PGH Top 250 Expo: Top Defenders

I took longer than I’d like to admit re-watching as many games as I could to make this list in particular as accurate as possible. Even after all the re-watching, I’m at the highest level of confidence I can have with the names I came up with. In the issue of fairness, I did tend to pay more attention to perimeter defense because a lot of these teams collapsed on drives, so it was hard to judge people defending in the paint. This list is in no particular order. <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="156076" first="Braelyn" last="Torres"]-5’6 G-’23-Kettle Moraine: </strong>This one was no surprise, in my opinion, one of the best defensive players in the state was great in this setting. Torres showed her ability to contain drives on her own, and funnel players toward areas where she knows she has help. In one particular game, she thrived in the chaos of defending in a full-court zone. She was flying around and making play after play. She just looked like a player who had almost three steals a game last season out there, leaving no doubt about how good she is. <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="329605" first="Madilyn" last="Reott"]-5’7 G-’24-Stoughton: </strong>Reott was one of the most intense players in Appleton. Her defense is really fun to watch because she plays extremely aggressive, but calculated. She plays basically half of a pass away off the ball. If you try a skip pass to her assignment just run a back on defense because it was a turnover the second that pass would be attempted. On the ball, she isn’t letting people breathe. She also will float to soft double at the free-throw line out of the ball handlers vision and doing that she got herself a few easy blocks. With the rules where there were subs every four minutes, you could tell she was just chomping at the bit to play, at the end of her second game she wouldn’t even sit down. <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="329570" first="Reese" last="Rynberg"]-5’11 F-’23-Westosha Central: </strong>This was the one player who I felt I could fairly judge in the paint. She had multiple blocks when I saw her in one half, guarding her assignment basically on an island. She has excellent timing for a shot-blocker. Her numbers on Wissports I believe don’t highlight how good she is at blocking shots, it says she was at 1.5 a game. I believe she’s probably in the two-three range when she’s at her best. Going into her junior season it will be interesting to see how she fairs this coming season. <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="262983" first="Mayah" last="Holzhueter"] -5’11 F-’22-Cambridge: </strong>Holzhueter didn’t necessarily block a ton of shots but she was extremely positive defensively. What she did extremely well was contest shots in the paint and locate the miss clearing the lines defensively. I was a big fan of what she did in that sense. Even though Holzhueter may not always rack up the counting stats of some players she is a great team defender. She’s also very mobile and I wish her team switched more because she may be able to defend on the perimeter a little bit, I think she can but that is mostly speculation when talking solely of the Top 250 Expo.