[81alum]

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 time in the time that player was on the floor during the game. It doesn't relate at all to that player's individual scoring other than how it contributes to the overall differential. This is a common metric in NBA games but for some reason (resources probably?) isn't calculated for college ball.

This is not what I would have guessed, superficially. Somehow despite being two of our least potent offensive weapons, when Marta and Kaylee are on the court, we spread our leads the farthest. Karlie is more predictable. 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.

Thanks 2006!  MT I think used to do this sort of analysis--ran into the problem that the play-by-play is not always accurate about substitutions and hence time played.  For example, in looking at the boxscore on GoStanford, the final substitution of Alex, Tess, and Alexa with a minute left is not recorded.  Not sure if there is a better boxscore somewhere....  But I find this fascinating.  Given the hints Kate has given about the use of stats in the coaching decisions, I imagine that the coaches are very well aware of this and similar stats, over time. 

When I do my first write-ups it is before the full boxscores become available--prior to the minutes played being posted.  In looking those minutes-played over today, I noticed that even though Tara played 8 players for much of the game, four players got 30+ minutes (McCall, Thompson, Sniezek, and Samuelson) and the final slot was split between Kaylee and Kailee, with Britt and Alanna playing small roles in relief.  The time was not spread out as much as, for example, ASU does between its players.  In last night's ASU win over Arizona, ASU played 10 players, none more than 30 with most of its starters in the mid 20s.  Most of our starters (other than Kailee) were in the mid 30s.  So Tara has not really embraced the deep rotation model as much as I expected.

On Sniezek's differential, she played for 35 of the 40 minutes, and she left the game before Tara sent the third string in for the last minute that immediately gave up 3 turnovers and six points.  We were leading by about 15 when she left, so I see where that number comes from.

With Bri out for the game, this was a game that Alex Green or Alexa Romano might have gotten some meaningful time, if Tara thought they were ready.  The fact that they did not get into the game until the last minute is strong evidence that the coaches think Alexa is not ready yet, and Alex must be having problems reclaiming her old form after such a prolonged injury.  She could be 100% healthy, but still missed months of practice and it is beginning to look like she won't make it back to meaningful play time.

However, with Tara limited to just Marta and Lili, during the small number of minutes of meaningful time that Marta or Lili rested, we saw some interesting lineups much like the ones we had been speculating about on these boards, with Karlie playing the 2.

Finally, it doesn't seem like we are doing our "job" on this board without scrutinizing the team and analyzing weaknesses and areas for improvement.  But let's stress a few positives.  We did win the game for a reason, after all.  Or for a few reasons!

1) The blocking was fantastic.  In fact, the best I have ever seen--better than when we had Appel and Nneka even.  And the sum total of all those blocks were incredibly intimidating for SC to handle.  Just superb work.  We are turning into a dominant inside-defense team.  Our defense on the perimeter may not be as strong, but isn't bad.

2) Ever since Arizona, the shooting of McCall, Lili, and Bri has been unreliable.  Bri didn't play last night, but McCall and Lili showed strong signs of coming out of their shooting slumps.  They each seemed to have their confidence back.

3) Tara tried some creative lineups and is clearly aware of the offensive issues and experimenting to find ways to solve them.  Marta made some mistakes, but is steadily showing signs of growth.  The two times she took it in to the basket she showed very fast acceleration and made quite difficult layups to go--around much taller players.  They were nice moves.

4) Karlie didn't make a single trey and only made one attempt against Oregon State.  She had 6 attempts and they were mostly good looks, and she sank 4.  The team was doing a much better job of getting her opportunities, and she was doing a better job of sinking them.

[81alum]

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 time in the time that player was on the floor during the game. It doesn't relate at all to that player's individual scoring other than how it contributes to the overall differential. This is a common metric in NBA games but for some reason (resources probably?) isn't calculated for college ball.

This is not what I would have guessed, superficially. Somehow despite being two of our least potent offensive weapons, when Marta and Kaylee are on the court, we spread our leads the farthest. Karlie is more predictable. 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.

Thanks 2006!  MT I think used to do this sort of analysis--ran into the problem that the play-by-play is not always accurate about substitutions and hence time played.  For example, in looking at the boxscore on GoStanford, the final substitution of Alex, Tess, and Alexa with a minute left is not recorded.  Not sure if there is a better boxscore somewhere....  But I find this fascinating.  Given the hints Kate has given about the use of stats in the coaching decisions, I imagine that the coaches are very well aware of this and similar stats, over time. 

When I do my first write-ups it is before the full boxscores become available--prior to the minutes played being posted.  In looking those minutes-played over today, I noticed that even though Tara played 8 players for much of the game, four players got 30+ minutes (McCall, Thompson, Sniezek, and Samuelson) and the final slot was split between Kaylee and Kailee, with Britt and Alanna playing small roles in relief.  The time was not spread out as much as, for example, ASU does between its players.  In last night's ASU win over Arizona, ASU played 10 players, none more than 30 with most of its starters in the mid 20s.  Most of our starters (other than Kailee) were in the mid 30s.  So Tara has not really embraced the deep rotation model as much as I expected.

On Sniezek's differential, she played for 35 of the 40 minutes, and she left the game before Tara sent the third string in for the last minute that immediately gave up 3 turnovers and six points.  We were leading by about 15 when she left, so I see where that number comes from.

With Bri out for the game, this was a game that Alex Green or Alexa Romano might have gotten some meaningful time, if Tara thought they were ready.  The fact that they did not get into the game until the last minute is strong evidence that the coaches think Alexa is not ready yet, and Alex must be having problems reclaiming her old form after such a prolonged injury.  She could be 100% healthy, but still missed months of practice and it is beginning to look like she won't make it back to meaningful play time.

However, with Tara limited to just Marta and Lili, during the small number of minutes of meaningful time that Marta or Lili rested, we saw some interesting lineups much like the ones we had been speculating about on these boards, with Karlie playing the 2.

Finally, it doesn't seem like we are doing our "job" on this board without scrutinizing the team and analyzing weaknesses and areas for improvement.  But let's stress a few positives.  We did win the game for a reason, after all.  Or for a few reasons!

1) The blocking was fantastic.  In fact, the best I have ever seen--better than when we had Appel and Nneka even.  And the sum total of all those blocks were incredibly intimidating for SC to handle.  Just superb work.  We are turning into a dominant inside-defense team.  Our defense on the perimeter may not be as strong, but isn't bad.

2) Ever since Arizona, the shooting of McCall, Lili, and Bri has been unreliable.  Bri didn't play last night, but McCall and Lili showed strong signs of coming out of their shooting slumps.  They each seemed to have their confidence back.

3) Tara tried some creative lineups and is clearly aware of the offensive issues and experimenting to find ways to solve them.  Marta made some mistakes, but is steadily showing signs of growth.  The two times she took it in to the basket she showed very fast acceleration and made quite difficult layups to go--around much taller players.  They were nice moves.

4) Karlie didn't make a single trey and only made one attempt against Oregon State.  She had 6 attempts and they were mostly good looks, and she sank 4.  The team was doing a much better job of getting her opportunities, and she was doing a better job of sinking them.