Milligan remains a dominant force in Marauder basketball

McMaster’s Hailey Milligan has been nothing short of incredible this year. As of Feb. 12, the six-foot-three centre is averaging a career-high in minutes, field-goal percentage and points per game.

Her rebounding is down on average, from 11.5 to 11.1, but her rebounding percentage (an estimate of how many available rebounds one player grabbed) is fourth in the CIS. Hailey Milligan should be an All-Canadian.

The slow undoing of the Marauders season has been well documented, but that is not fault of Milligan’s. Without the fifth-year, this season would have been much worse. You can see it too – when Milligan is off, the team struggles on both ends of the court. She owns the highest offensive (112) and defensive (71) ratings of the team. Her post presence causes teams to collapse immediately, and Milligan constantly faces double and triple teams.

Simply put, she is the best player donning the Maroon and Grey and perhaps the most important player to any team in the OUA. Remove Milligan from the line-up, spread her shots across the rest of the team and the end product would not be pretty. She leads the team in effective field goal percentage at 56 percent. That mark is good for eighth in the nation. But what is more impressive is the efficiency given the number of times Milligan uses an offensive possession.

The Brantford, Ont. product uses 28 percent of McMaster’s possessions, and no one above her in effective field goal percentage uses more.

Dalyce Emmerson of the University of Saskatchewan Huskies has a 27 percent usage clip, but also plays in a weaker Canada West division, where three of the eight teams have a combined 16-44 record.

Milligan is putting up eye-popping numbers, playing in the most competitive division in the CIS.

The list goes on. Her Player Efficiency Rating is fourth in the country. She has a low foul count per 40 minutes of 2.8, and gets to the line with a free throw to field-goal attempt ratio of 0.3.

But still, a spot on the All-Canadian team is not a guarantee for Milligan.

Voters could look at the record of the Marauders and put her accomplishments under the “good numbers on a bad team” label. This would be the wrong decision. Milligan is integral to the success of McMaster, and the regression next year will show that.

Hopefully, the voting committee does not wait that long to realize the impact the fifth-year has had on the McMaster program.