Women's College Basketball Player of the Year Rankings: Comparing Juju Watkins, Lauren Betts, Hannah Hidalgo

About a month ago, we did a statistics comparison between Juju Watkins, Hannah Hidalgo and Paige Bueckers. It produced a lot of fun conversation about the weight that stats have on on the Player of the Year race. Now, with Lauren Betts rising in the conversation, let's do the same exercise using Her Hoops Stats tools to see where Betts fits in.

All stats provided by herhoopstats.com and updated as of February 3, 2025

There is a lot to unpack here, so let's pick a few interesting categories and go from there. It's easy to dissect things like points per game or field goal percentage, which is why diving into the deep stats can be fun as well.

Points per 40 minutes: Hannah Hidalgo

Points per 40 minutes is an interesting stat because it evens out the field. Every player is naturally going to play a different amount of minutes per game based on their own conditions, roster, coach's decisions, etc. Laying out points per 40 minutes shows a fairer base to judge these on. When you put Betts, Watkins and Hidalgo into this category, the results are pretty close. Hidalgo leads with 29.5 points, but Watkins is close with 28.9 and Betts isn't too far behind at 27.7. She also plays the most minutes out of these three, averaging 35.2 per game.

Offensive Rating: Lauren Betts

Offensive rating is a measure of how many points each player's team scores per 100 possessions when they are on the floor. This one was close, Betts currently has an offensive rating of 124.9 and Hidalgo is at 124.8. Proves just how close this player-of-the-year race is really going to be. Watkins comes in at 117.5. On the reverse, it's Watkins who leads these three in defensive rating. Watkins is at 71.6, Betts at 74.4 and Hidalgo at 77.1 (remember, lower numbers are better here). An interesting factor for voters looking to measure the defense of their player of the year picks.

Total points this season: Juju Watkins

An easy stat to decipher, which player has scored the most total points this season? Watkins currently sits at 518 points this year. After her, Hidalgo has 495 points, and Betts has 384. It makes sense that Watkins and Hidalgo are so close, given their points per game and points per 40 minutes are pretty similar. Yet, they also score a large percentage of their points on 3-point shots, a category that Betts is not in. As a post player, Betts doesn't take the outside shot, meaning her overall total points will naturally be lower than a distance shooter's.

Does record factor in?

One last interesting factor is team record. UCLA is the last undefeated team in the country, at 20-0. For that, they've held the country's No. 1 ranking since November and will likely hold it so long as they stay undefeated. Does that same logic apply to the Player of the Year race? Does Betts get points added to her case because she has been a large part of UCLA's undefeated season?

Do specific losses come into play here as well? Notre Dame (No. 3) has two losses: one against no.17 TCU and one against Utah. USC (No. 7) also has two losses: one against No. 6 (at the time) Notre Dame and one recently against Iowa. Does Hidalgo get the edge here because her team beat Juju's?

There are certainly so many factors that go into choosing this award in a tight race like this one.