The Big Ten's Underrated Gems
Plus an Indiana-Iowa preview, obviously
This week’s set of games weren’t the most exciting. The premier matchups were mostly lopsided, and there weren’t many key upsets worth highlighting.
Indiana took care of business as it has for much of the season, Iowa dominated Maryland and then the Terps completely dismantled Ohio State in Jacy Sheldon’s first game back.
It has set the stage for an Indiana-Iowa matchup for the ages on Thursday, and I’ll get to that in here, but first I wanted to talk about some players that I feel I should be talking about more. These players have been crucial for their respective teams, but don’t have the eye-popping numbers of the Caitlin Clarks and Mackenzie Holmes of the world.
Sydney Parrish and Chloe Moore-McNeil - Indiana
Going to start this with two players who I’ve certainly talked about, but needed their own section after this past week. Indiana is 22-1 and has beaten each of its last three opponents by 23 points.
The Hoosiers are on an unreal tear, and for as much as Mackenzie Holmes is playing incredible basketball, it is the entire starting five’s contributions that is making this work, and Parrish and Moore-McNeil have been instrumental to it in completely different ways.
First, Parrish. The Oregon transfer and Indiana native has been the energy-infused guard that can give the Hoosiers a spark whenever they need it. This can be from hitting big shots down the stretch as she did against Purdue, or from making a big defensive stop, as she did with against Ohio State.
Parrish is, according to the analytics, Indiana’s best defender, with her 2.2 defensive win shares ranking 51st in the nation out of nearly 3,500 Division I players. Her 79.2 defensive rating is tops on the team and 164th in the country.
She’s seen a massive increase in her numbers, going from 8.4 PPG at Oregon last season to 13.0 PPG this season. Her rebounds (3.0 to 5.9 RPG), assists (1.0 to 2.0 APG) and steals (0.9 to 1.9 SPG) are all way up, and she’s doing it with just five more minutes per game and significantly improved shooting efficiency (39.4 to 45.5 FG%).
All of this is to say, Parrish has thrived with the Hoosiers in every way possible, and has become a delight to watch because of the fire she plays with. It was a natural fit on paper, but this fit has been unbelievably good for both Parrish and Indiana.
But Parrish is not leading Indiana in minutes. Neither is Holmes. Neither is Berger, even in the games she has played in. Nope, that is Moore-McNeil, who feels like the most unsung hero in the Hoosiers roster. Parrish, Sara Scalia and Yarden Garzon have been huge this season to help Holmes and Berger, but the rise of Moore-McNeil is unbelievable.
Parrish’s stat increases can at least be somewhat attributed to a new team and system. But Moore-McNeil has been with Indiana each of the past three seasons, but she’s found a sizable role, leads the team with 32.8 MPG and is extremely reliable on both sides of the court.
The stats don’t fly off the page, but Moore-McNeil’s become a more reliable scorer and, above all, has become Indiana’s primary facilitator out of nowhere.
With no Berger, Moore-McNeil stepped up and made a 500 percent increase to her assists per game. That, along with her big increase in steals and blocks, has made her critical to have on the floor, and she’s doing it all without getting in any sort of foul trouble.
Unlike Parrish, Moore-McNeil plays much more composed, and by default is less likely to be seen as a spark plug. But, like McKenna Warnock to Iowa, Indiana needs her and her well-rounded skillset to have this level of success.
Serah Williams - Wisconsin
It’s been a tough season for Wisconsin, but the development of Williams is important for this program’s future.
Williams, a true freshman, had a hot start to the season, slowed down for a bit, but has reignited in a big way over the past month for the Badgers. In her last eight games, Williams is averaging 17.6 PPG, 6.3 RPG and 2.1 BPG on 62.2-percent shooting. Those are elite numbers, especially for a first-year player.
Her 23 points were a big reason Wisconsin got within one point of Ohio State in the second half, and her 31 points and 13 rebounds led the way in an overtime victory over Michigan State.
Wisconsin is making progress, just slower than I was hoping for. Players like Williams and Maty Wilke show the potential in this Badgers roster, and more performances like this from Williams is all that Wisconsin fans can hope for at this point.
Hannah Stuelke and Kate Martin - Iowa
Speaking of exciting true freshman forwards!
This is Monika Czinano’s final year for the Hawkeyes. That looked a lot scarier for the future before Hannah Stuelke.
Yes, it will be very hard to replace everything Czinano does on offense for Iowa, but what we’ve seen from Stuelke in limited minutes shows that she has a ceiling that might even pass what the star Hawkeye forward is doing.
Here are Stuelke’s Per 40 Minutes stats:
22.9 points (80th in the NCAA)
13.5 rebounds (73rd)
0.29 win shares (194th)
Stuelke has come off the bench more and more recently for Iowa, and the fall-off in play has been less and less. She is a dominant interior scorer with potential to grow, but is an outstanding rebounder, which is something Iowa has lacked outside of Clark.
This year's freshman class has been unbelievably promising, and Stuelke is yet another gem that should become a true star within a season or two.
With Clark and Czinano putting up dominant numbers, Stuelke impressing off the bench and Warnock doing what she’s done every season, I have not given Kate Martin her proper respect, because she’s having an excellent senior season.
She currently leads the Hawkeyes in three-point percentage (43.8%), just narrowly edging out Warnock (43.7%). This is way up from last season, where Martin shot 28.6 percent from deep. Her scoring is slightly down (7.2 to 6.9 PPG), but she’s doing it more efficiently, and is covering more, both from deep and from the free-throw line (74.0 to 80.8 FT%).
Efficiency is the name of the game for Martin, and that is crucial to a team with Clark and Czinano as high-volume options. She’s the secondary facilitator to Clark with 3.3 APG, and her 2.34 assist-to-turnover ratio ranks 60th nationally. For a player with a low usage rate, Martin consistently comes up big when she’s called upon, and it’s players like her that turn Iowa from great to elite.
Moira Joiner - Michigan State
The Spartans are not having a good time as of late. They have lost 7 of 8, many of which have come by narrow margins. That being said, this team has a handful of really exciting players that should make for an excellent core in the future, if it stays together.
DeeDee Hagemann and Matilda Ekh are the two I’ve discussed the most, but senior Moira Joiner is having a really solid season, especially since becoming a starter this past month.
Joiner has scored at least 10 points and brought in at least six rebounds in five straight contests, and more recently has 11 total steals across Michigan State’s last two games. She’s the Spartans’ best three point-shooter, hitting 40.5 percent of her attempts, and is adding 4.6 rebounds and 1.8 steals per game.
All of this makes Joiner Michigan State’s top player in defensive win shares (1.3), and puts her second to Ekh in overall win shares (3.6). This is not the year Sparty was hoping for, but it’s a relatively favorable schedule to end the season for a team that handed Indiana its only loss of the year about six weeks ago.
Chyna Cornwell - Rutgers
I mean this with no sarcasm in my heart: Rutgers getting to 10 win is a true accomplishment.
Through almost unfathomable injury luck — and I need everyone reading this to knock on wood because I am not trying to jinx this — the eight-player Rutgers roster has played 191 of 192 possible games, meaning that just one player, Kassondra Brown, has missed a game this year.
Truly unbelievable, and credit to whatever voodoo is happening in Piscataway to make that happen. This has led to a best-case scenario for the team and head coach Coquese Washington, true development from the core.
Kaylene Smikle is scoring in bunches, by far leading the team with 17.3 PPG as a freshman. The rest of the roster is chipping in, but no one is doing it more than Chyna Cornwell, so much so that she actually has more win shares than Smikle (2.9 to 2.7) with about half the points per game (9.7).
Cornwell was one of the few players to return from last year’s Rutgers roster, and she has taken advantage of the expanded role with 9.7 PPG and 8.7 RPG. She’s doing all her damage inside, hitting on 53.2 percent of her attempts.
She had 16-point double-doubles in each of Rutgers’ last two wins over Penn State and Wisconsin, significant contributions for a team trying to scrap out any wins they can.
Clash Of The Titans
I’ve hyped up plenty of Big Ten matchups this season, and not to toot my own horn (or to do exactly that), but they’ve mostly been as good as promised!
This is without question the biggest game yet. Two teams have separated themselves from the rest, and will finally meet for the first of two matchups likely to decide the regular season champion.
Indiana (12-1 Big Ten, 22-1 Overall) vs. Iowa (11-1 Big Ten, 19-4 Overall). The Hoosiers have won 10 straight games by an average margin of 18.0 points. The Hawkeyes have won 8 straight by an average margin of 19.4 points.
There are so, so many storylines at play here. This is Caitlin Clark vs. Mackenzie Holmes, the two best players in the Big Ten this season. There are great post matchups with Holmes vs. Monika Czinano. Sydney Parrish, Grace Berger and Chloe Moore-McNeil will have to stop Clark, McKenna Warnock and Kate Martin outside. Yarden Garzon and Hannah Stuelke are two immensely talented true freshmen who will get the largest stage to shine on.
Last season, Iowa won both all three matchups against Indiana, including one to win the Big Ten tournament. Each of those games was decided by single digits. And while these teams do have plenty of returning players from those matchups, both of them, especially Indiana, feel revamped.
That being said, these numbers for Clark and Czinano in those wins tell a story:
Clark - 21.7 PPG, 6.3 RPG, 7.3 APG, 5.3 TOPG, 40.7 FG%, 19.0 3PT%
Czinano - 27.7 PPG, 8.7 RPG, 72.9 FG%
For Clark, those are bad numbers. Her scoring was down, her turnovers were up and her efficiency, especially from three, was way down. Indiana did a great job stifling the conference player of the year, but absolutely could not stop Czinano, who went for 30 and 10 in two of the three matchups.
Why did Czinano dominate? Part of the story could be that Holmes was not 100 percent after returning from injury. Her minutes were limited and her production was way down from her usual, and Czinano took advantage. Still, if she can get even close to those numbers in this matchup, Indiana may have a hard time recovering.
Another big number from those three Iowa wins: 25. That was the percent Indiana shot from three across those matchups, never shooting above 28.6 percent in any of the games. This is an area the Hoosiers have greatly improved in this season, where they now hit 36.1 percent, 25th-best in the country. If the deep shots stop falling, it’s another way Iowa can find a victory.
But, I’m angling all these what-ifs this way because I do think Indiana is the favorite, especially at home. These Hoosiers are playing some of the best basketball I have seen in this conference since I started covering Ohio State four years ago. It is beautiful, selfless basketball that has been outrageously dominant on both sides of the floor. Even when the shots stop falling for spans of time, Indiana has rallied together and gotten stops to regain momentum.
Iowa is a team that can and will capitalize on those lapses, and is the nation’s top-scoring team (88.0 PPG) for a reason. It’s hard to close out a Hawkeyes roster with that much firepower, and Clark has been known to hit a silencer on a loud opposing crowd.
Above all, I am beyond excited to see this matchup play out. Both of these teams are playing like title contenders, and not just within the Big Ten, and both have their rosters at full strength. Clark and Parrish are also two of the most fierce, fiery players this conference has to offer, and that should lead to some incredible fireworks.
Thursday, Feb. 9, 6:30 p.m., Big Ten Network. Don’t miss it.
Feature Photo Credit: Courtesy of Iowa Athletics
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