Remember last season when Kate Bullman became a defensive deity around January and still didn’t make the Missouri Valley All-Defensive team? Yeah, that sucked. I tweeted this at the time, and you probably thought I was joking.
Maybe a little. Like, 15% joking. But I also plan on going hard in the paint on the KB hype this year. The only person who will go harder in the paint is Kate herself in the literal paint. On that note, let’s get to it – words and clips demonstrating Kate Bullman’s lockdown ability and why voting for her for the 2023 All-Defensive team is going to be mandatory. MATCHUP VERSATILITY This may not have been as true 20 years ago, but you can’t talk about defense in 2022 without talking about switchability. With the rise in ball screens, transition, and shooters, every player on the court will have to guard out of position at some point during a game. This is the crown jewel of Kate’s skillset. She’s a 6-foot-2 power forward who defends guards on the regular. And not just on switches or in transition. From the tip. It’s an actual intentional part of the team’s game plans. In Illinois State’s second meeting with Indiana State last year, Kate was the primary matchup on Del’Janae Williams – a 5-foot-8 honorable mention All-MVC point guard who finished in the top 15 in the league in both scoring and assists. (That staredown at the end here is the stuff of legends.) She also memorably matched up with Caitlin Clark in the NCAA Tournament, and that fact alone is enough to basically end this article and give her the award already. Somehow, she does all that without giving up anything in the interior defense department. A couple of these are All-MVC post players, and Kate gives them nothing. Regardless of who Kate starts out matched up with, she always ends up all over the place. Against UNI in the MVC championship game, she was the primary defender on Bre Gunnels, Karli Rucker, and Nicole Kroeger, all in the first quarter alone. When Megan Meyer went off for a career high 22 against Illinois State, they moved Kate onto her down the stretch of the fourth quarter to protect the lead (and Kate completely walls her up on what ends up being a near-dagger stop for the Redbirds). And who can forget the defense Kate played on Brice Calip (#NotMyDPOY) to seal the win at Missouri State – the same Brice Calip who hit a game winner in pretty much that exact situation a year earlier. At first Kate switches onto Calip and provides enough length and ball pressure to take away the post entry (give DeAnna Wilson a ton of credit there too), taking the Bears out of their play and leading to a timeout. Kate comes out of the timeout matched up with Calip and smothers her, forcing her to instead kick out to a then-21.6% 3-point shooter in Mya Bhinhar who had missed 13 in a row from deep at that point. Some players guard the other team’s best perimeter player; some guard the other team’s best post player. Kate guards the other team’s best player. Period. In other words, she’s a queen in every sense of the word. She’s the conference’s defensive queen, whether voters crown her or not, but she’s also the queen on the chess board – the one who can move anywhere and do anything. ACTION VERSATILITY I wasn’t sure what else to call this, but versatility is about more than just being able to guard all five positions on the ball. It’s also about being able to defend all sorts of different actions and excel in any off-ball spot you find yourself in. Follow Kate for 25 seconds in this clip and note how many different things she does: jams a screen, cuts off a drive, switches a screen, switches another screen, and helps on the baseline to contest the shot. That’s all on a single possession. How about this one, where Kate tags the roller, closes out, digs on the post player (causing her to pick up her dribble), and moves her feet to take the charge. It took seven commas to list all the plays Kate made on just those two possessions. Then, there’s her recovery speed. Being able to help and also being able to recover to your own player quick enough to stop them both (or vice versa – stopping your player and rotating instantly to help wherever the ball was passed) is having your cake and eating it too. COMMUNICATION AND AWARENESS One of the most crucial aspects of playing defense is also one of the most overlooked. Maybe it’s because you can hardly ever hear what players are saying on TV and sometimes can’t even hear in person. However, you simply can’t be an elite team defender without communicating, and that’s yet another arrow in Kate’s quiver. This is evident every time she scram switches. While there’s no such thing as Kate getting caught in a mismatch, her teammates sometimes do after a switch. Watch Kate recognize these situations and switch back off the ball to keep her teammates out of those mismatches. (On the last clip here, I’m pretty sure I heard her call this one out – I’m the guy on the bottom right of the screen – but I’m not sure if this came from her or from the coaches. Either way, it didn’t come right after an initial switch like the others, but it was important because it put Kate on the eventual screener, which is always something you want when you’re guarding ball screens.) It may have been the other player who recognized and communicated some of those, so it really is a credit to the whole team and the staff. But Kate is a huge part of that. And while Rucker did score for UNI on that last possession, they got a little lucky after Kate tipped the ball. It was a great defensive possession. Obviously most of the time you aren’t in position to hear Kate’s communication on those, though, but you can see it too. For someone who so often is guarding the screener on ball screens, being able to communicate is even more important. Illinois State, among other teams, uses colors to represent their different ball screen coverages, and the player guarding the screener is responsible for knowing which one to call out each time based on the scouting report. Of course, as someone who also defends guards all the time, Kate really has to master both sides of it. Which brings me to her IQ. It’s one thing to be uncommonly physically gifted. To have all of that and be as smart as anyone on the court? C’mon. Check out this big brain move where she sits on Sitori Tanin’s spin move in the post. You can see Kate waiting like a tiger, and as soon as Tanin spins back to the middle Kate pounces and eats her alive. If Kate goes too early, Tanin sees her coming and just kicks it out. Kate goes too late, and Tanin gets the shot up. But this timing? Goldilocks. RIM PROTECTION This is the reason why I was shocked Kate didn’t make the All-Defensive team last year. I’m aware that most voters also cover 37 other sports and aren’t watching a ton of these games; I’m aware that they are probably just looking at stats and not necessarily some of the intangibles or eye-test skills from above. (They should be, but whatever.) But blocks is a stat. A really important, mainstream stat. So how did we overlook the player who led the MVC in blocks in league play? The one who tied the school record for blocks in a game while in the midst of a streak of four straight games with 4+ blocks? Who knows. But because I could watch these on a loop all day, I’ll wrap up with some of the baddest Bullman blocks of last season. Like the time she got four different Drake players in the same game. Or the time poor Mariah White thought she could put moves on KB – even twice in one possession! Kate also rejected a couple threes just for fun, including my personal favorite when she closed out from the left wing all the way to the right corner. I feel like to truly understand the value of Kate Bullman, we have to go back and watch that last clip again. But this time, watch each step of the play as it unfolds:
That’s a big deal. You’re always gonna give up those types of looks if you switch screens like that. Kate’s awareness and closeout speed allows Illinois State to switch those screens and still take those looks away. We haven’t even talked about so many aspects of Kate’s defensive impact, such as her rebounding or her hands. (This is probably getting way too long, but I guess you twisted my arm into one last clip of Kate’s ball skills on this poke away.) So there’s only one question left to ask yourselves, my voter friends. Game on the line, opponent’s ball, shot clock off, and you get to choose any five players in the conference to go out and get you a stop to win it. Can you honestly tell me you’re not picking Kate Bullman? Credit to @bask3tballchess for the help with edits on the second communication video
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