Atlanta vs. San Antonio, Saturday May 15th

Who: The Atlanta Dream (0-0) take on the San Antonio Silver Stars (0-0).

Here are the final rosters of both clubs:

Atlanta: Alison Bales, Iziane Castro Marques, Erika de Souza, Chamique Holdsclaw, Shalee Lehning, Sancho Lyttle, Angel McCoughtry, Coco Miller, Kelly Miller, Armintie Price, Brittainey Raven

San Antonio: Jayne Appel, Helen Darling, Megan Frazee, Becky Hammon, Roneeka Hodges, Crystal Kelly, Edwige Lawson-Wade, Ruth Riley, Belinda Snell, Michelle Snow, Sophia Young

What: The first of two regular season games against the Silver Stars. Every Eastern Conference team (Atlanta) plays a home-and-away during the regular season against each Western Conference team (San Antonio). Last year the Dream swept the season series against San Antonio, winning in San Antonio 92-84 on August 6th and then winning at home in Atlanta 93-87 on August 20th.

Where: The AT&T Center at San Antonio.

When: Tipoff is at at 8 pm Eastern time, today. (May 15, 2010.) This game should be available on WNBA Live Access.

Why: We get our very first, for-real-honest-and-for-true look at the Atlanta Dream, as this game counts. Chamique Holdsclaw will not be suiting up - she never came to Training Camp and she wants a trade - but until the Dream can deal her she takes up roster space. With Alison Bales having not played in the previous year, with rookie Brittainey Raven, and with Erika de Souza literally having got off the plane two days ago, it will be interesting to see how the Dream handles the adversity of playing in San Antonio against a packed house for the Silver Stars home opener. (And the next day, the Dream opens in Atlanta.)

The Angel McCoughtry tour continues as McCoughtry will compete against rookie Jayne Appel out of Stanford. Appel was a highly-touted player for Stanford - some thought she had a chance to being drafted #2 - but a poor national championship game caused Appel's draft stock to fall. The last game McCoughtry played was against Connecticut and Tina Charles in the pre-season; we'll see how well Appel fares against Atlanta.

San Antonio has a few changes. The most important is at the coaching level. Dan Hughes, a great WNBA coach, has moved up to General Manager. His successor, Sandy Brondello, is out on pregnancy leave, so associate coach Olaf Lange will try to steer the Silver Stars to victory.

There's a revenge factor in this game as the Dream face center Michelle Snow for the first time wearing an enemy uniform since Snow played for the Houston Comets in 2008. Snow was a back-up in 2009 for the Dream after many thought she'd be a starter. Snow starts over in San Antonio, who needs a center after Ann "The Belgian Waffle" Wauters decided to sit out the season. Snow has the opportunity to make Meadors look like a fool or a genius depending on how well Snow can do against the All-Star Duo of Sancho Lyttle and Erika de Souza.

Projecting the 2010 Draft Class: The Senior Prospects Metric

It can't be stopped. It can't be reasoned with. It barges into serious discussion like a drunk barging into a church picnic. The new 2010 Senior Prospects Metric (SPM) calculations are ready for the 2010 WNBA Draft!

The point of the SPM is to project future WNBA performance based on a player's junior year in college. Granted, a lot can happen between August 2009 and June 2010, but with that in mind, the SPM suggests players to keep your eyes on during the offseason.

Without going into the gory details, here's how the numbers are calcuated.

* The SPM is strongly based on a player's rebounding, shot blocking and stealing.
* Players who can shoot the 3-pointer get credit in the SPM. A guard might not be able to block shots, but she can (or should) be able to shoot the 3-pointer.
* An efficiency rating is created based on adjusted Wins Score per minute.
* The SPM doesn't like players who turn over the ball. The metric is subtractive instead of the traditional assist/turnover ratio.
* Players are penalized if they are older than the average player. Those players are probably better because they're further along in their physical development.
* The SPM loves players who can get 50 steals and 50 blocks in a season. Out of the 127 players studied, only two made that cut - Jessica Breland of North Carolina and Vivian Frieson of Gonzaga.
* The relative strength of a player's conference is taken into account.
* The SPM doesn't like players that are too short. Usually, those players get eaten alive in the WNBA.
* The SPM looks with a jaundiced eye at any player who is 6'6" or more. Generally, those players don't turn out to be that great.
* In addition to 3-point accuracy, guards should make a mininum number of 3-pointers.
* A player should rebound well for her position.
* The SPM gives bonuses to high-usage players - players that eat up a lot of their team's possessions - clearly, those players are generating a lot of their team's offense and beyond a certain point, it impacts their offensive efficiency because opposing teams are keying those defenses on those players. Likewise, low usage players are penalized.
* The Brittany Pittman Rule. This is an option rule, and stats will be presented with and without the rule. Brittany Pittman has the highest rank in the SPM, but she's a little known player from Morehead State. The rule: "Any player who is not from a major conference - the ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10 or SEC - will have their score docked by half." In general, players from "mid-major" conferences are ignored at the WNBA Draft.

We take all of these stats from these 127 players and throw them into a blender. Everyone gets assigned a number by the SPM which indicates - or rather, should indicate - their potential.

First, let's look at the rankings without the Brittany Pittman Rule. (We expect Brittany Pittman to rise to the top.)





And now, we look at the stats with the Brittany Pittman Rule in effect.





So it seems that according to the SPM, neither Jayne Appel nor Tina Charles is the best player around even if we apply the Brittany Pittman Rule. That honor goes to Jessica Breland, a forward out of North Carolina. Appel comes in third behind Danielle Wilson, a center out of Baylor. Epipphany Prince, who will skip her senior year of college finishes eighth.

Tina Charles ends up in 12th place. Why? Not as many steals or blocked shots per game as some of the other contenders. She's a good player, and the SPM is just a number.

Some odd names appearing in the top 20: Brittany Pittman of Morehead State still stays in the Top 10 even after being docked for playing in the Ohio Valley Conference. Courtnay Pilypaitis of Vermont should be worth a look. There are other players from non-major conferences in the top 20 as well.

Which leads me to another conclusion. The 2010 Draft will not be as strong as drafts of the previous years. Comparing my values to the values of the 2008 class and the 2009 class, the values drop more quickly. There just aren't that many impact players coming out of the 2010 Draft.

This is good news for teams that do well in the 2009 season, and bad news for the lottery finishers. It is less likely that the acquisition of one player is going to turn a team around. There is no Candace Parker-like figure in this draft, or even an Angel McCoughtry-like figure. In any case, the 2009-10 off season will be interesting to watch. A lot of players are clumped together...so which ones will break out of the pack?

Update: pilight's comment forced me to look up some information about Jessica Breland. As it turns out, she has Hodgkin's lymphoma and will be undergoing chemotherapy and will probably miss the 2009-10 season. However, Hodgkin's lymphoma is one of the most curable forms of cancer.