Koval and the coming frontcourt

I believe Kate Koval will be better than a lot of people think. I just watched her highlight reel from this season, and while you don't see any of the bad stuff in these reels, I was impressed with how well she played against big-time competition like UConn, Texas, South Carolina, USC, Duke, and TCU. She was blocking shots, grabbing rebounds, and scoring inside against accomplished bigs like Oldacre of Texas, Sarah Strong of UConn, Iriafen of USC, etc. She looked very active and aggressive, fighting for position offensively and defensively. No fear. She looked like she enjoyed contact and loved to block shots. She also showed very good low post moves and a sweet mid-range shot. I wonder why she didn't get more minutes down the stretch for Notre Dame.

Judging from highlights, Amaya Joyner is a brawler who'll win plenty of physical matchups down low. She's strong and seems to love the contact and rebounding. It seems like she might be our version of Draymond Green down low. She can handle the ball well, and both she and Koval can run the floor well for their size.

Grace Knox, on the other hand, is on a whole different level both athletically and skill-wise. She's also very aggressive. I expect Knox to be in the starting lineup by the end of the season, if not earlier.

That gives LSU three aggressive frontcourt players already, definitely an upgrade from last season when they had only one, Morrow. I wouldn't call Smith, Wolfenbarger, Del Rosario, or Bartlett aggressive. None seemed like they really wanted to mix it up down low. Smith would do it because she had to- not because she wanted to. I saw Smith as more of a skill player down low- that was her game. Still she's a big loss because she's a good player who would give her best, especially against stronger and larger players. Due to injury, we never even saw her reach her top potential that she was flashing before she got hurt.

The downside is that with frontcourt players who like to mix it up and block shots like the three above, there's always a good possibility of foul trouble. This is huge when you consider that this coming year South Carolina, Texas, UConn, and UCLA will all have a ton of quality physical depth down low. I see Joyner as the most likely to get into foul trouble because she will now be facing better athletes in the SEC.

So LSU needs at least one more competitive post player, albeit for a few minutes per game, in order to "hold serve" when one of the above is in foul trouble so that LSU's unmatched perimeter game (best in the country starters and bench) can continue to assert itself. They need four post players to practice, anyway. A fifth would be good for injury purposes.

I realize that pretty much everyone already has this same opinion, but I was encouraged by watching the highlights of the transfers and newcomers.