be no Hoopla next Monday (July 4). The Thursday posts will continue, but team previews will take a week off.
Slight Change: These will only kind of be in order from projected worst to best. Why? Rutgers is why. This 13th-place spot could easily go to the Scarlet Knights, who are also mostly starting over. But Rutgers only has eight players on the roster right now, so I want to wait until it fills out a little more before I talk about them. Minnesota would be next currently and it stands at a roster of 12, so there seems like less wiggle room for a major change to talk about. With that, I will make final rankings of the 14 Big Ten teams after all the previews, but it like won’t be all that different to the order in which these come out.
Last week’s preview:
OK, Minnesota time.
I went into last season with some hope that Minnesota was going to start figuring it out. The Golden Gophers had been trending very much in the wrong direction for four straight seasons, going from 24-9 in 2017-18 to 8-13 in a shortened 2020-21 campaign. But head coach Lindsay Whalen kept the roster mostly in tact going into last year, and I thought that cohesiveness could lead to genuine progress.
Then Minnesota started the year by losing to a Jacksonville team that went 2-17 the year prior, which set the tone for another underwhelming season, only slightly improving from the prior season with a 15-18 record.
Minnesota’s numbers here, largely, aren’t too bad. The offense was pretty strong and was exceptional from deep. Looking past these stats, the offense was also good at avoiding turnovers (14.4 per game, 93rd in the country) and made solid use of its three shooting, hitting 277 on the season, 14th-most in Division-I.
Most of the struggles instead came on defense, where the Gophers have yet to make improvements under Whalen. Since starting her tenure with a season ranking 52nd nationally in defensive rating, here is where Minnesota has ranked the past three seasons:
2019-20: 265th
2020-21: 340th
2021-22: 336th
Minnesota doesn’t play all that fast, but it still manages to give up oodles of points to opponents. This leads to teams scoring 0.87 points per play and 101.0 points per 100 possessions against the Gophers, two statistics that rank in the bottom 20 nationally.
All that being said, maybe Minnesota could turn into a new Iowa, scoring so many points that defense only kind of matters. The problem then lies with what is left of this roster, and it ain’t much.
Whalen is back and was extended for another year. She is returning to a team that has three players from last year’s roster. If you only count players that saw game action last year, that number drops to two.
Welcome to The Minnesota Project.
Thirteen — 13! — players are gone from last season, seven of which are through the transfer portal. That includes All-Big Ten star Sara Scalia, who had a true breakout season, along with each of Minnesota’s top six scorers from 2021-22. Who returns?
Alanna Micheaux — 6-2 F, So. — 3.4 PPG, 4.1 RPG in 30 games (16 starts)
Maggie Czinano — 6-0 G, So. — one point in nine games and 22 total minutes
Katie Borowicz — 5-7 G, R-Fr. — 3.9 PPG in 12 games as early enrollee in 2020-21
Micheaux has the most game experience of the trio, while Borowicz is the only one who has been with the team longer than a season, and she missed all of last year due to injury.
The graduate transfers will be utilized, but it seems clear what Minnesota is doing here: Clearing the way for the freshmen. This is no ordinary freshman class, especially considering how not good the Gophers have been in recent years. Whalen has managed to hold on to a class that ranked top 10 nationally, with four players that should be able to make an immediate impact.
Let me rephrase, because that’s a sentence that could be said for most teams, but Minnesota is not most teams this year. I would instead say this: These four freshmen should play a significant amount of minutes from start to finish this year. They might all start, because what do the Gophers have to lose?
This is not a roster built to win this year unless this freshman class is one of the greatest the Big Ten has ever seen. Instead, this year is a development one for the large quantities of untapped potential coming into Minneapolis. Getting that opportunity gives the Gophers a real plan for future success, and it should be fun to watch regardless of the win-loss record.
Whalen needs this plan to show some signs of life, and she needs this core to stay in Minneapolis past this season. The Gophers are going to lose games this year, very likely as much as it has the past few years. But, Minnesota also could be a threat to steal some big games down the stretch if the freshmen talents start to blossom in a big way.
I assume no teams want 13 players leaving in one offseason, but at least it forces Minnesota to fully dive into a singular plan, and that plan is giving its top 10 recruiting class a shit ton of minutes. I also am intrigued to see what we get out of year two of Micheaux, Czinano and Borowicz. The latter was a four-star prospect of her own and showed some real life as an early enrollee. Micheaux saw lots of action and could grow her game dramatically with a clear path to a starting role, and the same could be said for Czinano, who never got a real opportunity last year.
As for the transfers, none stand out to me as particular breakout candidates. Aminata Zie might be that answer, as the nation’s most efficient scorer at the JUCO level. I think that these four seniors are important regardless of scoring output, because this team needs leadership in a big way. There is so much future potential, sure, but it could all go very south without some structure, whether that be from Whalen or these incoming college veterans.
Outlook
All of this makes for a truly fascinating Minnesota roster, one that I am excited to see in action. As I said, this is likely not going to immediately turn around the Gophers program, and it’s very possible that Minnesota loses even more often than it did the year prior.
I just want to see the freshmen, and I want to see glimpses of what the future could hold. You cannot lose 13 players and turn into a contender. This is, instead, as close to a tank for prospects as you will see in college basketball, at least in the sense of what the goals should be.
Minnesota’s offense has never been the problem under Whalen, but some signs of life on defense would be a welcomed change. The Gophers held onto the ball well, but could not get any turnovers the other way, so some new life could help improve the defensive effort.
I may expect another season at the bottom of the standings for the Gophers, but if this was a ranking based on intrigue and potential, Minnesota is among the top teams in the conference, and maybe the country.
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