Could this be advance notice the staff is not particularly confident of the class of 26 wing recruits?
WBB Transfer Portal Targets 2025-2026 (Updated 5/3/25)
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Could this be an indicator the staff is not confident in landing desired class of 26 wing recruits?
Bringing in any of the '26 targets Jan is hoping to land could all trigger players to transfer as well.
I'll take a stab it this as it turned my head a 180 as well when I first started building my eval database and looking at the metrics to include in it.
There are some intense calcs that go into these stats as you'll see in the linked articles below. I'm sure you'll get a call from Dean Oliver if he catches wind of your post.
Anyways, you have to shift your mind on what the title of the category seems to state vs what it really calcs.I'll give you my take on the DRtg. It's heavily weighted on defensive rebounds. The higher the defensive rebounds the better chance you have a lower (which is better) the DRtg. It doesn't always follow in a linear fashion. There are outliers. But it does have a major bearing on it. This is why, imho, why CC and Syd rate better than Gabbie on this stat. Think taller players will have the advantage as well. This is why I don't have an individual metric on defensive rebounds in my eval database. It would seem somewhat redundant as I use this composite DRtg instead.
DRtg = "The core of the Defensive Rating calculation is the concept of the individual Defensive Stop. Stops take into account the instances of a player ending an opposing possession that are tracked in the boxscore (blocks, steals, and defensive rebounds), in addition to an estimate for the number of forced turnovers and forced misses by the player which aren't captured by steals and blocks."
As you can read here, defensive rebounds are going to be the #1 way opponent's possessions end or stop and why it's heavily weighted that way. Gabbie is not a big rebounder.
Another quote states, "A corollary to this is that excellent perimeter defenders who don't steal the ball a lot — for instance, Joe Dumars or Doug Christie — are underrated defensively by DRtg, and are prone to look only as good as their team's overall defense performs."
This is where Gabbie fits in with these "perimeter defenders" and they will look underrated for this stat unless they can get more possession ending stops (mainly individual rebounds, steals and blocks). This is why I said at the beginning you need to shift your mind from what the category seems to state vs what it really calcs. I remember this stat by looking at the 1st two letters of this DRtg stat being "DR" = Defensive Rebounds as its main driver of ending possessions and not defense in a general sense.
Now regarding Gabbie's defense and where it does show up is the the DBPM column of the 'Advanced' section. Go down to the 'Appearances on Leaderboards, Awards, and Honors' section and it shows the last 3 years played she was in the top 18 of the B1G or better. Would imagine steals helped to boost her for that stat since defensive rebounds were not a big part of her game.
Check out the DRtg (in 100 Possessions section) in each of the years on 6 of our players we're familiar with below. The DRtg for years they played closely follows the the ups and downs of defensive rebounds.
Caitlin Clark College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Caitlin Clark - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
www.sports-reference.com
Sydney Affolter College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Sydney Affolter - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
www.sports-reference.com
Gabbie Marshall College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Gabbie Marshall - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
www.sports-reference.com
Kylie Feuerbach College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Kylie Feuerbach - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
www.sports-reference.com
Ava Heiden College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Ava Heiden - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
www.sports-reference.com
Addison O'Grady College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Addison O'Grady - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
www.sports-reference.com
Afaict, think the other thing to keep in mind here is this was formulated for NBA players first and then applied to college basketball as well.
Here's a few resources on Defensive Ratings.
Calculating Individual Offensive and Defensive Ratings
Calculating Individual Offensive and Defensive Ratings | Basketball-Reference.com
How to calculate individual offensive and defensive ratings
www.basketball-reference.com
About Box Plus/Minus (BPM)
About Box Plus/Minus (BPM) | Basketball-Reference.com
About Box/Plus Minus (BPM)
www.basketball-reference.com
NBA Win Shares
NBA Win Shares | Basketball-Reference.com
Description of Basketball Win Shares
www.basketball-reference.com
About Dean Oliver the Author of Basketball on Paper
About the Author
Using Box-Scores to Determine a Position’s Contribution to Winning Basketball Games
"Some trends that dont receive as much attention is that both guard positions need to focus on defensive rebounding and a point guard should help with offensive rebounding as well."
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Sorry for the late response on this. I was hoping something would pop in my head on how to go about responding on her but nothing came into my head so I decided to use a format from a prior response.
Per 100 Poss
| Pts | ORbs | DRbs | Asts | Stls | Blks | TOVs | 2% | 3% | FG% | FT% | ORtg | DRtg | NRtg | |
| Ndjakalenga | 18.0 | 4.3 | 5.4 | 3.0 | 2.3 | 1.8 | 4.9 | 50.0% | 5.6% | 45.6% | 76.8% | 97.5 | 81.8 | 15.7 |
| Teagan | 20.2 | 2.7 | 10.6 | 3.1 | 2.3 | 1.7 | 6.2 | 51.3% | 22.8% | 34.4% | 78.3% | 83.1 | 87.5 | -4.4 |
Advanced
| PER | WS | WS/40 | OBPM | DBPM | BPM | |
| Emely | 15.6 | 2.6 | 0.162 | 3.8 | 5.5 | 9.3 |
| Teagan | 12.0 | 0.5 | 0.081 | -1.9 | 3.2 | 1.3 |
Glossary | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Glossary of statistics used on Sports Reference College Basketball
www.sports-reference.com
Have Ndjakalenga rated at #80 and Teagan at #115 now.
Is Ndjakalenga and upgrade over Teagan right now? I would say yes. She has more green while Teagan has more red. However, believe there's a very big fit problem that turns it into a no in our case. Don't think she makes a good candidate for a stretch 3/4. Her 3% is basically non-existent (1 of 18). I don't see that working as Hannah is already better than that and she wouldn't even need to work on it much to crush Ndjakalenga. Even Teagan would crush her in 3% I think this coming year.
Ndjakalenga with her stats would be looking for more playing time and even starting so I don't see her taking Hanna's starting spot and I'd rather keep Teagan as the main backup one more year to see if she can start to crank it up from downtown. Plus, Teagan has no problem mixing it for defensive rebounds and her overall defense is fine.
Laila Phelia is in the portal from the same team as Ndjakalenga but she suffers from the very same 3% problem (3 of 19). They're almost mirror images of each other except Phelia's stats are better in almost every category over Ndjakalenga. The one reason I like Phelia is her 2% is at 61% (14 of 23) which is pretty good for a 6'0" guard but she also has the same fit problem for us. Think both are looking for starting roles and they'll most likely get pretty nice paydays for it.
Think we run into the same problem with Ndjakalenga:
1) wanting too much money
2) the spot/fit doesn't have the dual flexibility desired
Sorry for the late response on this. I was hoping something would pop in my head on how to go about responding on her but nothing came into my head so I decided to use a format from a prior response.
Per 100 Poss
Pts ORbs DRbs Asts Stls Blks TOVs 2% 3% FG% FT% ORtg DRtg NRtg Ndjakalenga Teagan
Advanced
PER WS WS/40 OBPM DBPM BPM Emely Teagan Glossary | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Glossary of statistics used on Sports Reference College Basketball
Have Ndjakalenga rated at #80 and Teagan at #115 now.
Is Ndjakalenga and upgrade over Teagan right now? I would say yes. She has more green while Teagan has more red. However, believe there's a very big fit problem that turns it into a no in our case. Don't think she makes a good candidate for a stretch 3/4. Her 3% is basically non-existent (1 of 18). I don't see that working as Hannah is already better than that and she wouldn't even need to work on it much to crush Ndjakalenga. Even Teagan would crush her in 3% I think this coming year.
Ndjakalenga with her stats would be looking for more playing time and even starting so I don't see her taking Hanna's starting spot and I'd rather keep Teagan as the main backup one more year to see if she can start to crank it up from downtown. Plus, Teagan has no problem mixing it for defensive rebounds and her overall defense is fine.
Laila Phelia is in the portal from the same team as Ndjakalenga but she suffers from the very same 3% problem (3 of 19). They're almost mirror images of each other except Phelia's stats are better in almost every category over Ndjakalenga. The one reason I like Phelia is her 2% is at 61% (14 of 23) which is pretty good for a 6'0" guard but she also has the same fit problem for us. Think both are looking for starting roles and they'll most likely get pretty nice paydays for it.
Think we run into the same problem with Ndjakalenga:
1) wanting too much money
2) the spot/fit doesn't have the dual flexibility desired
Dude, these admins should just hire you. They're not doing this kind of work, TBH.
I don't disagree with anything you're saying. My overall point is that people (generally) are using these stats to evaluate player defense, but the stats really aren't meant to do that. At least in the way people are using them. Most people don't include rebounding when they talk about whether a player is a good defender. Rebounding gets its own separate category. It's why most people say Clark isn't a great defender despite ranking well in steals, blocks, and defensive rebounds in college and the W.I'll take a stab it this as it turned my head a 180 as well when I first started building my eval database and looking at the metrics to include in it.
There are some intense calcs that go into these stats as you'll see in the linked articles below. I'm sure you'll get a call from Dean Oliver if he catches wind of your post.
I'll give you my take on the DRtg. It's heavily weighted on defensive rebounds. The higher the defensive rebounds the better chance you have a lower (which is better) the DRtg. It doesn't always follow in a linear fashion. There are outliers. But it does have a major bearing on it. This is why, imho, why CC and Syd rate better than Gabbie on this stat. Think taller players will have the advantage as well. This is why I don't have an individual metric on defensive rebounds in my eval database. It would seem somewhat redundant as I use this composite DRtg instead.
DRtg = "The core of the Defensive Rating calculation is the concept of the individual Defensive Stop. Stops take into account the instances of a player ending an opposing possession that are tracked in the boxscore (blocks, steals, and defensive rebounds), in addition to an estimate for the number of forced turnovers and forced misses by the player which aren't captured by steals and blocks."
As you can read here, defensive rebounds are going to be the #1 way opponent's possessions end or stop and why it's heavily weighted that way. Gabbie is not a big rebounder.
Another quote states, "A corollary to this is that excellent perimeter defenders who don't steal the ball a lot — for instance, Joe Dumars or Doug Christie — are underrated defensively by DRtg, and are prone to look only as good as their team's overall defense performs."
This is where Gabbie fits in with these "perimeter defenders" and they will look underrated for this stat unless they can get more possession ending stops (mainly individual rebounds, steals and blocks). This is why I said at the beginning you need to shift your mind from what the category seems to state vs what it really calcs. I remember this stat by looking at the 1st two letters of this DRtg stat being "DR" = Defensive Rebounds as its main driver of ending possessions and not defense in a general sense.
Now regarding Gabbie's defense and where it does show up is the the DBPM column of the 'Advanced' section. Go down to the 'Appearances on Leaderboards, Awards, and Honors' section and it shows the last 3 years played she was in the top 18 of the B1G or better. Would imagine steals helped to boost her for that stat since defensive rebounds were not a big part of her game.
Check out the DRtg (in 100 Possessions section) in each of the years on 6 of our players we're familiar with below. The DRtg for years they played closely follows the the ups and downs of defensive rebounds.
Caitlin Clark College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Caitlin Clark - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
Sydney Affolter College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Sydney Affolter - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
Gabbie Marshall College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Gabbie Marshall - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
Kylie Feuerbach College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Kylie Feuerbach - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
Ava Heiden College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Ava Heiden - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
Addison O'Grady College Stats | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com
Addison O'Grady - Stats, Game Logs, Splits, and much more
Afaict, think the other thing to keep in mind here is this was formulated for NBA players first and then applied to college basketball as well.
Here's a few resources on Defensive Ratings.
Calculating Individual Offensive and Defensive Ratings
Calculating Individual Offensive and Defensive Ratings | Basketball-Reference.com
How to calculate individual offensive and defensive ratings
About Box Plus/Minus (BPM)
About Box Plus/Minus (BPM) | Basketball-Reference.com
About Box/Plus Minus (BPM)
NBA Win Shares
NBA Win Shares | Basketball-Reference.com
Description of Basketball Win Shares
About Dean Oliver the Author of Basketball on Paper
About the Author
www.basketballonpaper.com
Using Box-Scores to Determine a Position’s Contribution to Winning Basketball Games
"Some trends that dont receive as much attention is that both guard positions need to focus on defensive rebounding and a point guard should help with offensive rebounding as well."
Jan clearly believes we are lacking in coverage at the 3-4 . She knows much better than any of us what we can expect of our players next year. If she thinks we need an addition there, I believe her. If she was content to simply be a bubble team again she might not be as concerned, but she wants to be as competitive as possible. We thought this year was rough...next year will likely be even bumpier (though they can still be very good)...I hope she gets the help she is looking for. If she thinks we need it, I believe we need it.
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In this age of basically unrestricted one year free agents for all players. How can anyone really forward plan recruiting for needs when it’s year to year
You are looking for players on winning teams. Wright fit that requirement as a freshman. Northwestern has been curb stomped a lot. Faley, no thanks.
Huh? Daley's game almost beat the Clark team. She's good and experienced. Iowa may or may not have been interested, but she's definitely a player.
Decided to post this here as well coz it has portal activity remaining in point #3.
Jan Jensen on Hawk Central 4/30/25
Points that stood out to me:
1) Playing faster by putting Hannah back at the 5 changed the season for the better which we already know.
2) Chit-Chat at 1, Deal at 2 although they can interchange which still allows Harpring to fit in yet. That's what I though by watching Chit-Chat's games that she was also an off-guard at times while Tonie Morgan was PG for GA Tech this past season. Preferably 3 guards with PG experience to interchange within the R&R offense is better.
3) Looking for a scoring forward (expect stretch 3/4 here) yet and setting a visit. She has a couple in mind for it.
4) Stremlow still figures to be very important as a vocal leader and jack of all trades.
5) Silence on what's going on with the vacant assistant coach position by Tania Davis.
6) '26 class of recruits waiting yet on House Settlement Rev Share rules to take better shape before deciding a landing spot.
www.iheart.com
Citizenhawk has more details on it posted in the thread below.
Franisdaman has the original Jan Jensen podcast (4/30/25) thread here:
iowa.forums.rivals.com
Jan Jensen on Hawk Central 4/30/25
Points that stood out to me:
1) Playing faster by putting Hannah back at the 5 changed the season for the better which we already know.
2) Chit-Chat at 1, Deal at 2 although they can interchange which still allows Harpring to fit in yet. That's what I though by watching Chit-Chat's games that she was also an off-guard at times while Tonie Morgan was PG for GA Tech this past season. Preferably 3 guards with PG experience to interchange within the R&R offense is better.
3) Looking for a scoring forward (expect stretch 3/4 here) yet and setting a visit. She has a couple in mind for it.
4) Stremlow still figures to be very important as a vocal leader and jack of all trades.
5) Silence on what's going on with the vacant assistant coach position by Tania Davis.
6) '26 class of recruits waiting yet on House Settlement Rev Share rules to take better shape before deciding a landing spot.
Hawk Central Podcast | iHeart
The Hawk Central Podcast from The Des Moines Register and 1460 KXnO
Citizenhawk has more details on it posted in the thread below.
Franisdaman has the original Jan Jensen podcast (4/30/25) thread here:
Chad Leistikow interviews Jan Jensen as she exits Year 1 on the job & looks ahead to Year 2 & beyond
Here's the link to listen. Click on the PLAY button next to the April 30 podcast. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/487-hawk-central-podcast-28237015/
iowa.forums.rivals.com
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Some of you guys are so much better than beat writers in the media. Thanks for posting!
There are lots of talk by different coaches and reporters, etc. about the word culture and my opinion is that is how you build a team and keep players the best you can. That's what Lisa has always done, and it seems to me that is what Jan is doing and trying to do. For me, keeping players here for 4 years and watching them grow and develop is the most important thing about the Iowa WBB team and my interest in watching year after year.
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UConn would say otherwise having just signed Serah Williams.
How dare you come back to this topic when you still haven't spilled the beans! Spill it! What do you know space man?!
Interviewer in the chitchat interview says JJ looking for one more or maybe two more players. Interesting. And we know it has to be the right one or there won’t be one. I hope we get one more at least at forward spot
The portal has totally changed the landscape particularly in the pursuit of quality depth.
I think you're probably correct, for Kate Harpring anyway. What was Iowa, now seems to be North Carolina. Damn, I'm guessing a swing and miss again. Knowing how it stings for us, it must be gut wrenching for the coaches.
🤔 any names some of you might wanna throw out there who she could be vetting.
Easy now. You need more than that.
It just means you can't really count on anything, but again, it mostly means that the '25-'26 season matters. You want to compete this year regardless of what you may or may not have next year. It all changes, and could change again. It's a yearly roster that has to be adjusted and maintained.
Have no idea if vetting besides Emely Rodriguez, but the best I have in my database at 6'0"+.
I'll throw out an easy #1 but believe it would be a very long shot with team construction and playing time.
1) Just found Allie Kubek of Maryland (1 yr left) yesterday and entered her in my database. She rates really high and the highest forward remaining with somewhat of a 3pt shot (32.1%).
Maryland reddit fans not happy about it.
"I don't see why she'd push her out. Unlike Merkle, she's a big that can stretch defenses from the three-point line.
This one hurts. She's truly underrated nationwide. Someone's getting a great player."
However, think too much money for playing time she'd want.
For more comments on Kubek cut and paste to google:
r/NCAAW "Allie Kubek to hit the portal"
2) Georgia Woolley (Syracuse) 34.1% (3pt)
3) Emely Rodriguez (UCF) as we already know with 33.3% (3pt).
4) Courtney Dahlquist (Campbell) has a 37.% 3pt% but a long shot as she didn't play well against all three P5 teams.
Non-3ptrs (longer shots that can't stretch the floor so I doubt they're even considered):
Brooklyn Meyer (S. Dakota St)
Laila Phelia (Texas)
Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda (Texas)
Hopefully others can throw out some new names and I can see how they rate.
The recruiting or development at the 4 seems to be at the forefront for the 25-26 team now. I'm sure JJ would prefer the internal options of HS or TM or a combination of them Obviously she is not convinced this will work or an unexpected injury could endanger a promising season.
Woolley would be great but has played 4 complete seasons. Only way she'd be available is if NCAA starts granting everyone 5 seasons to play.
Yeah, it looks that way. Figured she had a shorten season like most of these 4 year portal entries have. Didn't realize you could enter the portal without eligibility. Haven't paid much attention to the men's side or I'd probably caught this. Guess if you don't enter before it closes, you're SOL if they do extend it to 5 years?
Maybe I'm off here but this brings up an interesting possibility to make extra money either way for these outgoing players with no eligibility. Imagine there'a a sharp attorney or two drumming up option money or right of first refusal so they make money regardless if the 5th year is granted or not. I'm not versed enough in the types of contract offers but basic concepts of them seem like they "might" work here as well.
Maybe that's why Jan said she's looking at a couple players? Give her a $5k option now to exercise at say $250k (likely too low for her but this is an example) if the 5 year extension is granted and also look for scoring forward with eligibility left. I'm just making up an unlikely situation here that Jan would entertain but we're living uncharted territory in this new Rev Share era.
Believe the more likely scenario is Jan has two scoring forwards with eligibility to fill one spot and is telling them the first to sign gets it.
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