Women's Hoops Blog

Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better


Monday, February 13, 2006

DePaul crushed Notre Dame behind 26 points from Allie Quigley.

“It was really just ugly at the end,” coach McGraw said. “We were just, just anemic on offense. We just can’t score. We can’t score in the post. When you go down and miss layup after layup after layup, it affects you mentally.”

McGraw also criticized DePaul for running up the score. Coach Bruno responded: "I'm not going to start a war of words in the newspapers with Muffet."

The Irish are in danger of missing the tournament. They are 10th in the Big East. They have an RPI around 40, and an even lower Sagarin rating.

As the Irish have suffered, so has Megan Duffy's WNBA draft stock. Her numbers are still decent, but where she was once projected to go in the 5-7 range, most draft boards now have her falling to the late first round or worse.

UPDATE: from Chris Masters, women's basketball SID at Notre Dame:
From everything I've heard from speaking with multiple WNBA scouts and WNBA media experts who have visited our games, Megan is a very solid upper to mid-first round pick and our team's performance has done nothing to affect her status. If anything, her play (offense, defense, work ethic, leadership, attitude) in spite of the problems we've had seems to have impressed the scouts even more ... she's in the midst of a run of eight consecutive double-digit scoring games (and 19 of 23 this year), is ranked in the top 10 in the BIG EAST in five different categories (including the point guard essentials of assists, assist/turnover ratio and scoring), and almost single-handedly has brought us back to contention in several games this year (most notably Tennessee, Marquette, the first DePaul game, South Florida and Villanova).

It's just that Megan is truly a special player (best basketball IQ, savvy and work ethic of anyone I've ever worked with) ... and I'd hate to see her accomplishments diminished because our team is having a subpar year.