Marina has truly surprised me with her overall game development particularly on defense. She understands Muffet's concepts and works hard on them seemingly every play. I still worry about the slowness of her first (usually too long) step, but she's out-anticipating most of her opponents, and is the sneakiest off-the-ball nuisance we have. Plus, against most opponents, she seems to be able to give Lindsay some relief bringing the ball up.
I believed pre-season that we'd end the year with a starting line-up of Lindsay, Brianna, Kat, Boley, and Young, or Lindsay, Brianna, Boley or Kat, Young, and Patberg, in either case with Marina and Arike coming off the bench to shellshock the opponent with offense, despite the defense slackening. (I thought this because in the Women's game, HS All-Americans are supposed to come right in a be REALLY good practically day one.) But Marina's development has made me realize that I was wrong about that (even HAD Boley and Patberg been that ready --- Jackie Young DID show up game ready --- Marina has become a required 30 minute player.) So, standing ovation, Marina! Even when you're not blazing the nets.
Patberg: who has this much physical trouble? Talk about snake-bitten.
It's important to get Mychal back, but REALLY important to get Kat back. Erin does not seem to be able to replace her in the all-around game (yet) and Koko not really at all. If Kat can't play in the 20s of minutes, we might see "small ball" more (with Jackie and Arike at the forwards.) That's still a pretty good team (assuming that Arike's recent "attention-to-detail", as Kelly would say, continues to get better) but a really thug team will oust us. We really need Kat.