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WBB: Stanford 77 Long Beach State 41 - 81alum - 11-25-2012

Despite competition from the Forty Niners game, 3500 came out to welcome the team home after its amazing Hawaii trip, and to see the number one team in the nation drub Long Beach State.  The atmosphere was odd--no band, and the regular announcer was gone--but the team seemed to have enough intensity.

After the game Chiney and then Tara came out and talked to the crowd.  Chiney is a riot.  Asked by a youngster to give one word that described herself, she said "introverted" and the crowd cracked up. 

Tara did say something interesting about training.  She said they are not doing as much of it as they had before--in an effort to prevent foot injuries.  I presume this is a reference to Mikaela and others.  She said she talked to Kim Mulkey and the Baylor coach complained about all the foot injuries they were having.  Tara seems to think (with our depth) that it is better to conserve wear and tear on feet than to do too much training.  Besides, she said, all the TV timeouts reduce the need for training.

When Tara described the game, she kept coming back to Amber's play.  Amber is developing into a fabulous point guard.  Today she had 9 assists to 1 turnover--and the turnover was a potentially good pass that was mishandled.  The opponents sagged off of her at first, and she hit jumpers until they felt they had to try to guard her again.  She scored the first 7 points on three long jumpers.  Then she began her pick and roll action.  Tara said we saw a lot of "new stuff that hopefully will look a lot better in three months."  I get the impression that Tara is redesigning the offense around Amber.

Getting to the game, strong contributions from Taylor, Bonnie, and Joslyn helped us hit 10/24 three point shots.  Joslyn had 18 points and 7 rebounds, Chiney had 16 points and 11 rebounds.  One of these games Amber is going to have a triple double--she keeps getting rebounds--7 this time. 

I do have one concern, and that is Toni's health.  I'm not sure what is going on there--maybe Tara just knows she is prone to injury and is saving her, but she played only 11 minutes and scored only 2 points.  When Toni was in, she guarded Long Beach's best player, so Tara must think that Toni is our best perimeter defender.  But this is not the first game that Toni has been used very sparingly or not at all.  I wonder if she is still getting over that undisclosed illness.

Jasmine Camp and Sara James each got more minutes and more points than Toni.  I remember a year ago that Amber and Jasmine were pretty much equal, with Jasmine edging out Amber for minutes against Connecticut.  What a difference a year of experience makes.  Jasmine is pretty much a freshman now after her injury and sitting the year out.  She looks quick, and yet has a ways to go before she will catch up with Amber.  A year of experience makes a big difference, though Jasmine may well blossom now that she is healthy.

Tess got 9 minutes.  Tara said she is improving a lot in practice and will play her way into more time as the year goes on.  She got three rebounds.  I noticed that every time she brought the ball down the Long Beach players reached in to try to grab the ball from her--they were clearly coached to do that, and they succeeded in tying it up a couple of times on her.  At the very end of the game, Tess had the ball around the free thrown line and the whole crowd was begging her to shoot it, but she passed it out.  She does need a tad more aggression about taking shots when they are available.

It is an odd Fall season, with relatively few home games.  We won't have another home look until December 15 against Pacific, and then not again until Connecticut.

Re: WBB: Stanford 77 Long Beach State 41 - 81alum - 11-25-2012

(11-25-2012, 07:10 PM)garvin link Wrote:Hmm. If we put two and two together, does four equal a lingering foot problem for Toni Kokenis?
Yes, that would be a very plausible explanation. 

What was Toni's injury that limited her time toward the end of her freshman year?  Something happened to her against North Carolina (after playing 28 minutes) and she played only 8 minutes against Gonzaga and 4 minutes in the loss against A&M.  Was that a foot?

Re: WBB: Stanford 77 Long Beach State 41 - CompSci87 - 11-25-2012

(11-25-2012, 07:56 PM)81alum link Wrote:[quote author=garvin link=topic=7014.msg53488#msg53488 date=1353895855]
Hmm. If we put two and two together, does four equal a lingering foot problem for Toni Kokenis?
Yes, that would be a very plausible explanation. 

What was Toni's injury that limited her time toward the end of her freshman year?  Something happened to her against North Carolina (after playing 28 minutes) and she played only 8 minutes against Gonzaga and 4 minutes in the loss against A&M.  Was that a foot?
[/quote]

No, that was a sprained ankle.

Speculation on what Toni's illness or injury of this year was or is seems to me disrespectful. The coaches have politely but unambiguously refused to say when asked. Seems it is not public information.

There have been plenty of publicly disclosed foot injuries over the past few seasons to provide background for Tara's decision to do less running.

Re: WBB: Stanford 77 Long Beach State 41 - 81alum - 11-26-2012

Thanks for the reminder about the privacy of our athletes, CompSci.

It also could easily be something as simple as Tara trying to develop depth at the guard position.  Amber needs the time to continue to perfect her point guard skills.  Jasmine and Sara can use all the game time they can get to continue to develop their skills.  Toni has proven herself and may not need more game time.  She did have 30 minutes and a great game when she was needed against Baylor, and she played about half the time in the other two games in Hawaii.

Re: WBB: Stanford 77 Long Beach State 41 - M T - 11-26-2012

[And, now, back to basketball]

My impression of the game was that it wasn't particularly impressive.  The first half was good, even impressive at times, but the second half was weak.  If you want to blame the weak offensive output of the second half (won 28-21 by Stanford) on the subs, consider the first 6.5 minutes when the full starting lineup was in and Stanford only won 9-6 (which, by the way, works out to 28-19 for a half).  [Admittedly, Tara might have had them working on some aspect of the game, versus scoring.  I would say that the score is somewhat meaningless above, say, a 25 point differential.]

On the bright side, Stanford had the highest assist/FG ratio in this young season, but it only equals last year's average (58%).

Our 3PtA/FGA ratio was the highest of the season at 39%, but that's fine since we shot more effectively (10/24 = 42%, 1.26pts per 3ptA) from 3pt range vs 2pt range (21/37 = 57%, 1.14pts per 2ptA).

However, we had our worst outing for rebounding on the offensive end.  We only got 28% of the possible rebounds (last year's average was 41%).  I suppose some of that could be blamed on the relatively high percentage (14/30 of the FG misses) of the missed shots were threes (longer bounce, at least 1 fewer potential rebounder)

I was surprised that we had no fast break points.  But, if you didn't notice, it was our largest margin of victory so far.

As everyone has noted, Amber was impressive.  Toni was less so.  Joslyn also deserves special notice.  Tara kept her in the game for 4 minutes longer than anyone else.  I felt she was there to stabilize the game when the subs were in, and of course, she was shooting very well.

Last year, I wasn't particularly hopeful that Bonnie would be able to contribute significantly to the team.  She's really improved and can contribute more than those instant 3s.

I think it was about midway through the second half when I saw Jasmine react as though her foot was hurt at the offensive end and was limping slightly as she headed back on defense.  I didn't see the cause, but she no longer was favoring it by the next time Stanford was on offense.

I also believe that Chiney has advanced the other aspects of her game.  I think the 3-on-3 basketball helped that.

When I look at the season statistics, I see some difference from last year that you might expect.  But since it is still so early in the season and we've played (generally) weak teams, I don't put much faith in the statistics so far.

I will say that I think we are incredibly deep with high quality players.  We no longer are a team with a strong first team and a passable second team, as we've been for many years.  The second team (here, 4 players) has become a good team, with each of them able to come in and contribute something special.  I believe the players in general really improved over the off-season.  I would suspect that Tara laid out how they could win if they each improved as they have, and the players did what they needed over the summer.

For this game, this shows the net change in the score (NetPts) while each player is in the game, along with their total time.  NetP/G is the result of normalizing the NetPts to a 40 minute game.  As has been pointed out, this isn't sufficient to evaluate a player as it doesn't account for the other teammates while a player is in, nor does it account for the opponent's players during those minutes.  (This is from the Play-by-Play, which is sometimes inaccurate.)

Player                Min NetPts  NetP/G
Camp, Jasmine        16:27      6  14.59
Greenfield, Taylor  23:45    24  40.42
James, Sara          11:51      8  27.00
Kokenis, Toni        11:03    10  36.20
Lakhian, Kiran        1:30      0    0.00
Ogwumike, Chiney    26:23    28  42.45
Orrange, Amber      25:38    32  49.93
Picknell, Tess        8:27    -1  -4.73
Ruef, Mikaela        21:17    22  41.35
Samuelson, Bonnie    23:12    24  41.38
Tinkle, Joslyn      30:27    37  48.60



Re: WBB: Stanford 77 Long Beach State 41 - 81alum - 11-27-2012

Very nice analysis, MT.

A few months ago, I posted a list of 9 questions that I wanted to see positive answers to if this year's team was to get back to the final four.  Here is my list again with current answers to the questions in italics:

1. Will Chiney develop a better jump shot?
She continues to be effective, even when playing alone inside against a zone, but I have not seen her sinking lots of jump shots so far.  Am I missing them?

2. Will Joslyn be more consistent on offense, and have her best year ever?
My impression of Joslyn a couple of years ago was that she could score against shorter, less athletic, inferior players with ease, but she went dormant against equals.  Against Baylor she scored 11 points on 4/7 shooting--so she has proven she can hold her own against quality opposition.  Her defense has also improved.  But I'm not ready to check this one off the list just yet.

3. Will Toni cure her 3 pt. shooting slump?
Not yet.  She is 1/7 so far this year.  But it is early.

4. Will Amber develop any regular 3 pt. shot?
She is 2/5 so far, but she regularly hits fairly long 2 point jumpers, so the trend is in the right direction.

5. Will Taylor learn how to score more and not just defend?
She is averaging 6.8 ppg so far this season, and averaged 3.6 ppg last season.  So far so good.

6. Will Mikaela blossom now that she is healthy and likely to play in her natural position?
Yes.  As a defender she is doing very well.  Now if she can score even a little bit...

7. Will Jasmine get back to form after injury?
She does seem to have her speed and quickness back, but not her shot yet.  She only played in 8 games last year but averaged 3.6 ppg.  So far this year she is averaging 1.2. 

8. Will Tess be more than a limited-time defensive player during her first year?  Will she show signs of becoming the next Jayne?
Bob immediately rejected the premise of my question--that Tess could be judged by Jayne standards.  Well, OK.  How about Dolson instead?  Kidding aside, Tess is showing a lot of growth and improvement, but it remains to be seen how far she can go.  Watching her development is going to be interesting this year into next.

9. Will Bonnie diversify her game?
Yes, she will, it seems.  Her defense is much improved, and I've seen her take the ball to the hoop a few times.  She is 3/7 from two point range.

Re: WBB: Stanford 77 Long Beach State 41 - M T - 11-27-2012

(11-27-2012, 01:49 AM)81alum link Wrote:1. Will Chiney develop a better jump shot?
She continues to be effective, even when playing alone inside against a zone, but I have not seen her sinking lots of jump shots so far.  Am I missing them?
I guess your concern here is that if the defense can pack it in & cut off passes to the inside, can Chiney (et al) still get the ball & score.

From the play-by-plays (by game,  Baylor was the 3rd game)
Layups: 8/10 ; 3/6 ; 1/2 ; 0/1 ; 7/8 ; 5/7  Total: 24/34
Jumpers (made shots are distinguished whether they are in the paint; misses aren't) 
(Format: Paint FG + non-Paint FG / Total attempts)
  1+1 / 4 ; 2+4 / 8 ; 3+3 / 10 ; 4+1 /9 ; 5+0 / 8 ; 1+0 / 2  Total 16+9 / 41
3Ptrs:  Against Baylor (game 3): 1/2

That's not many points outside the paint, but by itself that doesn't prove much.  These stats don't give us a good read on jumpers other than outside the paint she's no worse than 9/25 (36%).  I'd guess she's shooting closer to 50%, just like she is on the small sample of 3 pointers.  She was 60% for all jumpers in the Baylor game, which is probably the best indication.

(11-27-2012, 01:49 AM)81alum link Wrote:2. Will Joslyn be more consistent on offense, and have her best year ever?
My impression of Joslyn a couple of years ago was that she could score against shorter, less athletic, inferior players with ease, but she went dormant against equals.  Against Baylor she scored 11 points on 4/7 shooting--so she has proven she can hold her own against quality opposition.  Her defense has also improved.  But I'm not ready to check this one off the list just yet.

Why not ask the same question of Chiney?  If we take the Baylor game this year, last year's last 3 games in the tourney, and the last two games against Cal, Chiney scored 74pts in 196 min (15.1pt/40min), while Joslyn scored 58 in 189 min (12.3pt/40min).  This year, they're averaging 26.3pt/40min and 23.2pt/40min.  If Joslyn had done relatively poorer than Chiney in those 6 games against quality opponents, then I might accept your concerns.  But I'd say the numbers aren't there to support the concern, unless you're similarly concerned about Chiney.

(11-27-2012, 01:49 AM)81alum link Wrote:4. Will Amber develop any regular 3 pt. shot?
She is 2/5 so far, but she regularly hits fairly long 2 point jumpers, so the trend is in the right direction.
At 18.1pts/40min and 8.6A/40min, she's doing quite well offensively so far.  My concern is her ability to deal with quick opponents, and to keep her head (and the ball) in an intense press.

(11-27-2012, 01:49 AM)81alum link Wrote:5. Will Taylor learn how to score more and not just defend?
She is averaging 6.8 ppg so far this season, and averaged 3.6 ppg last season.  So far so good.
That's 11.7pts/40min, with 43% 3PT average.  She's clearly capable of scoring, but she's not taken on that role.

(11-27-2012, 01:49 AM)81alum link Wrote:7. Will Jasmine get back to form after injury?
She does seem to have her speed and quickness back, but not her shot yet.  She only played in 8 games last year but averaged 3.6 ppg.  So far this year she is averaging 1.2. 
If there is a problem with Toni that impairs her performance through the year, one of Sara or Jasmine is going to be needed.  I was impressed with some of Sara's play against Corban, but haven't seen her do that again in the limited time I've been able to see her play. 

(11-27-2012, 01:49 AM)81alum link Wrote:8. Will Tess be more than a limited-time defensive player during her first year?  Will she show signs of becoming the next Jayne?
Bob immediately rejected the premise of my question--that Tess could be judged by Jayne standards.  Well, OK.  How about Dolson instead?  Kidding aside, Tess is showing a lot of growth and improvement, but it remains to be seen how far she can go.  Watching her development is going to be interesting this year into next.
From the little I've seen, I can't see her contributing during any serious game this year.  I hope she's up to the task next year.


My thoughts are that we seem to be a team that will be good overall, but our ability to beat Baylor will depend upon our 3 point production.  We did it once; we'll likely have to do it again.  Can we sustain that? 

If we rain threes, we should be able to beat any team, once we get the ball into the front court.  UConn & other teams that are quick will press us.  I believe that our forwards are cool-headed enough to help break a press, if they're expecting it.  But if we only have two guards back and are hit with a press, I'm concerned.  I believe Toni can handle that, if she's ok.

Our offense will mainly come from our forwards against most teams (with Amber feeding them).  If they're thwarted (from getting the ball, or by foul trouble, etc), we would then rely on threes to change things.  If that fails, we'd like to see drives to the basket (Toni).  If that fails, the other team should be in foul trouble.

One problem of having 3pt shooting as an important factor is that it seems players can lose their confidence and stop hitting.  Does anyone have a good explanation why we shot threes so poorly against Fresno State??  We had our shots; we just didn't make them.




Re: WBB: Stanford 77 Long Beach State 41 - BobK - 11-27-2012

I do not think Toni is injured at all but she was out for awhile and I suspect getting back into playing condition.  Time will tell.Â