2020 Recruiting



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Erin Hedman is a 2020 commit.

Wow - Nice looking Forward/Post Player. She committed to Lindsay Whalen on September 12, 2018.[video]http://www.maxpreps.com/athlete/erin-hedman/Rgw_Xah7EeaAdqA2nzwY6g/videos.htm?videoid=08e7e518-f38b-4549-ae3c-5c41b502385c[/video]

https://twitter.com/LarsVHedman?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetem bed%7Ctwterm%5E1107483295414185989&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forums.gopherhole.com%2Fb oards%2Fshowthread.php%3F81979-2020-Recruiting%2Fpage7
 





#2 Lauren Jensen announced today that she's going to Iowa. #4 Mackenzie Kramer is going to Lehigh. That leaves #3 Alyssa Ustby of Rochester Lourdes as the most realistic in-state prospect for 2020.
 

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This sounds like Bueckers is all but gone?

#2 Lauren Jensen announced today that she's going to Iowa. #4 Mackenzie Kramer is going to Lehigh. That leaves #3 Alyssa Ustby of Rochester Lourdes as the most realistic in-state prospect for 2020.
 

#2 Lauren Jensen announced today that she's going to Iowa. #4 Mackenzie Kramer is going to Lehigh. That leaves #3 Alyssa Ustby of Rochester Lourdes as the most realistic in-state prospect for 2020.

See ya. We need Ustby, she will be a great fit for the program. Go Gophers!
 

#2 Lauren Jensen announced today that she's going to Iowa. #4 Mackenzie Kramer is going to Lehigh. That leaves #3 Alyssa Ustby of Rochester Lourdes as the most realistic in-state prospect for 2020.

Alyssa looks similar in style to Erin Hedman.

Judging from Alyssa's comments, she is wide open with possibilities of going to a high academic institution like Notre Dame or Stanford. She can go anywhere.

If she decides to stay home with the Gophers that will be awesome. Even more awesome if both Alyssa and Paige Bueckers decide to stay home. But, that is looking dismal at the moment.

it may take five years for Whalen to reach Big Ten Championship levels. It all comes down to recruiting.
 

https://www.postbulletin.com/sports...cle_faddce90-4a56-11e9-abf4-8f67f40f4848.html

Post Bulletin on Alyssa Ustby:

Three days per week, Alyssa Ustby gets in the car with her father Todd Ustby and makes an 80-minute trip from Rochester to the Twin Cities for Alyssa’s AAU basketball practice. Alyssa plays for an elite team, the Minnesota Fury. Todd does the driving in order that his daughter — a serious student with a 3.9 GPA — can get her homework done.
...
Basketball is No. 1. This past high school season was her best yet at Lourdes, with the agile, fast and strong Ustby averaging 25 points, 11.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 3.4 steals, and leading the Eagles to a 20-8 record.

All of that production has caught the attention of big-time basketball recruiters, with waves of offers coming for Ustby.

That includes from the famed Stanford women’s program, as well as Minnesota, to name just two.
...
“Alyssa went into the (last) off-season knowing she needed to get better shooting the basketball in order to really help our team,” Lourdes coach Aaron Berg said. “She spent a lot of time in the gym over the summer and at the Rochester Athletic Club with her dad, working on her shot.”

That worked. Ustby knocked down 25 3-pointers this season, and twice had games of 40 or more points.

But Berg says it’s a mistake to just get caught up in her point totals. It’s the total athletic package that Ustby possesses that he says makes her so special.
 

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How good is Destiny Salary?

She doesnt even have a profile on espn or prospects nation, but she was offered by Mississippi state a couple years ago and shes the 2nd or 3rd ranked player in arkansas, obviously this a Carly Thibault recruit. I looked for some videos of her online and there isnt much but theres a couple of her grabbing the rim. This is the best video i could find.

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She doesnt even have a profile on espn or prospects nation, but she was offered by Mississippi state a couple years ago and shes the 2nd or 3rd ranked player in arkansas, obviously this a Carly Thibault recruit. I looked for some videos of her online and there isnt much but theres a couple of her grabbing the rim. This is the best video i could find.

There is this https://www.ncsasports.org/womens-b...onesboro/jonesboro-high-school/destiny-salary NCSA site. It claims she shoots 75%, which seems so high that one might think it’s fictitious, but on the other hand, from that video she seems to have a very nice shot form.

And this https://www.maxpreps.com/m/career/default.aspx?careerid=0dd5cdd1-ab29-e611-bef0-a0369f3c1b4c MaxPreps site that notes she is now 6’ tall.

This https://arkansasbasketballrankings.com/co2020girls Arkansas ranking puts her at #2 in Arkansas, right ahead of Sasha Goforth.

She was named to the Arkansas Super Team but the article http://www.jonesborosun.com/sports/# is paywalled.
 

I hope she is money in the bank for the Gophers.
 

Gophers in top ten. Still keeping her volleyball/basketball options open.

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Gophers in top ten. Still keeping her volleyball/basketball options open.

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Nice ball player, let’s make the top 5! Go Gophers
 

Recruiting news has been slowed down. Little anxious to see what players they are able to get in the 2020 class. I would hope that Ustby and Ware would be included in that but its hard to read who the main targets of 2020 are now for the staff. I would hope Ustby would be one of the main focuses but once again, recruiting news seemed to come to a halt. It was mentioned before that they are looking at grad transfers and JUCO but did anyone know of names or targets in those categories?

Side note, I am not a huge fan of the JUCO route, mostly because if you look at the gopher history with JUCO players, they have either become bench warmers or were always injured. Just my thought.
 

Recruiting news has been slowed down. Little anxious to see what players they are able to get in the 2020 class. I would hope that Ustby and Ware would be included in that but its hard to read who the main targets of 2020 are now for the staff. I would hope Ustby would be one of the main focuses but once again, recruiting news seemed to come to a halt. It was mentioned before that they are looking at grad transfers and JUCO but did anyone know of names or targets in those categories?

Side note, I am not a huge fan of the JUCO route, mostly because if you look at the gopher history with JUCO players, they have either become bench warmers or were always injured. Just my thought.

Garrido Perez was a JUCO transfer and I'd hate to think where the Gophers would have been in the Big Ten season without her. They also had some reasonable contributions a couple of years back from Karley Barnes. It's a matter of being realistic about what a player can contribute at the Big Ten level. Most JUCOs can't play Power 5. Those who can are usually academic non-qualifiers out of high school and that's a whole other can of worms they may not want to deal with.
As for 2020 targets, Ustby is the only one left in Minnesota and the Gophers are working that one really hard. Ware visited Nebraska this weekend for both volleyball and basketball, and it is not at all clear which direction she is going. She will be here in a couple of weeks to start playing AAU for North Tartan if you want to get a closer look. She is a beast.
 

Ah I did forget that Perez was a JUCO, so you are right she was a major key to the team this year. Barnes seemed to me at least very out of her element in big ten basketball. Althought maybe that has more to do with Stollings style being very anit-center/big players.
On Ware, so is it right to assume her top 10 are ones she has both volleyball/basketball offers for, so thinking of doing one of the 4 years at one sport and a 5th year at the other like Roysland did at Minnesota? Or are some offers just volleyball, some basketball and only some have offered both? Would be an even more daunting task if Whalen and staff had to recruit not only against basketball teams but also likely Hugh McCutcheon over at gopher volleyball for a player.

Im happy to hear they on on Ustby, not just because she is a minnesota kid but looks from what has been discussed about her, that she would be a great get in terms of talent wise.


Garrido Perez was a JUCO transfer and I'd hate to think where the Gophers would have been in the Big Ten season without her. They also had some reasonable contributions a couple of years back from Karley Barnes. It's a matter of being realistic about what a player can contribute at the Big Ten level. Most JUCOs can't play Power 5. Those who can are usually academic non-qualifiers out of high school and that's a whole other can of worms they may not want to deal with.
As for 2020 targets, Ustby is the only one left in Minnesota and the Gophers are working that one really hard. Ware visited Nebraska this weekend for both volleyball and basketball, and it is not at all clear which direction she is going. She will be here in a couple of weeks to start playing AAU for North Tartan if you want to get a closer look. She is a beast.
 

Ah I did forget that Perez was a JUCO, so you are right she was a major key to the team this year. Barnes seemed to me at least very out of her element in big ten basketball. Althought maybe that has more to do with Stollings style being very anit-center/big players.
On Ware, so is it right to assume her top 10 are ones she has both volleyball/basketball offers for, so thinking of doing one of the 4 years at one sport and a 5th year at the other like Roysland did at Minnesota? Or are some offers just volleyball, some basketball and only some have offered both? Would be an even more daunting task if Whalen and staff had to recruit not only against basketball teams but also likely Hugh McCutcheon over at gopher volleyball for a player.

Im happy to hear they on on Ustby, not just because she is a minnesota kid but looks from what has been discussed about her, that she would be a great get in terms of talent wise.

Others have made the point about Perez while I was composing essentially the same point. But I’ll post it anyway since I have the numbers to support it ...

It’s true that for the most part we haven’t gotten much productivity from JUCOs. However you never know, so no sense shutting off that source of talent.

For instance we hit the jackpot with Irene Garrido Perez who hit 27 threes for us this year, shooting .409 from deep and leading the team in three-point percentage for the season. That’s three thousandths less than Carlie Wagner’s three percentage from last year (.412) but beat Rachel Banham’s Senior three percentage of .390 (and Jo Hedstrom’s .378 and Shayne Mullaney’s .356).

Moreover, Irene’s Big-Ten trey percentage of .463 beat Carlie’s Senior in-conference trey percentage of .421 as well as Rachel‘s Senior in-conference trey percentage of .444.

It’s hard to tell whether Irene’s better shooting toward the end of this season (and her career) came from shooting instruction by the coaches, or the culmination of a long effort by her to improve her shot, or simply improved confidence due to more playing time, or all of the above. Or maybe she was that good all along but just was ignored by Marlene (due to riches of other shooters) and ignored by Lindsay for the non-conference season (since cupcakes are easy to beat, even with only Destiny making threes).

In any event, we would have lost even more games this year without Irene’s 27 triples. We shouldn’t reject a potential future shooting hero just because she started out at the JUCO level.
 

It’s hard to tell whether Irene’s better shooting toward the end of this season (and her career) came from shooting instruction by the coaches, or the culmination of a long effort by her to improve her shot, or simply improved confidence due to more playing time, or all of the above. Or maybe she was that good all along but just was ignored by Marlene (due to riches of other shooters) and ignored by Lindsay for the non-conference season (since cupcakes are easy to beat, even with only Destiny making threes).

The answer is, "she was that good all along". Perez shot .488 percent from three in her sophomore season at Wyoming Community College. It was the reason she was recruited.
 




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