Women's Basketball: Cal Beats Georgia Tech Behind Do-Everything Gisella Maul
Surging Bears win 63-56, their fourth in their last five games
photo via calbears.com
Let’s talk about Gisella Maul, because I’ve been remiss in fully acknowledging what she’s done this season, and specifically what she has done in ACC play.
Maul came out of high school as a 4 star prospect, ranked as the #38 player by
ESPN, and won various Texas prep awards. Unsurprisingly, she committed to play for Texas and did carve out a small role at the back of Texas’ rotation as a true freshman. But, perhaps in search of more consistent playing time, Maul transferred to Cal.
However, in part due to injuries and in part due to Cal’s very veteran, established guard rotation, court time in her first year at Cal was even rarer than her freshman year at Texas.
When this season started, Maul’s role was to come off the bench as a secondary offensive option and bring solid defense and rebounding. She was mostly efficient in this role, but was only taking maybe 3 or 4 shots each game. A valuable player, but probably not the role you would expect for a former top 50 recruit in her 3rd season of college ball.
Then ACC play started, and Maul has arguably transformed herself into Cal’s best player, and she is the biggest reason why Cal is now on the fringes of NCAA bubble talk even though the Bears were barely above .500 as of mid-January. Across Cal’s last 5 games, she’s averaging 15.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 4.2 assists while shooting an insane 74% effective field goal percentage.
On the road against Georgia Tech, she displayed every part of her development as a player. She showed off her versatile scoring, putting up 17 points on 10 shots. She pulled down 13 rebounds, and it’s worth noting that she has very quietly become Cal’s leading rebounder on the year. She dished out 5 assists, and 30 of her 52 assists this year have come in ACC play, where she’s blossomed as an all-around play maker. The highlights of the game are full of her making plays all over the court, including the final three field goals Cal scored down the stretch to seal the game:
I know, as a fan, that progress is not linear. But I don’t know if I can recall a player in the past that had the switch turn on in such a sudden and stark fashion. Maul went from a player averaging 5.5 points/game prior to full-time ACC play, to a player who is averaging 13 ultra-efficient points/game in a power conference, against a schedule that has included four top 25 teams and a smattering of other schools expected to be playing in the NCAA tournament.
But really, Gisella Maul is just the most dramatic developmental story in a season defined by them.
You see development from Mjracle Sheppard, who has improved her finishing and tripled her assist rate after getting thrust unexpectedly into a ball-handling role after the injury to Puff Morris.
You see development from Lola Donez growing into a 3-and-D role and hitting maybe the biggest shot of the game to beat the 3rd quarter buzzer:
You see development from Lulu Twidale, learning how to make plays and find scoring opportunities with significantly more defensive attention as a junior.
You see development from Sakima Walker, even as a senior, given playing time and responsibility she never received at South Carolina and thriving.
Add it all up, and I think this has been the best coaching job Charmin Smith has done at Cal. Yes, even better than last year’s team. Because this year’s team was almost entirely rebuilt, with really only one returning significant contributor, and with a collection of mostly unproven talent that didn’t fit together in an obvious way. It took half a season to start to see the results of the development each player has made, but the result is a team making a legitimate late-season push for NCAA tournament consideration. They’re making that push in spite of two critical injuries that have left the team short handed and forced the coaching staff to play rotations very different than what they were likely planning to use earlier in the year.
On Sunday, Cal will play on the road against a Pitt team that is 1-10 in ACC play and has been larger non-competitive against quality competition. Cal has a 96% win probability per Torvik and is expected to cruise. Far be it from me to count chickens before they hatch, but the Bears are well positioned to get back to .500 in ACC play after a brutally difficult start to the conference schedule.
The next week it’s the most important homestand of the season, with fellow NCAA-bubble-teams Virginia and Virginia Tech coming to Berkeley. If the Bears win both games, they will accomplish two things: They will had two more Quad 2 wins to their resume, while simultaneously damaging the resumes of two teams Cal would love to pass in the eyes of the selection committee.
At no point this season did I expect Cal to be playing games with tournament stakes in February, but this team has continually surprised me for much of the season. I’m excited to see just how many surprises they have left in them.
During that brutal stretch of games losing to ranked/quad 1 opponents by thin thin margins, we had a tendency to tighten up and make exactly the wrong play - trying not to lose, instead of playing to win.
However since then, we’ve been able to close and finish - and yeah a lot has to do with no longer playing top 25 teams, and perhaps some has to do with the ball being in Lulu and Mjracle’s hands down the stretch instead of our super talented but still adjusting to NCAA play freshman ooint guard (Puff is going to be a killer I just know it but there’s still a learning curve)
I don’t know if I’d call Maul our best player quite yet but she’s been able to exploit the attention given to the two players on the top of the white board - Sakima and Twidele - and drive those open seams and hit those open threes because of the attention paid for Sakima and Lulu when they get the ball. But we’ll need all hands on deck to finish out the year
I knew she was a 4 star signed by Texas. Last season she looked like she was recovering from injury.
Prior to this season I watched Maul play overseas and saw she looked healthy. I thought she could have a breakthrough season and be a starter.
I posted my projection prior to the season (on another board, not sure if I posted it here). But early in the season she wasn’t starting and wasn’t being aggressive so I posted that my earlier prediction was wrong.
Then she started to show flashes, and I posted she was our MVP. I think she has now solidified that label and playing as well as anyone in the conference as a “do everything” player.
It’s a shame we lost some earlier close games because our record and NET could have been much better