I've said it before, and I'm sayin' it again---I agree. I still say what they have is good to great, but they have zero depth on the inside. Basically, the only true front court players they have with any playing time are Peters and Ochonwa. The one loss of Becca will prove huge. Braker has virtually no experience and Wright is a frosh. Neither is/was very highly regarded or rated. And from these four, they just don't have match-up size.
Fouls, fatigue, and/or injuries would be literally fatal.
Have your opinion. As someone who has actually followed both Braker and Wright I think you underestimate them because of what I have to assume is Hoopgurlz lack of evaluation.
Braker had an ACL injury and stayed off the AAU circuit after. Hoopgurlz didn't rank her, Blue Star and ASGR did...both around 40. She had an additional knee surgery (clean-up I believe) last year that kept her from breaking rotation. If she did it would have meant ND had a 11 man rotation in the fall and 9 man in the Spring. Have never seen MM do that.
Wright is more interesting. Averaged 16pts, 15 reb her senior season in Iowa. Her team's last lost was to Stokes' Lin Mar by 3pts two years ago in the state final. Since then it was Wright's Des Moines East team that went undefeated, ranked #1 from beginning to end, and won the state title. Wright was the MVP of the tourney. Every mention of the top players in Iowa mention Stokes immediately followed by Wright. Pretty much unanimously described as tough, aggressive, likes contact, physical etc. As an ND fan am thrilled that MM has compared her to Bruiser on more than one occasion and think she is going to fill that toughness void. Also when Hoopgurlz offered thier combined rankings with BS and ASGR she came in around 50 even though she wasn't ranked by one of the three.
After ND graduated 4 starters in 2010 and MM claimed that last years team was better most were skeptical. They were indeed better. Same could be true of this team. Achonwa outrebounded Bruiser in less minutes and will out score her as well when they increase. McBride is back too. I'll allow for the same type of improvement that most fans attribute for their team and players to also be true of mine.
I think ND is probably top 5 regardless of what will transpire during the season. ND could have more losses in conference and not win the BE. They don't have a favorable schedule having to play all of the expected top 5 on the road. None of that really matters. They are going to be a tough out for anyone in the NCAA and can't imagine them being a preferred opponent.
Good luck this season. Looking forward to seeing KML and hopefully a healthy recovered Doty.