When Josie Gilvin committed to Kentucky, she was not only Kenny Brooks‘ first get of the offseason, but maybe one of the more underrated additions anyone made through the transfer portal.
Gilvin was a stellar defensive player for WKU, recording 2.6 steals per game en route to receiving all-conference defensive team honors this past year. Her ability to guard multiple positions and play effective, in-your-face perimeter defense allowed her to take games over on that side of the ball.
However, she may also be one of the more underrated offensive players in all of women’s college basketball, and it’s not just because of her 41.3% clip from three-point range.
A player’s Offensive Rating is, as Her Hoop Stats describes it, “an advanced statistic by Dean Oliver that estimates the number of point produced by a player per one hundred total individual possessions”. Basically, it’s a numerical measurement of just how efficient of a scorer a player is.
Gilvin boasted a 124.2 Offensive Rating, which happened to be in the 99th percentile of all players. Specifically, she had the 27th-best Offensive Rating in the country last season. That’s higher than the likes of JuJu Watkins (113.2) and Hailey Van Lith (115.2).
On top of that, she had a Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of 28.8 — “the per minute value of a player from box score stats”, which was 72nd in the nation and higher than any Cat had last year. Clara Strack (28.3) had the highest PER of any Kentucky player a year ago. She also ranked top 100 in the country in Offensive Win Shares (3.1).
The 6-foot guard is going to do it all for Kentucky. Not only is she a tremendous defender, but she’s secretly one of the best (and certainly most efficient) offensive players in the entire sport.
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