VCU's Parks - Oh, what a week!

We're running out of words to describe what VCU's Robyn Parks is doing on a basketball court these days. In fact, on Saturday night, after she'd carried the Rams to a come-from-behind win at Duquesne, this was all we could come up with:

@_RobDoTheJob_ Wow.
— LadySwish (@Ladyswish) January 5, 2014

Pretty lame, huh? Well, it took us a while, but we think we've finally settled on a word that accurately conveys the impact Parks is having this season in general and last week in particular.

I mean, the numbers are strong by themselves. She had 27 points and 11 rebounds against Old Dominion, 22 and 7 against UMass and 31 and 9 vs. Duquesne, while shooting 59.6 percent from the field over the three games.

But Parks didn't just stuff the stat sheet. She flat-out took over when the Rams most needed a boost. Last Monday, for example, after a late 6-0 Old Dominion run cut VCU's lead to just four at halftime, Parks scored 12 straight VCU points before the first media timeout of the second half. The Rams went on to win by 13.

Against UMass, well, every Ram went off against UMass. But on Saturday, with the Rams trailing by 9 in the second half at Duquesne, it was as though Parks said, "Get on my back, ladies, we ain't losing this puppy." She scored eight points in the 10-0 run that gave VCU a short-lived lead. Her steal and fastbreak layup with 1:15 left got the Rams within one. And her three-point play with 45 seconds left put VCU ahead to stay. In the Rams' 71-68 victory, 22 of Parks' 31 points came in the second half.

The performance was so good, it deserves a musical tribute.



So yeah, it all left us pretty speechless for a while. But then it came to us, the ideal term to describe the superstar turns Parks is routinely delivering. It's a word we don't toss out casually - no one should - but in this case, it fits like Serena's catsuit.

Jordanesque.

By the way, we noticed that ESPN named Baylor's Odyssey Sims its national player of the week. Now, our stance has been misunderstood about this before so we want to make this clear - Sims is without question a great player, and we're sure the folks at ESPN take their work seriously.  But when you hand out a national award, you're essentially saying you've looked everywhere before weighing in. Do the voters understand what kind of week, what kind of impact, Parks had? Was she even considered?

Then again, we're pretty sure Parks isn't too bothered. A year ago we tried to get her to open up about scoring 30-something points in a game the Rams lost, and she looked at us like we were crazy. The young lady's all about wins, not stats, and with the Rams sitting at 14-1 (2-0 Atlantic 10) with a school-record 13 straight victories, who cares who gets the credit, right?

So if she isn't sweating individual accolades, we won't either.

But it was still one heck of a week.

Kinda like Mike.