I hope her leadership will continue on. Great season for her, and she deserves this award.

Banham had a very good season, and I am happy to see her get this deserved honor. But the article is misleading: the team's improvement was only from 6-10 last year to 7-9 this year, Banham did not lead the conference in scoring (Tyler Hill of OSU had more conference points and PPG), and Banham's shooting stats in conference games this year were worse than last year (espcially for 3FG%). Too much Borton spin, I suspect.

I'm not a huge fan of women's college basketball, but I didn't have to watch the Gophs long to know how special Banham is. A travesty the media picked her second team. Pretty much proves that none of them bother to watch the games they write about. No way there are five better players in this league or ones that were asked to do more for their team.

jsimple, this league is more than shooting. While Banham has had a decent two season, she needs to take more "quality shots" to shoot a higher percentage and play some defense. An all around game makes them great.

deepsix: she handles the ball better than anyone on the team, dishes out assists and is one of their better re-bounders. Plus she plays so many minutes I'm surprised she has the energy to even get a shot off. It's humanly impossible to give maximum effort on both ends of the floor for virtually the entire game. Have to pick your spots. Guarantee her shooting % would be much higher on a more talented team where she wasn't expected do everything. Not a coach in the conference who wouldn't want her.

Banham had an excellent sophomore season and fully deserves this honor. Banham is a great player and her stats are similar in a number of areas to Lindsay Whalen's during her sophomore campaign, but regionguy and deepsix are correct in observing that her shooting percentage is not as good as it should be for an elite player (which is what she is becoming). Whalen shot about 60% in her sophomore year while Rachael is shooting about 50% (though the three point percentage is almost identical to Whalen's during her sophomore year). She still has had turnovers in critical situations and will press occasionally and chose some very poor shots. This being said, she has also proven to be the kind of player that makes "elite" plays against top competition (she picked off three Dara Taylor passes face up and drove for scores to keep the Gophers in control during the Penn State game). Consistency, better shot selection and improved defense is what will put her the Wade Trophy territory. To the team's credit, however, the final record of 7-9 is not reflective of the strength of this years B1G schedule vs. last year's. last year, the Gophers went 6-10 but played only 6 games against the RPI top 30 (only 2 against the RPI top 18)and 11 games against the RPI top 70 (and had five games against sub-RPI 100 teams - two of which they lost). This year the Gophers had 6 games against the RPI top 18 (Penn State, Purdue, and Nebraska), 9 games against the RPI top 37, and 13 games against the RPI top 65 (and only two ROAD games against RPI sub 100 teams - both of which they won). This year's schedule was MUCH MORE DIFFICULT than last year's statistically and the Gophers should be given credit for performing as well as they did with no senior starters. JMHO.

InformedOne and I disagree about the RPI aspect, but we are of one mind on how every coach in the conference would be delighted to have Banham. She is not Whalen-level (her conference shooting this year was about 40%, while Whalen's sophomore percentage was 53%), but Whalen was an exceptional player on a very good team. (And dare I say it, was better coached for much of her time at the U.) I would LOVE for Banham to get some ongoing 1-1 tutoring from Whalen, who was fabulous at controlling game tempo and played huge at the end of close games.