With her tough interior presence and amazing personality, Maud will be missed.
At the start of the season, I felt pretty confident that Maud would have a big ‘24-25 campaign as she no longer had players like Eliza Hollingsworth ahead of her on the depth chart. I predicted that she’d finish the year with a stat line of 28 minutes, 11 points, 8 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.5 steal, and 1.2 block.
As the primary big next to Yvonne Ejim, Huijbens did end up finishing with just under 28 minutes per game, but thanks to some injuries that impacted the squad’s depth and a midseason concussion that forced her to miss 6 games after which her minutes dropped off with Esther Little playing more, the counting stats fell a bit short.
That’s not to say it was a poor season for the Dutchwoman, but with 9.7 points, 6.7 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.4 blocks, it wasn’t the step-up I had hoped for over the summer. Maybe some of this came from the substantial uptick in her minutes played and importance in the system as in previous years, she filled more of a 6th/7th person off the bench. This means that she was going to face-off against more 1st-team players and received more attention in the scouting.
If you look at her shooting numbers prior in ‘23-24, Maud put up a then-career high 4.8 shots per game of which she made 54.% on two pointers and 40.9% on three balls. When look at this past year, she shot 9 per game and finished 48% and 24.2% from her two point and three point attempts, respectively. Part of this comes from a terrible start to the season as in non-conference play, she went 4-23 from beyond the arc and 30-66 on two point field goals. But it’s not all of it as this Zags squad really didn’t have the same high quality ball distribution seen in years past which resulted in lower quality opportunities for the 6’2” forward.
Despite the poor start to the campaign, Maud ended up posting some great games this year. One such notable example came in an early December overtime loss to the Colorado State Rams when she posted 15 points on 50% shooting along with a career high 19 rebounds. Another has to be her two game stretch after the calendar turned to 2025 when she dropped 19 points and 12 rebounds against Portland that she followed up with a career high 23 point and 10 rebound performance in Gonzaga’s most dominating win of the year against Santa Clara.
For me, Maud’s the kind of player that I think the Bulldog community and program will miss very much. From everything I’ve seen, she looked to be an ideal teammate with high levels of professionalism. She fought hard in the paint and I never saw her get too down on the court when things weren’t going her way. While I have this feeling with most departing Zags, I really wish Maud had another year to give us. 2024-2025 was really her only year of regular playing time and I can only imagine what she would bring with another offseason of development. Plus, this upcoming Zags squad is going to be quite light on players in the interior and even more inexperienced so her impact will be felt even more.
I wish Maud the best in her next steps and hope that she spreads the word of Gonzaga to her Dutch compatriots. Good luck!