Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

Hear me out, we’re going on a journey. The Laurier women’s basketball team has done a better job than most, in my opinion, at recruiting what they’re losing, so they’re not really losing it, they’re just developing it again. They find players that develop into having the abilities of the ones that came before them, and the result of that is a system and a style that has rarely shifted.

You go back to 2016 and 2017, two players getting the most minutes and two of the most field goal attempts (1st and 3rd) were Rachel Woodburn and Nicole Morrison. You shift to 2018 and the players getting the most minutes and the first and third most field goal attempts were Rachel Woodburn and Brianna Iannazzo. 2019 Iannazzo and Jill Condron led the team in minutes and field goal attempts. 2021 Cassidy Hirtle and Miranda Campbell led the team with the most field goal attempts with Hirtle leading in minutes by a significant margin. Now all the way to 2023 and the two leaders of the team are Hirtle and Campbell.

Why I bring this up is to explain why the names and faces on the Laurier women’s basketball team has constantly shifted, the emphasis on the system has remained the same. If you look at all of the names i’ve mentioned you’ll notice they are all guards, specifically Iannazzo and Hirtle are point guards, which kicks off our discussion of Laurier’s system.

Laurier has been very guard centric for several years. The way they execute on offence uses a lot of ball screens, and relies on a pair of guards to both play heavy minutes and shoulder a lot of the scoring. Iannazzo and Condron in 2018 both averaged 12 points per game, the two leading scorers on the team ahead of Woodburn with 9 points per game.

The Golden Hawks offence during the Iannazzo and Condron years was predicated on the ability for Iannazzo and Condron to make plays with the ball and create chances off the dribble. They had two shifty guards who handled the ball a lot and got to the paint creating shots for others on the team.

Now in 2023, Cassidy Hirtle has taken over the role of Iannazzo as the shifty guard who creates opportunities for others on the team while Campbell takes her opportunities and is the second hand of the Golden Hawks that puts up a volume of shots, much like Condron.

If you’d like to look inside the paint, look at Tayania Siwek-Smith and Hunter Johns averaging roughly the same amount of rebounds as Kathryn White and Janet Enge, providing that relief inside that was bridged by Madelyn White in 2021 when Tayania and Hunter were gone and Kathryn hadn’t arrived yet.

Whether it’s Morrison, Iannazzo or Hirtle, Laurier has found a way to replace the players while executing the same style of play with very little shift. That ability to find the players for the style so correctly and getting the same if not more out of the new as you did with the old, is a testament to a culture set in place for a long period of time, and an identity that is engrained in everyone who puts on that jersey.