Belated Hello: Allie Havers (women's basketball)
Back in December, the Free Press reported that Allie Havers, a 6-foot-5 junior center from Mattawan (a small town west of Kalamazoo), had made a verbal commitment to Michigan. She joins Taylor Gleason as the second member of U-M's 2013 class.
Offers: No clue on which other schools might have offered her, but Havers reportedly had at least "interest" from MSU.
Rankings: In their rankings of this season's players regardless of class, the Free Press has Havers as the 18th-best player in the state, while the Detroit News ranked her #17. The News provided this brief scouting report:
A dominating inside threat, she scored 38 points and grabbed 23 rebounds in a postseason win over Benton Harbor last year. She is being recruited by numerous Division 1 teams, including Big Ten schools. She is also an outstanding volleyball player.
Havers also played on Mattawan's softball team last year, which won the Division 1 state championship, with Havers hitting a home run in the final.
The only other basketball ranking I could find for her was from the Midwest Recruiting Report, which has her as the #9 player in the Midwest in the 2013 class and #2 in Michigan. ("Midwest" in this case includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin.)
Stats: The brief Free Press item on her commitment had her stats for this season through Dec. 20: 14 points, 12 rebounds, and 8 blocked shots per game. A Kalamazoo Gazette article, in which she's called a "game-changer," the best player in her conference, and "easily one of the top two or three players on this side of the state," had her sophomore-year numbers (when she played alongside a four-year starter averaging 17 points per game):
Havers averaged 14.3 points, 4.5 rebounds, four blocks, just under two steals and shot 49 percent from the field as a sophomore for the Wildcats, not to mention a 7-for-16 clip from 3-point range.
"Prediction": By the time Havers arrives in Ann Arbor, Michigan's current starting center, Rachel Sheffer, and her main backup, Sam Arnold, will both have graduated. The only other post player on the current roster is 6-foot-4 Val Driscoll, who played sparingly last year and has done the same this season as well. So there's a good chance Havers will see action during her freshman season and figures to be Kevin Borseth's starting center in 2014-15.
Status of 2013 Class: As the roster stands now and with the four 2012 signees, Borseth could sign as many as five players in the 2013 class. So with Gleason and Havers onboard, three openings remain.
Related Note: The women's basketball team has a road game today against Penn State, which tips off at 6:00 pm and will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network. The team will again be on the Big Ten Network on Sunday, a home game against Minnesota, which starts at 12:00 noon.
January 12th, 2012 at 11:53 AM ^
How many stars does she have?
January 12th, 2012 at 12:24 PM ^
I'm glad someone is paying attention!
Welcome Allie!
Borseth has the team clicking and they are enjoyable to watch. Sometimes sloppy, but gritty like the men's. They don't give up.
January 12th, 2012 at 12:48 PM ^
Welcome to the good guys, Allie!
January 12th, 2012 at 12:50 PM ^
Welcome to Allie from a 1991 Mattawan grad! She is only third Mattawan athelete to play at Michigan that I know of (Ian Kurth, soccer 1992; Harold Schock, who attended Mattawan but graduated from Okemos, hockey 1992).
Anyone know of others?
January 12th, 2012 at 1:04 PM ^
To me 6'5" seems like a really tall women. Anyone have an idea how tall that is in women's bball terms? For instance what would the analogous man's height on the CBB floor be?
January 12th, 2012 at 1:30 PM ^
Online info on women's basketball seems to be pretty sparse. Mgoblue.com shows 14 women on Michigan's roster. 3 of them are 6'4", and the rest are 6"1" or shorter.
ESPN has rosters for WNBA teams, but only has information beyond just a name for 4-6 women per team. There area a few listed at 6'5" here and there, but most of them are shorter and my brief browsing did not find anyone taller.
January 12th, 2012 at 1:45 PM ^
6-foot-5 is definitely on the tall size for women's college basketball, but it's not that unusual. Krista Phillips was Michigan's tallest women's player ever at 6-foot-6. And the current roster has three players at 6-foot-4. If I had to guess, I'd say 6-foot-5 is about equivalent to 6-foot-11 on the men's side.
Baylor's Brittney Griner is 6-foot-8 and was the tallest player in the women's NCAA tournament last year, according to this article. The article said she was a foot taller than the height of the average player in the tournament (5-foot-8) and then claims she would be proportionally two inches taller than Yao Ming, which would be 7-foot-8. Not sure if I buy that.
Anyway, the article mentions several other players 6-foot-5 or taller.
January 12th, 2012 at 1:57 PM ^
5'8 seems short for the average height in the NCAA tournament. I wonder if that's skewed from a lot of girls who don't see the court much, or maybe from a lot of smaller schools who can't recruit a "complete package" player? The WBB players I run into are almost all my height (6'0) or taller, and they definitely don't play for UConn or Stanford or somewhere like that.
Completely unrelated note: nothing is more ridiculous than volleyball players heights. Those girls are regularly 6'2-6'3 and some go out in big heels on top of that, so they look like an average D1 MBB player, which is very, very tall.
January 12th, 2012 at 2:12 PM ^
Your points about bench players and players from smaller schools are exactly why the reasoning in that article seemed suspect to me. But nearly all guards in women's basketball--even among schools from major conferences--are under 6-foot. The backcourt players are typically 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-10. So the average height of the players at major schools who get the majority of minutes is probably around 5-foot-11 or 6-foot-0.