During a now fairly typical out-of-conference blowout against Akron, the small but devoted faction of Michigan WBB followers on Bluesky directed its Bluesky scold energy at two targets. The first was Michigan’s extremely shambolic athletic department, which was far too busy doing something other than supervising the football staff to make any effort to get some fans to Crisler Arena to watch a women’s team that’s having unprecedented success. The second was Seth Fisher of MGoBlog, of whom we demanded more WBB coverage. Seth did devote some time to WBB on their podcast, but, unfortunately, the economics of online publishing mean it’s far more lucrative to post about embarrassing behind-the-scenes football drama than it is to post about amazing basketball teams.

So our energy has turned, to “Fuck it, we’ll do it ourselves.” First, Ace Anbender resurrected The Bucket Problem to talk WBB. Then I decided that if Seth couldn’t make teamsheets for the women like he does for the men, I’d have to do that myself. (I can forgive Seth for not wanting to do them - they are a lot of work!) Now I’ve decided to write some previews, because more people need to talk about this great team.

Shoutouts to those who do this at a far more professional level than me: Dream B1G, Hoopla, Her Hoop Stats, and many many more. I’m an amateur and I’ll try to write regularly during the conference season, but life may get in the way.

The Season So Far

Michigan starts the real conference season 10-1, and most observers were far more impressed by the “1” than the “10.” While the 72-69 loss to UConn caught a lot of attention, every other game has been a win by at least 36 points, include a true neutral site win over Syracuse and a “neutral site” depantsing of Notre Dame in Detroit. Syla Swords showed out against UConn with 29 points, but Olivia Olson leads the team in overall scoring with 18.5 PPG.

The Wolverines have been blessed with good health so far this season. All the starters have been healthy, and of the significant rotation players, only Kendall Dudley and McKenzie Mathurin have missed time. Mathurin returned to the lineup against Oakland after missing three games.

Things are looking so good that Wyatt Crosher’s Hoopla newsletter says “What’s Michigan’s biggest strength? I’d argue everything right now.” In my opinion, the stats suggest one irritating potential Achilles heel: free-throw shooting, where the Wolverines current rank 205th at 68.8%. It’s not all that bad: both Swords and Mila Holloway can be expected to shoot closer to their career averages going forward, and the weaker shooting from bench mobbers Ciara Byars and Jessica Fields (9 out of 20 combined) will be less relevant in conference play. Kim Barnes Arico will want to scheme to keep Dudley, and maybe Brooke Quarles Daniels, away from the line in key situations.

But this is just me looking for something negative to say for balance. They’re awesome!

The Opposition

Oregon & Washington have had very similar seasons so far. Both teams had a very understandable loss to open conference play (Oregon vs. UCLA, Washington vs. USC), a solid but unspectacular Quad II win (Auburn & Utah, respectively), and a loss to Stanford. The difference that puts Oregon ahead in the various rankings is that the Huskies needed a big fourth-quarter comeback to eke out a five-point win against Green Bay, while the Ducks have easily handled all their lower-tier matchups.

For both teams, it’s hard to say how their early-season performance will translate to conference play. For what it’s worth, Charlie Creme’s bracketology puts Oregon as a 10-seed and Washington as a 9-seed. But they’ll each have at least 8 chances for Quad I wins to push themselves to a higher seed, and they’ll both need to rack up some W’s against their fellow members of the Big Ten’s middle class (Michigan State, Ohio State, Illinois, etc.) or risk missing the tournament entirely.

Oregon (12/29, 6:00 PST (FS1), +7.3 Torvik)

Kelly Graves has gotten the Ducks back on track after a disastrous 2024 season. While they’re still nowhere near the heights of the Sabrina Ionescu/Satou Sabally/Ruthy Hebard era, they’re coming off a Round of 32 appearance last season, ending with an overtime tournament win over Vanderbilt and a six-point loss at Duke. The Ducks are a very good free-throw shooting team, which could be important if the officials have happy whistles.

Players to Watch:

• PG Katie Fiso is 7th in the country with 7.5 assists per game. She combines this with 3.4 turnovers per game too, so there’s some bad with the very, very good. The Wolverines, with their 29.5% TO rate so far, have an opportunity to take advantage.

• Wing Mia Jacobs is the main three-point threat. Jacobs, an incoming transfer from Fresno State, leads the team with a 37.8% 3PT% and also collected 6.4 rebounds per game. Sofia Bell also has a good 3PT% at 37.1%, but she has extremely low usage (12.1%)

• F Ehis Etute is their top rebounder, and picks them up on both the offensive and defensive ends. However, Stanford was able to keep Oregon from grabbing an offensive board until the fourth quarter though. I thought it would be a fun idea to put logos on the teamsheets for player with U16/U19 national team experience, and then I discovered the Ducks have both the Luxembourgish Etute and Kosovo’s Astera Tuhina. More work for me!

• The Ducks are missing the contributions of Elisa Mevius, who was lost for the season after suffering a knee injury in their second game against Montana. Ari Long has replaced Mevius in the starting lineup and done admirably on the defensive end, but her offense has not made up for Mevius’s loss.

Vibes-based prediction: Fouls and free throw shooting keep this game uncomfortably close.
Very specific prediction: Whether it’s close or a blowout, Te’Yala Delfosse gets a double-double.

Washington (1/1, 3:00 PST (BTN), +8.6 Torvik)

The Huskies fell off hard after Kelsey Plum graduated and Aari McDonald transferred to Arizona in 2017. They spent several years in the wilderness before hiring Tina Langley from Rice for the 2021-22 season. Since then, they’ve been gradually working their way back; their T-Rank has increased each year (79 -> 59 -> 49 -> 40) and they returned to the tournament for the first time in almost a decade this March, losing the First Four game to Columbia 63-60. This year is the last ride for seniors Hannah Stines and Elle Ladine, who have stayed in Seattle for the duration of this rebuild.

Players to Watch:

• 5’7” Alaskan PG Sayvia Sellers leads the Huskies with 19.2 PPG. That average slightly understates things as she scored only one point against Southern. She’s had two 30-point games so far and U-Dub needed them both to get a big win at Utah and to manage their escape against Green Bay. Australian freshman Sienna Harvey backs her up and has coughing up turnovers for most of the year, but her last two games have been clean.

• There’ll be a Canadian U19 national team reunion as USC transfer Avery Howell played with Swords and Holloway at the World Cup in Czechia this summer. Howell and Swords have similar styles, but Syla has the slight edge: she was named to the Women’s World Cup First Team, while Howell was on the second. They’ve also both won Canada Basketball’s Player of the Week wards on multiple occasions, but only Howell has won it under its current name, the “Keg-Sized Player Of The Week.”

• Old friend Yulia Grabovskaia starts up front. Comparisons with Ashley Sofilkanich are inevitable: stylistically, Yulia grabs more boards while Sof gets more blocks. Grabovskaia’s heir apparent is five-star freshman Brynn McGaughy, who is an excellent shot-blocker.

Vibes-based prediction: Sellers has looked a lot like Hannah Hidalgo so far this year. Swords, Holloway, and especially BQD will turn her into the Hidalgo who faced Michigan in November.
Very specific prediction: Swords scores at least one, but no more than three, points more than Howell. Syla is finally declared “Keg-Sized Player of the Week” by Basketball Canada.

Making Teamsheets

The data for the teamsheets in this post comes from Bart Torvik’s site mostly, with a few rankings looked up for Her Hoop Stats and ESPN. I’ve been learning how to automate the process so I can generate these for all the Big Ten teams throughout the conference season, but there’s one thing that’s been more difficult than I expected: getting reliable position data.

Most official team sites only list players as “G” or “F” but I’d like to be a little more granular. Torvik has a role for each player, but the classification seems too focused on the men’s game. There are eight possible roles in the Torvik data, which are reasonably distributed for the men, but way off-kilter for the women:

The women's frontcourt seems to get pushed back a position, with centers becoming PF/C, and forwards becoming wings, and WBB having over 800 more wing guards than MBB. For the teamsheets, I simplified the roles to point guard, combo guard, "wing," and "PF/C," but I hope we can find a way to be more refined. Positionless basketball, it's for people way smarter than me.

Enjoy the games, everyone!