HoriZone Roundtable

The return from the holiday break and to conference play provided no shortage of big games and unexpected results, all of which came together to cause rankings movement (in one direction or the other) with every team in the top nine last week.

While Youngstown State has yet to face a pair of massive tests in the form of fellow contenders Northern Kentucky and IUPUI – though the Penguins visit the former this week – YSU has handled everything thrown at it so far, including a brutally physical win over rival Cleveland State on Saturday, following up a dominant effort against Purdue Fort Wayne on Thursday. There’s nothing not to like about the Penguins, particularly their defense and the fact that just about everyone who plays significant minutes has blown up at some point this season. Lilly Ritz is a bona fide player of the year candidate who has continued to add to her legend through things bleeding all over her 35 jersey after taking an elbow to the face against CSU, then emerging from the Beeghly Center corner wearing number 1 to finish a 20 point, 14 rebound effort.

Northern Kentucky’s fifth win in a row to climb to 9-3 overall was its most impressive yet, as the Norse went into Indianapolis on Friday and took down IUPUI on their home court by a 54-53 score in a game they led most of the way before surviving a late comeback. It’s hard to truly say that the Norse slowed Macee Williams down when the Jags’ star had 23 and 11, but Grayson Rose (10 rebounds, three blocks) and Emmy Souder found enough answers as the game went on, as Williams’ production disproportionately came in the first half. NKU also held reigning player of the week Rachel McLimore to just two points on 1-for-11 shooting, while Lindsey Duvall and Ivy Turner took turns balling out, as the duo combined for 43 of their team’s 54 points. A scheduled game at UIC on Sunday was declared a no contest due to breakthrough COVID cases in the Flames program.

In IUPUI’s defense, the Jaguars were without Destiny Perkins over their two games last week, including the loss to NKU where one could certainly argue that she would have made a single point’s worth of a difference. They bounced back on Sunday to club Wright State in a rematch of last season’s conference championship game that, given the changes in WSU’s program since then, felt absolutely nothing like one. It’s hard to argue that Austin Parkinson’s squad needed a get-right game after a single one-point defeat to a very good team, but…at the same time, even with the stunner in Iowa City two weeks ago, IUPUI went into the game at 4-2 since their COVID pause in November with two of those wins against sub-300 NET teams (Butler and Detroit Mercy). Whatever the case, getting McLimore (a game-high 26 points on 8-for-15 shooting) back on track after the NKU game certainly isn’t a bad outcome.

Cleveland State’s list of questions continued to grow after their pair of games last week, road losses to Robert Morris and Youngstown State. The Vikings, already dealing with season-long absences from key players like Taylah Levy and Aminata Ly, found its usual group of ten active players reduced to eight by Saturday with Brittni Moore and Raevyn Harris out. Depth concerns aside, CSU has also run into severe offensive issues. Destiny Leo still got hers for the most part with 22 points against the Colonials and 16 versus the Penguins, though she was held well below her typical percentages in both games, with her combined 1-for-9 from three standing out on the stat sheet. Other than Nadia Dumas and her reliable putback game, nobody is shooting the ball well for the Vikings, as the squad hit 32.1 percent from the floor and 17.5 percent from behind the arc over the two losses.

Green Bay demonstrated the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln’s famous “better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt” line by not playing any games while others in this tier, particularly Cleveland State and Milwaukee, struggled in theirs. Furthermore the COVID issues that led to the unexpected weekend off were on the side of the opponents, Detroit Mercy and Oakland, with the first of those two situations resulting in a forfeit win when the Titans did not receive a hardship exemption to the Horizon League COVID policy. The Phoenix will take their 6-4 (3-2) record to IUPUI and UIC this week.

A week after saying that Oakland barely deserved to hang on to the seventh spot, I moved the Grizzlies up to sixth because…well, just that kind of week. Nevertheless, OU earned the promotion with an extremely impressive 66-53 win at Milwaukee despite having numerous players out, including <inhales> Brianna Breedy, Lamariyee Williams, Breanna Perry, Olivia Sims, Alona Blackwell, and Aaliyah McQueen (and don’t forget that head coach Jeff Tungate is away from the program too). They did it in the best way possible, with solid contributions up and down the board and a strong defensive effort that held Megan Walstad to nine points. Those absences were pretty clearly explained when Oakland was shut down by COVID midway through their road trip, though they received a no contest ruling for their scheduled game at Green Bay on Saturday. Nevertheless, OU’s 5-7 (3-2) record somehow looks miles better than their 4-7 (2-2) one did.

Milwaukee, of course, was on the other end of that game, one that counts as a pretty rough loss by just about any standard. The best free throw shooting team in college basketball history is still connecting from the line (15-for-16 against Oakland, and their 83.1 team percentage is second in the nation right now), but continues to struggle from most other places (their 36.9 field goal percentage is 278th). While all is not lost – the Panthers’ 4-2 Horizon League record actually has them tied for second with Cleveland State, and one of those four came against Northern Kentucky early this season – it’s getting harder and harder to see UWM as a team capable of winning a conference title after being a clear preseason favorite. The Panthers, like Green Bay, also received a forfeit win from Detroit Mercy, thanks to UDM’s COVID outbreak.

Robert Morris fans have every right to be mad at me for their lack of more significant movement despite a fantastic weekend for the Colonials, I’ll put that up front. On Thursday, the Colonials absolutely suffocated Cleveland State 63-55, after holding the Vikings to just a pair of free throws over ten minutes of game time at one point. That run took a contest that was tied 33-33 early into the third quarter into rout territory, with the score 48-35 well into the fourth quarter. Alejandra Mastral bolstered a fantastic three-point effort by the Colonials by connecting four times from deep, while Esther Castedo added three triples among her 18 points. A win two days later against Purdue Fort Wayne didn’t involve quite as many style points, though the Colonials held the Mastodons under 50 points and received a balanced effort with all five starters between six and 11 points. I’m not quite prepared to say that RMU’s 5-6 (3-3) record means the same thing as Oakland’s 5-7 (3-2) or Green Bay’s 6-4 (3-2), but with their next game at Northern Kentucky on Friday, I’m certainly open to changing my mind.

Whether it’s the continued absence of Ryin Ott or something deeper, Purdue Fort Wayne has struggled a ton of late. The Dons have now lost six straight games (Ott, for what it’s worth, went down in the second game in the streak), the latest of those being losses at Youngstown State and Robert Morris last week. The Penguins held PFW’s star trio of Riley Ott, Shayla Sellers, and Sylare Starks to 21 combined points, just two of those from Ott, while RMU shut out Starks two days later. PFW, like travel partner Cleveland State (which, not so coincidentally, also struggled against YSU and RMU last week), is scheduled to host Oakland and Detroit Mercy this week. Should those two teams be through their COVID issues by the weekend, that represents a good opportunity for Maria Marchesano and company to get back in the win column.  

In a hastily-scheduled Gem City Jam game against crosstown rival Dayton on Friday (replacing a COVID-spiked contest at UIC), Wright State showed extremely well against the Flyers, a top 100 NET team. The Raiders lingered in a game that looked like a potential blowout early on, eventually pulling to within 61-60 on a Jada Roberson bucket with 6:08 left before fading late and losing by ten. The contest was a glimpse of WSU at its best, with Roberson leading the way with 20 and 7 before fouling out, while Destyne Jackson fired home her usual 16 and Channing Chappell put on a three point and defensive clinic. While their more recent game, at an angry IUPUI team on Sunday, didn’t go quite as well (the Jags led by 20 or so most of the way before eventually winning by 15), I’m starting to believe that the Raiders are one of those teams capable of playing their best ball by the end of the season while making a little noise closer to the middle of the standings.

UIC was one of three Horizon League teams that were in COVID protocol this week, one of two that had those issues cancel both scheduled games, and the only one that received hardship determinations and no contest rulings for those games. The contests in question were at home against Wright State and Northern Kentucky, although the Flames’ issues extend back before the holiday, with their last completed game taking place on December 18th against Saint Louis. That stretch will hopefully end this week, with Milwaukee and Green Bay planning to head to the Windy City.

The Horizon League either revised or reinterpreted its COVID game cancellation policy – it’s not entirely clear which – when the Omicron variant started to claim an increasing number of games last month. While early-season cancellations automatically tagged IUPUI and Wright State with forfeit losses, league commissioner Julie Roe Lach is now liberally applying a hardship exemption that allows her to declare a no contest instead of a forfeit when a team’s COVID issues involve vaccinated individuals. Most canceled Horizon League games for both women and men are now considered no contests, but Detroit Mercy’s women’s team became a notable exception last week when it took forfeit losses for scheduled games at Green Bay and Milwaukee even as UDM’s similarly-stricken men’s team received no contest rulings (draw your own conclusions there, I suppose). The Titans, now 0-11 (0-6), are scheduled to visit Cleveland State and Purdue Fort Wayne this week.

The Transfer Portal.

At this stage in college basketball, it is not only a well known commodity, it is a part of the every day landscape of a team. As a fan you start to wonder if players look unhappy, wondering if maybe they’re playing too well and likely to be poached by another school, start to second guess minute distribution by a coach and think the worst at every turn. It has changed the game for players, coaches, fans and athletic departments.

But at some point, it needs to be discussed if transferring is really working out well for players in the long run.

The Horizon League offers multiple perspectives on the transfer portal and if using it is working out for those that transfer. To do so, we need to suspend some reality though. There are multiple reasons why a player may choose to transfer and many of those cannot be quantified. It’s impossible to measure wanting to be closer to home or unhappiness with a coaching staff and the way they treat people. But with that caveat, it’s time to break down some recent Horizon League transfers and how things are going for them on the other side of things. No final conclusions intended to be drawn, just comparison for you to decide for yourself. These are also just a handful of transfers you could discuss, so to help weed through them (there was 1740 players that entered into the portal in the past offseason) we are going to stick with Div 1 to Div 1 transfers. And in the Horizon League, this isn’t even close to all the possibilities.

The tale of AJ Bramah began last year mid-season, when the senior who was averaging 21 points and 10 rebounds decided to leave Robert Morris. It was a big blow to the RMU program but read to the outside as he thought he had one last chance to retain some eligibility and gain some exposure on a bigger stage to set himself up for success playing professionally. He also stated that the RMU 8 game losing streak at the time was a factor in his leaving. With the NCAA granting a free year to all for last year, it gave Bramah the opportunity for one more full season. He chose Arizona State as the place he would finish out his college basketball career. However, only two months after committing to ASU, he chose to leave as some pieces of ASU returned. For a player looking to showcase their skills for a future job, he clearly saw that opportunity diminishing there. After decommitting, he landed at Nevada. However, after only 4 games, he was dismissed from the team.

“Due to conduct detrimental to the team, AJ Bramah has been dismissed from the Nevada Men’s Basketball program”

Bramah seemed to be looking for two things. He wanted to win, and he wanted to play and be a part of the winning. However, he never seemed to get there. He must now try to find a job overseas playing basketball, without much recently to show and having left 3 teams in a year. Would he have been able to put together a better resume for playing professionally had he stayed at RMU? Winning may not have improved but a good attitude and averaging a double-double probably would look better to some teams looking for size outside of the US.

Up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a new head coach took over last season. With the arrival of Will Ryan, a slew of transfers were expected. This is not uncommon with a new coach. Two players that stuck around last year to lead the new look Phoenix were the 2019-20 Freshman of the Year Amari Davis as well as his backcourt teammate PJ Pipes. But after just one season under Ryan, both players took the portal to find a new home.

Davis landed at Missouri, where he has played in all 12 games, starting in 10 of them. He is one of only two Tigers for the 6-6 squad averaging in double figures at 10.4 PPG. While this year’s Mizzou team may not be great, as they have losses to Liberty and UMKC in the non-conference play, Davis is getting the chance to continue to show his skills on a bigger stage. He will need to improve over the next few years to get back to the contribution he was having at UWGB, but it seems he found a good landing spot to be able to do that.

While Davis has played well and found himself a part of the Mizzou program after transferring, PJ Pipes has taken his opportunity for one more year and is trying to turn into future gold as a big piece of the 10-5 Santa Clara Broncos. Pipes has started in all 13 games he has played in, while averaging 10.5 PPG, just over 33 minutes a game and four assists a contest. He averaged 14.5 points per game as a member of the Phoenix, so the dropoff isn’t much. However, now he’s doing it on a winning team and if nothing else, it has to be more enjoyable playing basketball in the winter in California versus Wisconsin. With both Pipes and Davis, it is difficult to predict what their future would have held if they have aspirations of playing professionally, but it seems that these moves likely didn’t hurt their futures and may have only improved their outcomes. And back in the cold climate of Green Bay, there’s no question their scoring and leadership is missed.

Naz Bohannon and Darius Quisenberry both opted to transfer from Youngstown State heading into this season. It seemed a bit surprising in some ways, as together they had been a formidable tandem and seemed likely to be successful if they could stay healthy for a full season. Quisenberry is having a season for Fordham that is right on track with his previous work at YSU. He is averaging 16.3 ppg, a slight uptick from last season while seeing a slight decrease in his assists per game through the non-conference season. Fordham is 7-5 heading into A-10 play. He should have the opportunity to show he can stay healthy and be seen enough to have future opportunities overseas. Is that any different than he would have had in Youngstown? That’s where it’s hard to quantify some of these things that go into a player’s decision to transfer.

While Quisenberry has more or less transferred his stats from YSU to his new home, Bohannon has seen a decrease in his production since joining the team at Clemson. He was a near automatic double-double as a Penguin but is averaging just 4.9 PPG and 3.5 rebounds. While he has seen the floor in every game for the Tigers, he is yet to make a start and averaging just shy of 20 minutes per game. Horizon League fans know Bohannon has a motor that never stopped and you always knew he would be in the middle of a scrum for a rebound and working down low. It was easy to see him getting chances to play overseas despite being a little undersized at 6-6, but will those chances still exist when this season is done? It’s likely he saw the opportunity to play better competition more consistently, but it was a gamble leaving for a new destination in the ACC.

Many players cite wanting to play in the NCAA tournament as a reason to transfer. Last year, Jalen Tate took the chance to leave Northern Kentucky to join Arkansas. He already had an excellent Horizon League career having been named to the All-Freshman team, a 3 time All- Defensive Team member, All tournament team and Tournament MVP. However, he made the most of his year at Arkansas chipping in 10.9 PPG and playing just under 30 minutes while continuing to play the tenacious defense he was likely recruited for and starting all 32 games for the Razorbacks.

When it came time for the NCAA tournament, Tate shined bringing his experience with him. He averaged 15.5 points 4.5 rebounds, and 3.5 assists while helping Arkansas reach the Elite 8. He also found himself as a member of the South Regional of the NCAA tournament All Tournament Team. All these things to say, Jalen Tate had a great season at Arkansas and turned it into a pro career as he is playing professionally for Jobstairs Giessen 46ers in Germany. Would that opportunity have existed had he not left NKU for Arkansas and had the season he had including shining on the stage of the NCAA tournament?

When it comes to Oakland University, their relationship with the transfer portal has been well documented (See?). So how could there possibly be more to talk about? Oakland had 3 transfers this past offseason that cannot be ignored. The question becomes, were those good choices for the players or the team?

Oakland had two players leave this offseason who were seemingly big pieces of the team. The first one was forward Daniel Oladapo, who left for Pittsburgh, and the other was guard Rashad Williams, who left for St. Louis. Both seemed to have an ax to grind with the school on their way out, but none more apparent than Oladapo. He tweeted a picture of head coach Greg Kampe and Associate Head Coach Jeff Smith with clown emojis over their heads. He was a good player for Oakland averaging 11 points and 7.5 rebounds per game as a Golden Grizzly, but most of his tenure was a rollercoaster. From committing and decommitting three times before arriving on campus, to throwing a chair in frustration during a timeout last season, he was a player that seemed fueled by emotion. And at the end of the day, his emotions told him leaving an Oakland team he didn’t believe in, especially as he was awaiting a transfer big but instead got another “wing” coming in, and going closer to home was the right move.

However, sometimes the right move may have a diminishing return on the court. While he played and started in every game last year for OU, he has only started in 4 games for Pitt and even recorded a DNP in Pitt’s recent loss to Notre Dame where they only went seven deep and Oladapo found himself out of the rotation. He is averaging 3.8 points and 2.3 rebounds as a Panther. It was easy to see Oladapo with another good year having a chance to play overseas as an undersized but athletic big, but now, that seems very unlikely.

Exiting the OU roster with Oladapo was Rashad Williams, the former Cleveland State guard transfer. Last year saw Williams play his only full season in the black and gold where he averaged 13.6 points in 28.5 minutes. Where did things go wrong for the 3 point shooting guard, who made 34% of his threes last year? The issue seemed to come in roster makeup. Rashad had been brought to Oakland having been told he was the point guard they needed.

However, after not showing the ability to run the point the way Kampe expected, they brought in Jalen Moore. It was clear at times last year that while Rashad was seeing success shooting the three thanks to Moore, he wanted to be more than a volume 3 point shooter and that opportunity wasn’t going to present itself at Oakland. But to leave for St. Louis, a guard heavy team that brought back much of their roster seemed a bit perplexing. He has appeared in just 6 games for the 8-4 Billikens with most of his work coming against NAIA Harris-Stowe. A player that has found himself making treys for two different Horizon League schools and drawing attention from scouts for his shooting ability, now finds himself not seeing the floor in St. Louis.

And sometimes, a transfer involving Oakland works out for the better. That “wing” that Oladapo wasn’t too happy to see coming to campus was the Marquette transfer, Jamal Cain. While the other transfers discussed here were leaving Horizon League programs hoping to find success, Cain is story of a Div 1 player at a high major transferring to the mid-major level hoping to find a future payday. Through the non-conference schedule, Cain is looking ready to cash in, and not just overseas. Greg Kampe has scouts in regularly watching his 6’7″ forward who is averaging 21.1 ppg and 10.1 rebounds heading into conference play. Cain is regularly the best player on the floor, including against high major programs like West Virginia, Oklahoma State and Michigan State, and looks every bit the part of a future pro. Cain was nearly an afterthought at Marquette, but has used the portal to not only come closer to home, but also ensure he will be having a pro career.

These are just some of the MANY examples in the Horizon League of recent transfers and how they’re working out for those players. As the portal continues to shape the landscape of all college sports, many of these stories will be used by coaches to help attract new players or maybe try and keep one on your campus. Hopefully, whoever is in the ear of many of these athletes start to document these stories too. The portal can be a great tool for an athlete in the wrong situation. Being able to properly evaluate the situation versus your future aspirations is where the real decisions will come in.

Non-conference games are done, 2021 is (almost) done, and the Horizon League is presently in the middle of its holiday break, so it seems like as good of a time as any to take stock of the season to this point. We do that weekly on the team level through the power rankings of course, but what about the individuals who have starred for those teams? Here’s our call for the all-conference teams based on the games played in November and December.

You may be wondering how these teams stack up with our preseason vote. At the risk of sounding a bit too self-congratulatory, not bad at all. Nine of the ten players from the top two preseason teams on HoriZone Roundtable are once again on the first or second team here (compared with eight from the official league vote), with Youngstown State’s Lilly Ritz standing as the lone newcomer. Yes, we had a couple absolutely brutal misses after that (hi, Shamarre Hale), but all in all we accounted for ourselves pretty well.

Here’s how we see things at the halfway* point.

First Team

In hindsight, it seems kind of laughable that the narrative about Cleveland State all offseason was “who is going to replace Mariah White’s production,” because Destiny Leo has done that, and then some. Leo became the primary ballhandler in the Vikings’ system this season and has produced at a clip that should have her squarely in the Player of the Year conversation at this point. Her 21.8 points per game lead the league – and are seventh nationally – and she’s gotten to that number with staggering efficiency, including 52.0 percent from the floor and an even 50.0 percent from three. Leo has developed an impressive arsenal and court vision off of the dribble drive, in addition to her elite shot.

Lindsey Duvall, the Horizon League’s five-star, remains a machine who can do pretty much everything that needs to be done on a basketball court, one that can take over a game at just about any time. She’s the second-leading scorer and third-leading rebounder in the conference and her game at Saint Louis on December 11th, where she went off for 29 and 14, might be the best single-game performance by anyone in the HL so far this year. While Northern Kentucky has had an up-and-down start to the season the Norse’s talent level, led by Duvall, makes them a threat to win the title.

It’s probably a compliment to Macee Williams that her 16.9 points and 7.4 rebounds per game aren’t really headline material anymore, since that’s more or less what we’ve come to expect from the three-time conference Player of the Year. Those numbers are actually a bit off from where Williams ended last season, when she was within a hair of averaging a double-double, but that can be chalked up to the fact that IUPUI’s roster is deeper than ever. And the Jaguars’ team success speaks for itself of course, with Williams and company rattling off arguably the two biggest results for the league during the non-conference portion of the season.

The Horizon League has no shortage of top post players, with Lilly Ritz jumping into Youngstown State’s lineup from Division II Wheeling and immediately becoming one of them – in fact, if I blindly put the stats from Ritz and Williams side by side, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. The pair are 1-2 in the conference in player efficiency rating, and while each approaches things a bit differently from the other, they both get the job done at an extremely high level. Ritz has been vital to YSU’s better-than-expected start to the season, not only through her direct production but also through the way she opens things up for the Penguins’ collection of snipers.

The word “unicorn” is thrown around a lot in basketball, but Megan Walstad might be the closest thing the Horizon League has to one. She’s 6-2 and excels as a traditional big in most ways, she’s second in the conference in rebounding and third in blocks to name a couple. However, she also plays at every level (nobody will confuse her for one of the HL’s elite shooters from behind the arc, but she’s usually good for a three ball every game) and is a primary ballhandler and facilitator out of the high post. Walstad also shoots 92.6 percent from the line, hardly a throwaway stat for the focal point of every defense she faces.

Second Team

Arguably the most exciting player to watch in the conference, Kahlaijah Dean is a human explosion who can put up a lot of points in a hurry, then turn you over and put up a few more for good measure. She’s a solid bet for the league’s All-Defensive Team at the end of the year with 2.2 steals per game, but outings like her career-best 34 points (on 11-for-16 shooting) against Central Michigan three weeks ago are what sells the tickets. Dean also boasts outings of 28 and 27 points, major contributors to her 18.1 points per game. If you’re one of those people who likes to emphasize the V in MVP, Dean’s 30.7 percent usage rate is the highest of anyone in this post, edging out Duvall, Ritz, and Williams.

Jaida McCloud might be the Horizon League’s ultimate IYKYK player, since her 2-7 Flames don’t provide an abundance of opportunity for wider publicity. But the sophomore from Peoria reminds me of Duvall, not necessarily in terms of how they get the job done, but just through how well-rounded their respective games are, and with a similar ability to take over at a moment’s notice. In part thanks to necessity on a team that has been severely lacking in depth, McCloud’s numbers have skyrocketed this season, and her 18.2 points per game places her among the conference’s elite scorers. She, quite literally, gets to the line as well as anyone: McCloud’s 7.1 made free throws per game lead the nation while her 9.7 attempts are second.

As if Duvall didn’t provide enough of a headache for NKU opponents, Ivy Turner has continued to evolve into a front-end player in her own right. Turner has always been one of the conference’s best shooters – her percentages are competitive with Leo’s – but her true separator, much like McCloud, has been her ability to find space on the dribble drive, then draw tons of fouls attacking the bucket. In NKU’s come-from-behind win against Central Arkansas this season, Turner scored a game-high 24 points, including a whopping 13-for-18 from the free throw line. Games like that are admittedly atypical, but the production isn’t.

While a bevy of different Penguins have taken turns grabbing the headlines this season, and although she was taken off the point in favor of Mady Aulbach, Chelsea Olson keeps plugging along as one of the conference’s most quietly effective players. She’s 12th in the league in scoring (12.3), tenth in rebounding (6.3), and seventh in assists (3.4) with each of those numbers ranking second on YSU to Ritz, Ritz again, and Aulbach. However, Olson is still plenty capable of putting the cape on and taking over when needed, as she showed during a recent stretch with Ritz out of the lineup. Against Canisius on December 8th, she poured in 28 points on 12 made field goals, the latter number standing as the most by a YSU player since 2006.

Rachel McLimore has had a quiet year in a lot of respects, with her production – like that of teammate Williams, and probably for the same reasons – trailing her 2020-21 output. Not that she’s in an awful place of course, her 10.8 points per game are still 15th league-wide, she’s still shooting around a 40 percent clip, and her 3.5 assists per game (against just 1.5 turnovers) are sixth in the conference. None of those stats, however, have the staying power of her decisive free throws that took down No. 15 Iowa. The moments – along with the people, of course – are what stick in memories and what matter years later, and McLimore has probably the biggest moment in the conference this season in her portfolio.

Third Team

I think people take for granted just how imposing of a presence Grayson Rose is on the defensive end for Northern Kentucky, because for all the great bigs in the Horizon League, nobody really comes close to some of the stuff she does. The 6-3 grad student leads the conference in rebounding with 10.1 boards per game, and her 8.6 defensive rebounds are good for fifth nationally. She also blocks three shots per game, twice as many as anyone else in the league, and 11th most in the nation. Given numbers like that, Rose would deserve consideration for this post even if she never scored a single point, but she chips in 7.4 per game (including the occasional three ball) to serve as solid complimentary offense to Duvall and Turner.

Destiny Perkins is one of those players you don’t fully appreciate until you watch IUPUI play a few times to see how she operates as a facilitator that makes the Jaguars machine littered with big names go. She’s a high-energy player who’s very solid defensively, and leads the conference with 4.6 assists per game, many of them to players like Williams, McLimore, and Rachel Kent, of course. While scoring the basketball isn’t necessarily Perkins’ role on the team, she’s lethal from three (46.9 percent from behind the arc, contributing to a 61.6 effective field goal percentage) and more than capable of popping out an efficient 15-point effort every so often.

Green Bay is an absolute headache when it comes to individual awards because the team, of course, is usually good enough to warrant at least one player on the all-conference teams… but which player? Our preseason vote was basically a hedge between Sydney Levy and Jasmine Kondrakiewicz, while the Horizon League coaches chose Meghan Pingel for their second team. As it turned out, none of those players are a lights-out pick for this midseason team (though Pingel is admittedly the closest). Hailey Oskey has emerged as the Phoenix’s leading scorer, but I’m going to go slightly off the map and pick freshman Maddy Schreiber for this spot. Schreiber has been remarkably consistent this season, scoring between seven and 11 points in each of UWGB’s games since the third contest of the season, while Oskey and Pingel tend to blow hot and cold. Schreiber’s 4.6 rebounds per game and 46.9 shooting percentage both lead the team, and she’s also pulled down a pair of league Freshman of the Week awards.

It’s tough to pick one player from Purdue Fort Wayne because Shayla Sellers is an absolute sniper and Sylare Starks is probably responsible for most of the Mastodons’ improvement this year, but Riley Ott is the focal point for a cohesive and occasionally dangerous unit. While she turns the ball over a bit too much, Ott runs the PFW offense on a high level while leading the team in scoring with 13.1 points per game (a number that’s also tenth league-wide). Among those who play at least 20 minutes per game, Ott’s 48.3 percent rate from three is second only to Leo.

While Wright State has struggled this season in just about any way a team can struggle (a 1-7 record, two midseason player departures, two COVID pauses, committee meetings to figure out whether WSU should remain in Division I), Destyne Jackson has been an absolute rock for the Raiders on a shorthanded roster in Kari Hoffman’s first season. While her efficiency numbers won’t blow many minds, she is a bit of a volume shooter, Jackson is nevertheless good for 10-15 points every time out and regardless of the opponent. For someone in a spotlight role, she also takes extremely good care of the ball and doesn’t give away many fouls (she’s 79th nationally in foul rate). The Raiders certainly have some ways to go, but a player like Jackson can help them get there faster.

Honorable Mention

Want 15 more names? Sure, I can do that. Here are the players who crossed my mind at some point while putting together this post but just missed the cut.

*just go with it

There were just eight completed games across the league last week thanks to the holiday break and the latest round of COVID cancellations. However, whatever the results lacked in numerical volume, they more than compensated for it with their level of impact, making this week’s update a necessary one, starting right at the top.

IUPUI earned the top spot in just about the most emphatic way possible, by going into Iowa City and stunning the 15th-ranked Hawkeyes. For most of the game, things seems like they were on a collision course with a decisive but still somewhat respectable loss for the Jags, until a furious fourth-quarter rally erased a 15-point Iowa lead and delivered the upset. Rachel McLimore was responsible for the decisive blow in the 74-73 win (the program’s first ever against a ranked team), drawing a foul to Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark and knocking down a pair of free throws with three seconds left. She and Macee Williams each had 19 points to lead the way for IUPUI which, between this result and their season-opening overtime loss at Michigan, might have something of a case for an NCAA at-large bid in the works, if needed. Some more good news for the Jags: several conferences, including the Horizon League, are re-examining the practicality of their COVID forfeit policies, opening the door for the possible removal of both of the team’s HL “losses.”

Though Youngstown State didn’t do anything more than batter Division II team Point Park on Tuesday, the Penguins did offer one eye-catching stat regardless of the opponent, matching their effort against Davis & Elkins two weeks ago by only allowing two points in the first quarter. While it would still be fair to say that YSU very much goes as their shooting does, they’re definitely a squad that does most things pretty well, and that’s supported by their resume to this point. Six different Penguins have led the team in scoring over their 11 games, including Lilly Ritz, Chelsea Olson, Megan Callahan, Malia Magestro, and Paige Shy.

Cleveland State skidded into the break with their unbeaten mark shattered, thanks to a 66-52 loss to Loyola Chicago on Tuesday evening – one that seemed to suddenly raise some questions about the Vikings. Sure a 9-1 record is great, but on closer examination, that mark includes two forfeit wins (and again, there’s a chance of those disappearing), two non-Division I wins, and victories against the teams currently occupying spots 248, 312, 322, and 331 in NET. That leaves the win at Northern Kentucky earlier this month as CSU’s only positive outcome against the top half of DI, and it’s now balanced out by the game against the Ramblers, which never truly felt within reach after a 15-0 Loyola run spanning the first and second quarters. The Vikings remain unbeaten in league play and will have a shot at redemption this week with games at Robert Morris and Youngstown State.

Northern Kentucky closed their non-conference schedule on a high note, by going to South Carolina on Monday and smashing Wofford 84-64. Ivy Turner checked in with her latest strong outing, 24 points on 9-for-13 shooting, and her elevation from top complimentary piece to frontline player in her own right has been a low-key but nevertheless major storyline this season. She’s shot the ball a full nine percent better (both overall and from three) than she did last year and is now producing at a level that can keep the Norse afloat during Lindsey Duvall’s rare off nights. Having more than one weapon hardly makes a team unique towards the top of the standings but if this were NBA Jam, I’d feel pretty good rolling with NKU against anyone.

Milwaukee was idle last week (by design, which I suppose needs to be pointed out when applicable), and though a lot of metrics have started to favor rival Green Bay over the Panthers, I’m going to stick to my guns for another week and leave Kyle Rechlicz’s crew in fifth despite an unsightly 4-7 overall mark. UWM has a really interesting stretch of conference games coming up: three winnable contests, first at home against Oakland and Detroit Mercy, then on the road at UIC, followed by a game at IUPUI, then visits from Purdue Fort Wayne and Cleveland State, followed by their home-and-home with the Phoenix. Whatever Milwaukee is, we’ll find out pretty definitively over the next three or four weeks.

Had Green Bay done a little bit more against Central Michigan on Monday I probably would have moved the Phoenix up, but a not-great Chippewas team crawled back into the game late in the third quarter behind Molly Davis and forced the home team to go the distance in a 71-67 win. Green Bay continues to be extremely young and maddeningly well-balanced, so they’re a decent futures pick, but they still have the feel of a team that’s not quite ripe yet. Hailey Oskey has emerged as the team’s go-to player in recent weeks, while incredibly consistent Maddy Schreiber is one of the conference’s top freshmen.

It’s getting increasingly hard to justify parking Oakland in this seventh spot every week, as the Golden Grizzlies are now 4-7 and pretty much only hanging on here because nobody beneath them is doing much of anything either. On Monday, OU finished an 0-2 trip out to Las Vegas with a 21-point loss to Marshall, one that saw Kahlaijah Dean held to just four points in 12 minutes thanks largely to foul trouble, though she was also just 1-for-7 shooting the ball. Oakland has some nice pieces, as Illinois transfer Aaliyah McQueen (12 points against Marshall) is finally coming into her own a little bit, and streaky Alona Blackwell is at least visible after she wasn’t in the early part of the season, but the results just haven’t been following. Things don’t get any easier for the Grizzlies, as they re-enter conference play with the dreaded Wisconsin trip this week.

I hesitate to give out too much credit over losses, but Purdue Fort Wayne was fairly impressive in a home defeat to Indiana State on Monday. While the Sycamores are only 228th in NET, they did wreck UIC by 26 points in their previous game. And besides, PFW is 307th in NET, so the fact that they played a nip-and-tuck game with someone 80 spots up the ladder is a good look for them, right? The Mastadons probably should’ve won the thing to be honest, but they were done in by a late cold streak (Riley Ott’s three with 4:01 to go ended up being PFW’s final points of the game) and by turnovers (26 as a team, 11 by Ott). It seems clear to me that both the Dons and Robert Morris are in a tier above the final three teams at this point, and as luck would have it, PFW and RMU play each other on Saturday to sort things out further.

Robert Morris remained in COVID protocol through last week, one of three Horizon League teams that ended up there simultaneously in the buildup to Christmas (as luck would have it, they appear consecutively in these power rankings), which washed out a scheduled get-right game against Division III Waynesburg on Monday. As far as anyone outside of Hoop Township is aware, the Colonials are still on track to host Cleveland State on Thursday, a less-than-ideal re-introduction into things.

Wright State achieved the ignominy of becoming the first Horizon League team to go into COVID protocol for a second time this season, forcing the cancellation of WSU’s final non-conference game, at No. 8 Indiana. Between those issues, the struggles on the court, a bit of roster turnover and, of course, questions about the school remaining in Division I, it’s been quite the season down in Fairborn.

The third Horizon League team in COVID protocol last week was UIC, which spiked the Flames’ scheduled game at Kansas State on Wednesday. Coincidentally, the City of Chicago announced a vaccination requirement on the same day as the ill-fated game, which requires proof of vaccination before entering any “restaurants, establishments, gyms and other indoor sporting and entertainment venues.” That obviously applies to anyone who wants to attend UIC basketball games going forward – and, presumably, anyone who wants to play in a basketball game at UIC.

Was Tuesday Detroit Mercy’s last best chance to win a game this season? That seems unlikely, as the Titans have played well enough to grab one somewhere else along the line. Nevertheless, it had to be a bit gutting to have a tantalizingly bad Valparaiso team come up on the schedule, then play a tight ballgame for three quarters before UDM’s latest fourth quarter fade. Morgan State transfer Sydney Searcy, who started her college career at Florida, has been fantastic lately after a slow start to the season with 15.4 points per game over her last five contests. She and the rest of the Titans head to Green Bay and Milwaukee this week.