[2006alum]

Many were passes up court to force SC to run.  We had players breaking early even before the rebound was secure to be ready to receive a long pass, and thus SC had to run back on defense early to avoid our fast break.  Marta was bringing the ball up the court with her head up always looking for a pass to accelerate the break.  Once we settled into the halfcourt I think passing and pace were more energetic too, but not all that different from prior games.  The difference is that Marta deliberately "pushed" the pace to maintain a credible threat of a fast break whenever possible.  This made SC run.

Another thing to keep in mind--SC specializes in creating turnovers and that is one of its best statistics this season.  They had 11 steals.  That leaves 8 unforced errors, more or less, and most of those were on passes that didn't quite work.

Another observation.  Turnovers by quarter: 6 6 2 5.  Three of the turnovers in the 4th quarter came in that silly stretch in the last 30 seconds.  So, in general, we dramatically cut back on turnovers for all the minutes that mattered in the second half.

Although this was a turnover-heavy game, I like where Tara is going with this. Compared to our more dominant years, the one leg up we have now is that we are considerably more athletic. While Appel, Pederson and Pohlen were all top players, none was especially athletic, and we were noticeably bad at up-tempo games with close guarding and presses. In contrast, when our bench is deep and we have no particular standout player we MUST get the ball to, playing fast and risking turnovers for exhausting the opposing team seems like a great strategy, especially teams with one or two standout players like Fagbenle, who was effectively neutralized in the game.

With such a rotating cast, out of curiosity I ran the +/- differential for each of our players for the game. Heres's what it looks like:

Lili: +9
Erica: +7
Karlie: +10
Marta: +13
Kailee: +1
Kaylee: +10
Brittany: -2
Alanna: +2

As a reminder, this number shows how much we went up (or down) relative to the other team in the time that player was on the floor during the whole game. It doesn't relate at all to that player's individual scoring other than how her scoring contributes to the overall differential while she's on the floor. This is a common metric in NBA games but for some reason (resources probably?) isn't calculated for college ball. It's especially helpful in helping to determine how much a player subtly contributes to assists and/or is a liability on defense.

At a quick glance, these numbers are not what I would have guessed. Somehow despite being two of our least potent offensive weapons, when Marta and Kaylee are on the court, we spread our leads the farthest (Kaylee, recently, has been much stronger on the offensive end). Karlie is more predictable. I was somewhat surprised Erica didn't have a stronger differential. And interestingly, at least in this game, the presence of Brittany and Alanna didn't contribute much. Obviously this is an imperfect measure in any given game - I may try to do this for several of our next games to get a sense of things over time. Now that I've made the excel spreadsheet to auto-calculate things, it's not too much hassle.

[2006alum]

Many were passes up court to force SC to run.  We had players breaking early even before the rebound was secure to be ready to receive a long pass, and thus SC had to run back on defense early to avoid our fast break.  Marta was bringing the ball up the court with her head up always looking for a pass to accelerate the break.  Once we settled into the halfcourt I think passing and pace were more energetic too, but not all that different from prior games.  The difference is that Marta deliberately "pushed" the pace to maintain a credible threat of a fast break whenever possible.  This made SC run.

Another thing to keep in mind--SC specializes in creating turnovers and that is one of its best statistics this season.  They had 11 steals.  That leaves 8 unforced errors, more or less, and most of those were on passes that didn't quite work.

Another observation.  Turnovers by quarter: 6 6 2 5.  Three of the turnovers in the 4th quarter came in that silly stretch in the last 30 seconds.  So, in general, we dramatically cut back on turnovers for all the minutes that mattered in the second half.

Although this was a turnover-heavy game, I like where Tara is going with this. Compared to our more dominant years, the one leg up we have now is that we are considerably more athletic. While Appel, Pederson and Pohlen were all top players, none was especially athletic, and we were noticeably bad at up-tempo games with close guarding and presses. In contrast, when our bench is deep and we have no particular standout player we MUST get the ball to, playing fast and risking turnovers for exhausting the opposing team seems like a great strategy, especially teams with one or two standout players like Fagbenle, who was effectively neutralized in the game.

With such a rotating cast, out of curiosity I ran the +/- differential for each of our players for the game. Heres's what it looks like:

Lili: +9
Erica: +7
Karlie: +10
Marta: +13
Kailee: +1
Kaylee: +10
Brittany: -2
Alanna: +2

As a reminder, this number shows how much we went up (or down) relative to the other team in the time that player was on the floor during the whole game. It doesn't relate at all to that player's individual scoring other than how her scoring contributes to the overall differential while she's on the floor. This is a common metric in NBA games but for some reason (resources probably?) isn't calculated for college ball. It's especially helpful in helping to determine how much a player subtly contributes to assists and/or is a liability on defense.

At a quick glance, these numbers are not what I would have guessed. Somehow despite being two of our least potent offensive weapons, when Marta and Kaylee are on the court, we spread our leads the farthest (Kaylee, recently, has been much stronger on the offensive end). Karlie is more predictable. I was somewhat surprised Erica didn't have a stronger differential. And interestingly, at least in this game, the presence of Brittany and Alanna didn't contribute much. Obviously this is an imperfect measure in any given game - I may try to do this for several of our next games to get a sense of things over time. Now that I've made the excel spreadsheet to auto-calculate things, it's not too much hassle.