Maybe a year ago that would be an adequate description of the 6-foot-8 Houstonian, but that’s not good enough anymore. Talk to coaches who have coached against her a year or more ago and you’ll hear their confidence in being able to “stop” her and by that they mean not let her score at will. “We just push her around ... get her away from the basket… she doesn’t like contact …”

Simply put, Griner injects confidence in her teammates at the defensive end of the floor unlike anyone before her. It is one of the main reasons that, in its release of a full hot 100, ESPN HoopGurlz elevated her to the top spot in the 2009 class.

In recent years individuals have impressed with incredible athleticism that translated well at the defense end. Maya Moore has jumped into the air and caught, rather than swatted, the opposition’s shot. Sylvia Fowles has swatted shots from behind, at rim level, after getting beat by a step. But this is different. While the aforementioned are isolated plays, Griner’s impact is constant. She roams the paint, intimidating like a guard dog at the junk yard, but picture that dog without a fence or chain. She can be in the paint and suddenly she’s in the air blocking a 3-point attempt. Her reign of terror is seemingly without boundaries, defensively, yet she knows where to be on the floor. She drops low enough in the paint to see the action in front of her when she’s in weakside help position, she moves her feet over to stop dribble penetration and when she blocks a shot it isn’t a wild out of control swat at the ball.

You can take some of the most prolific shot blockers on the men’s side of the game, Marcus Camby, Dikembe Mutombo, Hakeem Olajuwon, Bill Russell or Ben Wallace and their impact on the game is notable but not as dominating as Griner is in the female game. The fact is, she would be a shot-blocking factor playing male counterparts, maybe not as dominant given the size of players, but still a factor.

Offensively, Griner is just scratching the surface. She is just starting to take her dominance from the defensive end of the floor to the offensive side. In drill work at the Nike Regional Skills Academy in Houston, she picked up on the interior footwork as quickly as anyone and you could see the wheels spinning at how easy it was, much easier than the fadeaway jumpers for which she has historically settled during ames. Yes, the same shots that these coaches think they are “forcing” her into.

Allowed to roam the court because of her athleticism, Griner's been pretty successful at it. Hitting her on the wing in transition almost always leads to an easy bucket. The most intriguing thing about Griner is that she’s nothing like the tall players before her, for one because she’s taller than most of them. Unfortunately most of the players who reach 6-5 had such tremendous growth spurts that their coordination is lacking. We’ve all seen the tall post player who spends hours in the weight room but can’t put on significant muscle, it’s just not in their genes. The Baylor commit can glide up and down the court in transition and her coordination is not limited to running. Griner can change directions quickly with and without the ball. She has good leaping ability and more impressive is her body control while she’s in the air. She has touch on her finishes. You can point to players that have a few of these attributes but not all of them and not in a 6-8 frame.

Griner needs to continue to learn how to use leverage along with her strength. If she consistently stays in a strong athletic position she will find that there aren’t too many defenders who can really push her around and that she can finish when and where she wants to, a liberty that no other player has.

No disrespect to the top players in previous classes or even to this year’s crop of college All-Americans, but Brittney Griner can be better, a lot better, than all of them. Candace Parker is a phenomenal athlete and one of the most advanced offensive players the game has ever been blessed with, but Griner could be better. While Parker is the face of the game right now, Griner is the next full evolution of the game. By the time Griner is done in college she will have rewritten the expectations of the top female player and all her peers will know of her.

Griner can be the best ever to play the game and even if she doesn’t get any better she’ll still be one of the biggest impact players when she reaches Baylor. The things she does effortlessly will only be a fraction of her game when she’s done developing as a player. She listens too well, moves too smoothly and has too much potential not to be the best. Her development may be the single biggest piece in the evolution of the women’s game to take the novelty away from dunking and elevate the game itself. She didn’t sign up for this kind of responsibility, but the next evolution in womens’ basketball is in very good --and very large -- hands.

Chris Hansen is the National Director of Scouting for Women’s Basketball at HoopGurlz.com. He leads the panel that evaluates and ranks girl's basketball prospects nationally for HoopGurlz. Chris has been involved in the women’s basketball community since 1998 as a coach, trainer, evaluator and reporter. He can be reached at chris@hoopgurlz.com.