Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats newsletter. We’re excited to announce a new partnership with Hudl. Hudl’s industry-leading tools – Sportscode, Instat, and Fastmodel – elevate the preparation, performance, and player development of WNBA and NCAA teams. We appreciate their support and look forward to working with them to help bring more insight about the women’s game to you.
You can find me on Bluesky and HHS on Bluesky, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Uche Izoje. Photo Credit: Syracuse University Athletics
The 15-team ACC Tournament field is set, even with two games remaining on the regular season schedule.
Here is the bracket if the tournament started today:
Before the tournament tips off, the various All-Conference awards will be handed out. New in the ACC this year, the Blue Ribbon Panel and the coaches will have separate sets of awardees.
With all due respect to the other first-year players in the league, just give ACC Rookie of the Year to Syracuse’s Uche Izoje now. Izoje has earned seven of the 16 Rookie of the Week honors. The next-closest, Stanford’s Lara Somfai, has four. Izoje is just one of four ACC freshmen since at least the 2009-10 season to average at least 12 points and eight rebounds while playing at least 20 games and 20 minutes per game.
Now, when it comes to Player of the Year, the question of what defines the “best” or “most valuable” player in a given league is not a new one.
The main dichotomy in such debates tends to be between the shiniest stat lines, regardless of team record, versus the best player on the best team, even if the individual stats jump off the page a little less.
The former argument hands the award to Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo for a second consecutive season. She has scored 25 points in 15 of her team’s games this season, more than double the number of the player with the second most, Virginia’s Kymora Johnson. Hidalgo also has 14 games with five or more steals, nearly triple that of any other player in the conference. Johnson outpaces Hidalgo for the most games with five or more assists, notching 21 to Hidalgo’s 15, with Virginia Tech’s Mackenzie Nelson between them with 18.
If you put those three stat marks together, Hidalgo has six games with at least those numbers, the only ACC player to have more than one such game. Overall, she’s on track to finish the season in the nation’s top 30 in points, steals, and assists per game. It’s a feat she accomplished during her freshman year; no other Division I player over the last five seasons has finished in the top 30 in these three categories.
That said, if the tournament started today, Hidalgo’s Notre Dame team would be the No. 9 seed. If the last two games of the season go as the HHS prediction model thinks, plus we give the Fighting Irish a bump via a win over Louisville in the Yum! Center, a game our predictor gives Notre Dame just a 27.1% chance of winning, they finish with the No. 6 seed. Good, but not amazing.
Duke has been the best team in the ACC all season. They are beating conference opponents by an average of 22 points per game, 5.4 points clear of second-place Louisville.
Leading the way is last season’s Rookie of the Year, Toby Fournier. When you look at her player page, there’s an awful lot of dark green, meaning she’s among the top 10% in the country in those categories. Plus, as her head coach Kara Lawson put it, in a not-so-subtle campaign stump speech: “I think winning matters. I think it does for awards and for player of the year and for all-conference, it matters. It matters that you impact winning. It matters that your team wins… I think you’d be hard-pressed to find more than [a number you can count] on one hand a forward that impacts winning more than Fournier.” Lawson isn’t wrong, though, even though, as she puts it, “ everybody likes their player.”
None. Lots of good performances, no epic standouts, plus a lot else going on at the moment.
Please note: SIDs and coaches submit the players they want considered, we don’t have free rein to pick anyone
Votes for the week of 2/16:
Marissa’s Player of the Week: Sophie Burrows, Syracuse
Marissa’s Rookie of the Week: Uche Izoje, Syracuse
Actual Player of the Week: Sophie Burrows, Syracuse
Actual Rookie of the Week: Theresa Hagans Jr., Pitt
Burrows averaged 18.5 points, 10 rebounds and 2.5 assists for the Orange last week, and recorded a career-high 16 rebounds in Syracuse’s big win over Clemson, but her most impressive stat over the course of the two games is her single turnover in the 57 minutes she played.
For Rookie of the Week, I once again looked past a bit of an all-time performance because of the “L” the player’s team took in the game, and I probably shouldn’t have. Hagans Jr.’s 33-point, six-steal, six-assist, three-rebound performance is just the 13th such performance since the 2009-10 season. Those 33 points are also the most by a conference first-year since Hannah Hidalgo did it in February of 2024.
Votes for the week of 2/23:
Marissa’s Player of the Week: Hannah Hidalgo, Notre Dame
Marissa’s Rookie of the Week: Uche Izoje, Syracuse
Actual Player of the Week: Hannah Hidalgo, Notre Dame
Actual Rookie of the Week: Uche Izoje, Syracuse
With all due respect to Kymora Johnson of Virginia and Demeara Hinds of Clemson, who led the way in their teams’ upsets of Louisville and Duke, respectively, there were two players that I thought had the best argument for Player of the Week: NC State’s Khamil Pierre and Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo.
Pierre had a huge game in what was essentially a must-win game for the Wolfpack if they wanted to hold on the last double-bye slot. She scored 25 points and pulled down 15 rebounds in NC State’s win over the team they’re competing with for that top-four seed, Syracuse, getting the best of presumptive Rookie of the Year Uche Izoje. That said, her somewhat underwhelming performance in the Wolfpack’s loss to Duke dropped her out of the top slot for player of the week.
Hidalgo’s Fighting Irish went 2-0 over the past week, although against weaker competition than Pierre’s Wolfpack. That said, Hidalgo’s dominating performances in both games earned her the nod, as she averaged 28.5 points, 7.0 steals, 7.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists over the course of the week, also only missing a triple-double against SMU by a single rebound. Her 11 steals against the Mustangs marked her fourth double-digit steals performance of the season, the most in the country.
The ACC Tournament starts in six days. Where on earth did the season go?!?!?!
That said, the last two games of the regular season have big implications for some teams in determining which seed line they land on. I don’t think Florida State can go to Cameron and beat Duke, and I don’t see Louisville losing to Georgia Tech, even with the game in Atlanta. But even if the Blue Devils lose to their rivals in Chapel Hill on Sunday and Notre Dame exacts revenge for its home loss to Louisville by beating the Cardinals in the KFC Yum! Center, Duke and Louisville will be the top two seeds in Duluth.
Assuming Duke beats Florida State at home, a game we have as a 27.1-point Blue Devil win, and NC State beats Wake Forest at home, a game we have as a 23.4-point Wolfpack win, the last game will determine who between the Seminoles and Demon Deacons will be No. 14 and who will be No. 15, as they face off in Winston-Salem to close the season.
Most of the other results cause similar fluctuations of just a seed line or two, but Notre Dame could land as high as fourth if it wins out (and gets some help). However, the Fighting Irish fall to 10th if they lose to Syracuse and at Louisville. Virginia, who just upset the Cardinals, could land anywhere from No. 3 to No. 8. I think the Cavaliers have the hardest closing schedule of any team in the conference, starting with the game they played on Sunday in Louisville. Their opponent tonight, North Carolina, could land anywhere No. 3 to No. 6, and the game at John Paul Jones Arena in a few hours goes further in determining where on that spectrum they land than the big rivalry match at Carmichael on Sunday.
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats newsletter. We’re excited to announce a new partnership with Hudl. Hudl’s industry-leading tools – Sportscode, Instat, and Fastmodel – elevate the preparation, performance, and player development of WNBA and NCAA teams. We appreciate their support and look forward to working with them to help bring more insight about the women’s game to you.
You can find me on Bluesky and HHS on Bluesky, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.