The Whalen Effect

Donate To GopherHole

Ignatius L Hoops said:
A Perkins blast from the past.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the blast from the past. I loved that vid when it first came out, and still do. I’d nominate it as the best Perk at Play ever.

They used some nice production tricks. For instance when Perk made the half court shot, what do ya bet that was really the tail end of a Whay made shot spliced to the front end of a Perk attempt. Whay rejecting the wadded paper to the wastebasket at the end was the coup de grace.

Maybe Perk should reprise the video next fall, this time taking on Whay plus all the Gopher starters in sequence. Would be fun to see Destiny outshoot him from 7 feet behind the three point line, and Bello stuff him.
 
Last edited:






https://www.theday.com/article/20190823/SPORT01/190829750

The Day: article on Whalen's jersey retirement by the Sun.

Mohegan — Very few of us truly know the athletes we admire personally. And still in our minds, we are quick to marry the mutually exclusive irrelevancies of success and character — as if one begets the other. They don’t.

Plus, it cheapens the narrative for the rare occasions we actually form friendships with athletes — or people in general — and one day happily realize they’re every bit as real as we could have hoped.

Lindsay Whalen was a ball of humor, humility and humanity in her days here as a guard for the Connecticut Sun. You rooted for her because you couldn’t help it. There were times she had this inimitable genius in making the sun move across the heavens out there on the court — and still crack you up in the locker room or out on the town after the game.

The franchise honored Whalen at halftime of Friday’s game, a night the old days became current events, even if for one night. Whalen returned to toast the past, all while one of the dramatis personae who made the past more fun, Bill Laimbeer, was coaching the other team, as he had many times in Neon Uncasville leading the nemesis known as the Detroit Shock.

Does Whalen still have a soft spot for her old digs? You decide:

“All my dad and I have been talking about is where we’re going to eat and drink when we got here,” she said before Friday’s game. “We have Saturday planned. The Spot (in Groton) for lobster bisque and then we have reservations in Mystic at night. My mom said to me ‘we’re never going to have time to go to all these places you want to go.’”

Whalen never played a game here for anyone other than Mike Thibault, the coach in Washington now, the man who led the Sun twice to the WNBA Finals. The Sun were a big family in those days. Maybe that’s why we always joked Whalen was the “fifth Thibault,” joining Mike, Nanci, Eric and Carly.
...

Sun president Mitchell Etess: “She was the guts of our franchise. She represented what the Connecticut Sun has been to people.”

John Altavilla of the Hartford Courant, who has covered the NHL and NFL in his many years doing this, wrote, "Listen, everyone associated with the Sun — the coaches, management, fans and media — love Lindsay Whalen to death because she's a great player, a wonderful ambassador for the league and a tremendous, fun-loving person. On a personal level, I have never enjoyed writing about a player as much in my career as Lindsay, as accommodating a pro athlete as can be.”

Among the reasons for the hosannas: She always made us laugh. Whalen has a Ph.D. in practical jokes and deadpans, often using Tavares, the media relations manager at the time, as her foil.
Click to expand...
 

Wow. Some great Whalen stories and testimonials. And the guy who wrote the article can flat out write.
 

Is Lindsay Whalen slowly and quietly starting to amass talent to make some noise in the Big Ten?
 





The Whalen Era recruits:

2018
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barbora Tomancova - F/C, 6' 2", Brno Czech Republic, -
Mercedes Staples - PG, 5' 10", Centerville UT, 4-Star, Grade 95, ESPN No. 64th player overall, No. 17 PG. http://www.espn.com/high-school/girls-basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/230839
Transferring this year from Syracuse...
Kadiatou Sissoko - G, 6' 2", Paris France, 5-Star, Grade 98, ESPN No. 10th player overall, No. 2 Guard. She is sitting out this year due to transfer rules.
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesot...adiatou-sissoko-transfers-to-play-for-gophers

2019
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jasmine Powell - PG, 5' 6", Southfield MI, 4-Star, Grade 94, ESPN No. 76th player overall, No. 23 PG. http://www.espn.com/high-school/girls-basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/235855/jasmine-powell
Sara Scalia - G, 5' 8", Stillwater MN, 3- Star, Grade 88, No. 65 G.
Justice Ross - W, 6' 0", Des Moines IA, 3-Star, Grade 88, No. 35 W.
Klarke Sconiers - P, 6' 3", Middle Village NY, 3-Star, Grade 90, No. 19 P.
Grace Cumming - P, 6' 3", Des Moines IA, 3-Star, Grade 88, No. 46 P.

2020
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Erin Hedman - P, 6' 3", New Berlin WI, 4-Star, Grade 94, ESPN No. 75th player overall, No. 8 P. http://www.espn.com/high-school/girls-basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/238943/erin-hedman
Alexia Smith - PG, 5' 8", Columbus OH, 5-Star, Grade 96, ESPN No. 46 player overall, No. 15 PG. http://www.espn.com/high-school/girls-basketball/recruiting/player/_/id/236618/alexia-smith

The 2018 recruiting year was a transition from Marlene Stollings to Lindsay Whalen with original Stollings commitments decommiting.

So far in 2020, Coach Whalen is off to a good start. With 2 remaining scholarships for 2020, will we see additional 4-Star/5-Star players?
 
Last edited:

 



Whalen makes Sports Illustrated 3rd-string All-Decade Team.
https://www.si.com/wnba/2019/09/27/wnba-all-decade-team-bird-taurasi-moore-catchings

Actually, SI was choosing a First and Second team, but as they put it, they started with ...

"... the players who were named first-team All-WNBA and had won at least one championship and an MVP award, a group of 14 players clearly stood out from the rest. Making those last few cuts, however, was really hard, especially since the majority of these players are versatile forwards who can impact the game in so many ways. In the end, Angel McCoughtry, Nneka Ogwumike, Breanna Stewart and Lindsay Whalen were left off the list."

Or, as I prefer to view it, Whay made the SI Third-string All-Decade Team along with a rather respectable set of team-mates, namely Angel McCoughtry, Nneka Ogwumike, Breanna Stewart and some other unspecified player of their caliber. More specifically, her WNBA qualifications to be so-named were:
- She was named to the first-string of at least one All-WNBA team.
- She won a WNBA MVP award.
- Her team won at least one WNBA championship (well, in fact they won four!).

BTW, Whay's Lynx team-mates Maya Moore and Sylvia Fowles made the First All-Decade Team; and Seimone Augustus made the Second All-Decade Team. By my count, that means that about 2/7 of the First/Second/Third All-Decade Team members were Lynx.

A.K.A. the Whalen Effect. She may not have made First Team All-Decade, but she was the glue that made the championship Lynx team work. Now she's the glue that makes the (future-champion?) Gophers team work.
 


You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom