Cara Ursin Wins LA GPOY

4,660 Views | 18 Replies | Last: 5 yr ago by EasyE
Brian Ethridge
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Ursin is the only three time winner of the Gatorade Player of the Year in Louisiana History

Huge accomplishment for her and she won the state tournament with her team 35-0.
BuinmyBlood
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She was so under-the-radar, and under-rated. By the time Hoopgurlz got wind of her, they were about finished with doing their ratings for last year. Still, they finally got her in their last rankings update, at around #64, as I recall.

This girl is just so explosive in her highlight films, and, as it's been suggested before, her game may not translate as rapidly to the college game as, say, an Odyssey Sims. But, I've got a feeling that with proper coaching, she can be as effective as Sims after a year of seasoning. Just an incredible athlete, and competitor - and with the great grades to match. Definitely the steal of that entire recruiting class...
Brian Ethridge
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Agreed. She may be the type of defender needed to get on the court immediately.
Heart
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Yep, excited this young lady will be a Lady Bear!
slimecap
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ladybears4eva
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I also have a gut feeling about her, winning state Championships is very hard to do once, but 3 times!??!?
KajunKarlsdad
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ladybears4eva said:

I also have a gut feeling about her, winning state Championships is very hard to do once, but 3 times!??!?
They only won the State title her Senior year. She won the individual award (Gatorade Player of the Year) 3 times. She was also Miss La. Basketball twice. In her sophomore season she played against Kalani's high school team. She blocked K's shots twice in that game.
ladybears4eva
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She is going to be our next Odyssey. Im crossing my fingers
Bone Squad
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I knew Moon had won player of the year over Kalani, but I did not know she had blocked Kalani's shots twice in a game. That's just silly right there! I'm looking forward to seeing what she can do!
slimecap
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Bone Squad said:


I knew Moon had won player of the year over Kalani, but I did not know she had blocked Kalani's shots twice in a game. That's just silly right there! I'm looking forward to seeing what she can do!

Still thinking about that terrific, lengthy, and well-thought-out post you made
on the Non-Conference schedule thread during the last days of baylorfans.com




Bone Squad
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Thanks, Slimecap. Hopefully I can still think of something intelligent to say every once in a while on the new board.
bowdedg
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Cara Ursin will be fun to watch. Below is a quote from Kalani's mom regarding Cara when the 2 girls played each other in High School.

(Ursin shot 6-13 from the field, including three 3s, and 9-12 from the line.)

"Let me tell you something, we just did what we possibly could but there's no stopping Cara Ursin," Dee Brown said. "All you can do is maintain her. She's a phenomenal player and she's going to be a great player to watch going forward."
slimecap
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`

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slimecap
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March 17, 2016

"Her sprained right ankle throbbing in pain, Cara Ursin had pleaded all day with her coach, begging Angi Butler to let her play in that night's game. Doctors had cleared Ursin -- there was no fracture -- but Butler saw her star player limping and kept her on the bench. Without Ursin, who was just a freshman at the time, Destrehan (Louisiana) fell behind by 12 points at the half against District 7-5A rival Thibodaux.

"At halftime, I went to our [practice] gym and warmed up," Ursin said. "I had to run and jump and show [Butler] I was ready."

When halftime was over, Thibodaux coach Damon Robinson emerged from the visitors' locker room to see Ursin taping her ankle, preparing to enter the game. A minute into the third quarter, Thibodaux's 12-point lead had been cut in half after Ursin hit two 3-pointers. Ursin finished with 18 second-half points and Destrehan rallied to win.

"She put her [Superman] cape on at halftime," Robinson said. "Even as a freshman, her older teammates looked up to her."

Everybody in the state looks up to Ursin now. A 5-foot-7 guard, Ursin's stock in recruiting circles is skyrocketing. She was the Louisiana Gatorade Player of the Year as a sophomore and won it again last week in recognition of her standout junior year.

Ursin has numerous college scholarship offers
she favors Baylor, Texas, South Carolina and Tennessee
and it's easy to see why. This past season, she averaged 25.1 points, 13.2 rebounds, 7.4 steals, 6.0 assists and 5.3 blocks.

"I'm not going to compare her to Michael Jordan, but I can understand what the Cleveland Cavaliers felt like when they had to face the Chicago Bulls," said Robinson, who is 0-9 in games against Ursin. "Cara can jump out of the gym, and she can run like the wind."

Ursin had a quadruple-double this past season vs. St. Katharine (New Orleans): 24 points, 10 rebounds, 12 assists and 12 steals. She also had four triple-doubles and 21 double-doubles in 28 games. Her team has fallen short of a state title but is 84-8 in three years, including 40-0 in district play. The Wildcats reached the state final in her freshman year, the semifinals her sophomore season and the quarterfinals this past season.

Butler said she recently got a visit from Louisiana native Pokey Chatman, the head coach and general manager of the WNBA's Chicago Sky.

"[Chatman] said she told South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, 'You don't need to worry about recruiting her. We'll take her straight to the WNBA,'" Butler said.

Butler said Chatman was joking ... but not by a lot.

Ursin's aunt, Karen Wilson, gave her niece the nickname "Moon" because she believed she had a "moon head" at birth -- nobody is entirely sure what that means.

Given Ursin's out-of-this-world leaping ability -- she can grab the rim and she's come close to dunking twice -- the moon nickname fits. In fact, Ursin's twitter handle is "TouchDaMoon."

Ursin grew up playing basketball with her two older brothers and their male cousins. But Ursin is on a track to outperform everyone in her family ... and pretty much every other family, too.

"Her talent is just a gift from God," said her mother, Erica Burise. "She is awesome and phenomenal."

But Ursin is more than just an elite athlete. She has a 4.0 GPA and sings in her church's youth choir.

"One day, she was singing to us," teammate Brandi Mason said, "and it was, like, mind-blowing."

After basketball, Ursin said she wants to become a pharmacist or a physical therapist.

She spends two nights a week tutoring student-athletes who are struggling academically.

A fan of the TV show, "The Walking Dead," Ursin has been known to make some comical mistakes when it comes to figures of speech.

"As smart as she is, she once thought 'schizophrenic' was 'skinzophrenic' -- she thought it was a skin disorder," Butler said laughing. "She thought 'bedside manner' was bed-side man.' She's so cute."

Her mother agreed.

"She is a quirky, goofy girl," Burise said. "She's always got something funny to say."

Butler said Ursin weighs 165 pounds of solid muscle and could be a track star because of her speed and leaping ability. But Ursin wants to focus on basketball, even if she has gone about her development in an unconventional way.

Ursin played travel ball from fifth to eighth grade.

But in the summer of her ninth-grade year, she decided to stay home and work on her academics as well as individual skill development in basketball.

The plan worked. Ursin's scoring average jumped from 14 points as a freshman to 22 points as a sophomore, and she has followed the same course of action every summer since. Ursin said Butler and her mom supported her plan, but she heard plenty of criticism from the outside.

"That's all I heard -- 'You have to play AAU to get better and to get colleges to look at you,'" Ursin said. "But I've sprouted since I stopped playing AAU. Inside, I am full of joy. But on the outside, I stay humble because I know I have a long way to go."

Ursin, who has been able to touch the rim since eighth grade, has done all this with minimal weight training, and she said she looks forward to getting even stronger in college. One of her major goals for her senior season is to finally dunk in a game. She missed a dunk try as a freshman. This past season, she nearly dunked, but the ball slipped out of her hand.

"It's so important," Ursin said of dunking. "I thought it would have come easier since I got up there as a freshman, and I have to have grown since then."

Butler wants her to dunk, too, but she is terrified that her star will hurt her fingers in the attempt or that someone will undercut her, causing injury. Ursin, though, has seen the future, and that's not how it goes down.

"I picture a perfect atmosphere and fans running all over the place," she said. "I picture myself just getting back on defense, no big deal, like I do this all the time."

- Walter Villa, espnW
- photo gathered from the web
ScottS
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She sounds like a great player....maybe she will dunk while at Baylor.
Bone Squad
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I learned my lesson with Cox last year and am tapping the breaks on the expectations I lay onto a true freshman.

That said, man do I excited every time I read about this young lady! I don't care who your competition is, a quadruple double is outstanding.
slimecap
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chorne68
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I thought she was a point guard. Why is she not in the mix like the other three mentioned.
Polarbear
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My take - in high school, she was probably far advanced in her talent and skills compared to her teammates. The best option for her HS team was probably to have her on ball, initiating the offense; get the ball in the hands of the star. At that level, she could probably break down and drive around nearly every opponent, and create scoring opportunities at will for herself and teammates.
In college, she could probably still play point with some success, but the competition is much greater and Moon is not able to dominate her opponents every night. In the Baylor program there are four guards, all extremely talented, and each is capable of playing point. The question is who is the best at point for this program. The coaches will use practices and games in the first few months to solve that question. Perhaps it's an issue of floor vision, perhaps ball handling and limiting turnovers, perhaps communication and getting the ball where it needs to go, perhaps defending; they'll decide who they prefer at point and we'll see it reflected in minutes.
My prediction is that at point we'll see Chloe get bulk of minutes, with Honesty most of backup. At shooting guard we'll see Juicy get bulk of minutes, with Moon most of backup.
EasyE
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I watched one or two of her HS games online, and if memory serves me right, she was still primarily off the ball at the #2.
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