Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

Julia Chadwick won the OUA’s Defensive Player of the Year award for the 2023-2024 Women’s Basketball season, and it’s about time. As the Queen’s Gaels have been rising to the level of national contenders where they’re at now, Julia Chadwick has been playing at a MVP level, and aside from All-Star nods, hasn’t gotten the recognition she deserves for it.

Let’s go back to 2021, the shortened season after the COVID break. Julia, in her second year playing for the Gaels, led the team in points per game and was second in rebounds to Sophie De Goede. Julia averaged a double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds per game shooting 46 per cent from the field with 35 blocks and 42 steals, and you could see the evolution of her awareness inside of where everyone else was on the floor, and as the following two seasons went on, it only got better.

Julia has averaged a double-double three seasons in a row for the Gaels, and each year she’s made it look easier and easier. There are few in the OUA who can be as calculated and efficient, as frequently as Julia, and her game shows it.

Offensively, Julia plays out of the post a lot, and when she catches on the block, there are few i’ve seen who are as efficient with their feet making moves to get to the rim and around defenders. There are no wasted movements and the constant awareness of where she is on the floor and where everyone else will be allows her to be not only an efficient scorer but an effective facilitator dishing back out to the Gaels players on the perimeter.

Defensively, Julia uses her efficient movement, and her length, to control the glass and be a constant rim presence for her team to play around. With Julia able to go one on one with many posts in the league, she gives the Gaels a foundation to play off on defence, and her ability to block shots creates transition opportunities for the speed and counterattack Queen’s has always played with.

Whether it’s going bucket for bucket and board for board in their matchups against the Ravens, or going up against the presence teams like Waterloo, Guelph or Brock have inside the paint, you look at each matchup the Gaels had this season and in season’s prior and it’s hard to locate one where you wouldn’t have confidence in Julia going up against the player she’s matched with.

If the 43 point and 27 rebound performance against York on January 13th 2024 caught your eye to Julia Chadwick, all you have to do is go back to the previous two years she’s averaged a double-double, to see that it isn’t new. The decisive movement, the moves she’s drilled into routine offensively, the awareness of positioning defensively, she’s been showing the level of talent that has gotten her the Defensive Player of the Year award for years now, and it’s about time people are realizing what the OUA has in it’s perennial playoff and final contender.