Not A UConn Post: Swish Appeal Analyzes Stanford's PG Play

SBN's women's hoops blog Swish Appeal analyzes the play of Stanford PG Jeannette Pohlen, whose victory layup against Xavier surprised some fans, but maybe shouldn't have. Pohlen doesn't look like a world-beating shooter on the stat sheet, but her contributions to the Cardinal are crucial:

The simplest way to look at Pohlen's performance as a point guard is to note the 5 assists and 0 turnovers, which is quite easily identified as a solid assist-to-turnover ration. But the fact that she played 40 minutes at the point guard position and managed to finish with no turnovers - especially given Oklahoma's mix of defensive pressure using their athletic guards - is actually outstanding. The value of balancing assists and turnovers so well in big minutes is what John Hollingers pure point rating accounts for. In the Oklahoma game, Pohlen posted a pure point rating of 8.33, which is in the elite range of point guard performances for women's college basketball players. Sure, she didn't do much other than set up others and take care of the ball, but on a team like Stanford and a night on which Nneka Ogwumike had an other-worldly performance - she accounted for 50% of Stanford's overall production - Pohlen played her position very, very well. That's noteworthy for a person who is not necessarily a born point guard.

Read the rest at Swish Appeal.