If her sophomore season was any indication, look out, CAA. You’ve got a new superstar on your hands.
Overview
Eva Hodgson may have just wrapped up the best individual season in the history of the William and Mary women’s basketball program. I don’t want to say that it came out of nowhere — Hodgson was an All-CAA Rookie Team honoree in 2018-19 — but I’m not sure anybody, save maybe coaches and teammates, were expecting this.
The potential was there: she shot 42.4% from behind the arc her freshman year, albeit on only the third-most attempts on the team. She dished out 3 assists per game, as opposed to 2.5 turnovers. And, overall, she looked like she belonged on the court her freshman year. Then, after that solid freshman year… she went and got better. A lot better.
She continued to shoot the ball extremely well from long range, upping her percentage to 43.2% on a much higher volume. But Hodgson’s greatest improvement came from closer to the basket. Her freshman year, Hodgson made 48.4% of her two-point shots. This year, she hit a sterling 60.9% of shots from inside the arc. Her effective field goal percentage (which accounts for the fact that threes are worth more than twos) was an absolutely incredible 62.4%. Hodgson was more aggressive, got to the hole more, and showed a penchant for getting acrobatic, off-balance layups to fall.
Her CAA-leading 20.7 points per game, along with 3.6 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 1.5 steals, were conference-player-of-the-year worthy. While Kamiah Smalls of JMU (who deserved it) claimed the award this year, Hodgson will certainly have more opportunities to win the school’s second CAA Player of the Year award.
What’s scary about all this for other CAA schools is that Hodgson still has room to improve, especially when it comes to taking care of the ball. Turnovers were a problem for W&M this year (averaging just over 16 per contest) and Hodgson was one of the main contributors to that, leading the team with 3.4 per game. Part of that can be assessed to high usage and having the ball in her hands much of the time, but there is still room for her to grow in terms of decision-making. It’s hard to believe, but she’s still young.
It’s not fair to expect a jump as apparent as the one she made between her freshman and sophomore years again. It might not be fair to expect that from anyone, ever. But, even if she takes some strides at the margins of her game, she might very well end up as the best to ever play at W&M.
Here’s a Number: 91.2
That’s Hodgson’s free throw percentage, which ranked third in the entire NCAA. Not only was she nearly perfect at the line, but she was very good at getting there — her 193 attempts from the charity stripe were tied for 20th in the country. All in all, Hodgson’s season was just absolutely stupid efficient. (Another fun number? Hodgson’s true shooting percentage, which measures shooting efficiency by measuring threes, twos, and free throws, was 70.7%, which is incredible, especially for as high a usage rate as she had. For context: while there are no widely available advanced stats for women’s college basketball, Hodgson’s single-season TS% of 70.7% would be the 40th most efficient season *ever* in men’s college basketball. I can’t stress to you enough how out-of-this-world efficient she was this year. And she was just a sophomore. Sheesh.)
High Hopes
Ed. Note: For returning players, we’ll look for a sign of future potential.
This is not a great first player to look at future potential for; her potential has already been realized. So I guess I’ll go with her awesome game at Elon: 34 points (second-most in a single game in W&M history) on 8-11 from the field, including 4-5 from behind the arc. And she went 14-16 from the line. She won’t do that every night, but she has the ability to explode for performances like this any given ballgame.