Both the Iowa State Cyclones’ Audi Crooks and Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s Hannah Hidalgo are going head-to-head for something more than just the national scoring lead.

Both Audi Crooks and Hannah Hidalgo have been the biggest obstacles for their opponents with both stars averaging nearly 30 points per game this season. Crooks has made it a practice to dominate her way through the defense. While playing against the Southern Jaguars she scored 29 points. She upped her game against the Valparaiso Beakers when she scored a whomping 43 points. Since then, she has crossed the 30-point mark on several different occasions. Her best performance was against the Indiana Hoosiers where she scored an astounding 47 points.

Any team going up against Crooks is forced to do one of two things. Either they have to leave some of the other top shooters open and send in more force to defend the Cyclones’ Center or keep the 3-point line tight and let Crooks isolate on inferior post defenders.

Similar to Crooks, Hannah Hidalgo is also piling up points and is having a fantastic season under Niele Ivey. After missing out on scoring her first 30 points in a game against Fairleigh Dickinson where she scored a total of 27 points, she got her first 30+ game against Chicago (32). Then she dominated Akron with an astounding 44 points. She then followed that performance with back-to-back 30-pointers against Bellarmine and Pittsburgh.

Hidalgo isn’t the only one behind Audi Crooks, though, as she shares her distinction with three other contenders who were equally prolific. Indiana’s Shay Ciezki(22.8 points), who is in the 8th position of the NCAA rankings, Florida’s Liv McGill (24.5 points), who finds herself in the 4th spot, and last but not least, by any means Vanderbilt’s Mikalya Blakes (25.2 points), who is right behind Hidalgo in the points column.

So as things stand, as the season is nearly closing in on the midway mark, we might witness a lot more 30-plus games from all these athletes involved. While we still don’t have a clear picture as to who will eventually be the ultimate winner in all of this, even then, things probably lean towards Iowa’s towering figure, Audi Crooks. However, that’s all concerning her attacking acumen; her defense still needs work for her to truly come out as an all-around player.

Crooks’ Lack of Defensive Fortitude

Audi Crooks is undoubtedly an elite scorer, but there are questions raised when it comes to her defensive abilities. Her frame and lack of three-dimensionality are two of the liabilities of her game. She is prone to being slow-footed on defense and finds it hard guarding switches.

Considering the fact that Crooks is 6’3″, her rebounding average is also below par. She does not even make it in the top 10 of rebounds per game, according to NCAA stats. Now, obviously, we can’t expect her to do it all, but still, if these areas are not worked upon, it might cause her problems in her future WNBA career.

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So far, what we have seen Audi do is hold the ball in paint, dribble and shoot layups, but apart from that, there’s not much that we have seen that would give us any indication of what more she can do.

Iowa is also very reliant on Audi and has shown the tendency to fizzling out when it isn’t ‘cooking’ on court. So that dependency might just impede the team’s progression altogether, and Bill Fenelly has to be cautious about that more so now, as Iowa is reeling from back-to-back losses against Baylor and Cincinnati.