Wisconsin women's basketball: previewing the guards
The Badgers found a great point guard in the transfer portal last year. Have they done it again this year?
Here at Badgers Ball Knower headquarters it is time to fully enter season preview, uh, season. With two teams to focus on, it’s best we get started a little bit earlier than you might think so that we can discuss everything we want to.
We’ll be diving into each position group (I’ve divided them into bigs, wings, and guards based on a complicated proprietary formula) for both the men’s and women’s teams. We’ll be looking at the conference overall as well as making some predictions (closer to the season) that you aren’t allowed to bring up at the end of the season unless I was right.
We have already talked about the bigs and wings on the women’s hoops team and now it’s time to take a look at the final position group, the guards.
Entering the 2022-2023 season, the Badgers return a vast majority of their roster from last season, losing only two contributors. Reserve forward Tara Stauffacher (2.0 ppg, 1.7 rpg, 12.7 mpg) transferred to Northern Illinois and her production should be easily replaced by the multiple newcomers brought in this offseason. The second contributor that UW lost? She’ll be more difficult to replace.
Point guard Katie Nelson followed head coach Marisa Moseley from Boston University to Wisconsin ahead of last season and she was an invaluable member of the Badgers team. Nelson was the only player to start all 29 games for UW and led the team in minutes per game, averaging 38.3, which was the fifth most in the nation. In an amazing stat, this isn’t even the most minutes per game she averaged in her career. As a junior at BU she averaged 39.4 minutes per game, which ranked second in the country.
She scored 8.1 points per game (39.7% from the field, 35.0% from deep), grabbed 3.6 rebounds per game, dished out 3.9 assists per game, and pilfered 1.7 steals per game. Her assist/turnover ratio of 1.96 was No. 93 in the whole country.
To put it bluntly…she won’t be easily replaced.
There are eight players in the “guard” classification for Wisconsin this season, per my proprietary positional formula, and one player in particular who will be asked to replace a lot of Nelson’s production.
Guards
Sania Copeland, freshman, 5-foot-7, Kansas City, Kan.
Krystyna Ellew, sophomore, 5-foot-10, Chicago
Mary Ferrito, freshman, 5-foot-10, Plain City, Ohio
Lily Krahn, freshman, 5-foot-10, Prairie du Chien
Avery LaBarbera, 5th year, 5-foot-6, Harrison, N.Y.
Natalie Leuzinger, junior, 5-foot-8, Monroe
Ronnie Porter, freshman, 5-foot-4, St. Paul, Minn.
Maty Wilke, RS freshman, 5-foot-10, Beaver Dam
This is an extremely young position group which features five freshmen, a sophomore, a junior who has played 87 career minutes, and a grad transfer.
Avery LaBarbera is that grad transfer and she comes to Madison after a decorated career at Holy Cross in the Patriot League. She is the reigning Patriot League Player of the Year, the 2018-19 Patriot League Rookie of the Year, and made the All-Patriot League first team once, the second team twice, and the third team once.
Last season, LaBarbera scored 16.5 points, pulled down 9.8 rebounds (!!!), and dished out 4.0 assists per game. She had 19 double-doubles, 1.7 steals per game, made two three-pointers per game, and averaged 36.3 minutes per game during her senior campaign as well.
If Moseley was looking for a point guard to replace Nelson…well, she just may have found one in the transfer portal again with LaBarbera.
Courtesy of CBB Analytics
Keeping in mind that the Patriot League isn’t the Big Ten, LaBarbera had a better season than Nelson last year. Despite the higher total turnover numbers, LaBarbera’s turnover percentage was actually way lower than Nelson’s and in the 84th percentile in the country. LaBarbera had such an insane usage (28.7%, 96th percentile) that she was just going to have more turnovers because she had the ball in her hands so often.
LaBarbera will have to work on her efficiency as her shooting percentages weren’t great last year. But an 87.6% career free throw shooting clip and a 33.3% three-point percentage number leads me to believe that the lower numbers during her senior year were in part due to her massive usage.
With players like Sydney Hilliard and Julie Pospisilova on the court with her, LaBarbera won’t have to shoulder quite as large a load on offense this season and hopefully her shooting percentages will improve beacuse of it.
As for the other guards on the roster, Krystyna Ellew has the potential to be a valuable piece on offense for the Badgers. She averaged 7.6 points per game as the top reserve, and occasional starter, last year. She was unafraid to let it fly from beyond the arc as a freshman and her 42.7% three-point rate was second best on the team last year (of players who played more than 400 minutes on the season).
Beyond LaBarbera and Ellew there are a lot of…unproven options. Junior Natalie Leuzinger is a career reserve and the other five players are freshmen, four of them true freshmen. The one RS freshman in the group, Maty Wilke, missed all of last season with an injury.
However, Moseley is high on her potential. From my B5Q interview with Moseley back in March: “Moseley noted that Wilke had spent the entire year, on the bench, right next to the coaches during games. Moseley called her a “cerebral kid.”
While I doubt we see all four true freshmen play this season, I am interested to see the diminutive Ronnie Porter (22.7 ppg, 5.6 apg, 4.9 rpg) out of St. Paul and in-state 4-star Lily Krahn (20.6 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 5.2 apg, 3.2 spg) on the court in preseason practice. This Badgers team is always in need of scoring punch and these two can fill it up if they get hot.
And, if all else fails…Nelson WAS hired as a grad assistant for the team this year and maybe Moseley can sneak her into a game.
Nelson must not have fouled much!
I saw some of Krahn's tape, and she looks very smooth and very athletic. Sure would be nice to get a star in-state player. Any chance of a redshirt?