02-02-2016, 07:29 AM
Overview:
The best offense on the floor tonight was the California Rush, the 5th graders who performed at halftime. The national player of the week returned to earth with a 3-15 performance and showed that without her hot shooting we are quite mediocre on offense. Fortunately, California was even worse that we were, and we bludgeoned our way to a win in a relatively ugly game.
Pregame:
After a pair of much-needed wins over the Washington schools, we need another pair of wins over our cross bay rival if we are going to create something good out of this season. With only a one day turn-around there has not been much time to install a scouting report defense tailored to the C.al players. C.al, which began the season with high hopes, has been struggling mightily in conference play, where it is 2-8. This despite the fact that they have the best freshman in the country in Kristine Anigwe, who at 20 ppg is the nations #25 scorer. She also pulls down 9 rp, blocks shots, and makes most of her free throws. Not at all bad for a freshman, and she is only going to get better over the next four years. So what has gone wrong for C.al? Graduations, player dismissals, injuries...they have only 9 TOTAL players on their roster now, and 2 play very limited minutes. A successful strategy is to rotate a lot of fresh players against them and make them work hard until their energy flags in the fourth quarter, and many teams have exploited this. C.al is dangerous, though, ranked 67 out of 344 in scoring offense, and 260th in defense. But as we saw with UCLA, if C.al wants to go zone and our shooters go cold--why any defense can make us look bad under those circumstances.
Coaches notes:
Tempie got a rare chance to talk to us after a win. Tonight there were lots of excellent questions, even a question about a non-performing player. The greatest insight came when Tempie explained some of the complexities of our man defense based on analytics. Doubling a player who has a strong directional tendency when that player is to the right of the key, not doubling them when they are left of the key--stuff like that. I think it even impressed the hardcore basketball fans. And it is working quite well--defense is the only reason we have a winning record right now. She talked about the challenge of covering Anigwe. She also discussed the hope that we would build a good lead and have a chance to play a lot more players, given how many games we have had in so few days. She discussed McPhee playing well in the first half of the last game and getting pulled in the second--for nothing that she did, but because she and Karlie mainly share the same slot and Karlie was playing so well. She discussed the struggle to get freshmen integrated--Marta's need to score, Alanna's need for consistency, etc.Â
Flow of the Game
The first quarter repeated our general tendency to start out ice cold. The one bit of good news is that Bri hit a trey--her first in league play, believe it or not, and this created hope that global warming was helping her emerge from the ice age. But the bad news was that Lili looked nothing at all like the national player of the week, starting off missing a jumper, a trey, another trey, a jumper, a trey, a layup, another layup, another layup, another layup, yet another layup, until making her first basket--a trey, with 2:30 left in the third quarter. We were going to find out if we could win a game without our leading scorer, I guess.
In fact, the first half was simply appalling from an offensive standpoint. Am I hopelessly biased to think that C.al's offense was terrible because of our awesome defense, but our offense was terrible because...our offense was terrible? Ca.l did not leave a lot of open shooters, true, but they certainly did not seem to be playing suffocating defense a la ASU. As so often has happened, we often passed up semi-open shots hoping to get fully open shots that never materialized. Erica was taking 15 foot jumpers and not making them. By some act of divine intervention both teams reached the lofty heights of two dozen points in the half, and we took a commanding 25-24 point lead into halftime.Â
The third quarter was also dreadful, with Stanford outscoring C.al 10-9. I missed the crisp fast breaks of the California Crush by that point. Still, our defense stayed relatively solid, although the refs went from allowing anything at all to go in the paint to calling fouls on our double teams whenever Anigwe or Range decided to bump into our people. With eight minutes left in the game C.al had cut the lead to one point, and things were looking bleak--althought I was beginning to think that both teams might go scoreless for the final 8!. But then Karlie hit a trey, and a few minutes later Lili got two layups to go down, and and 8 point lead seemed almost insurmountable. It turns out it was. Free throws were all that was left.
Performances
Does anyone remember a Stanford player as streaky as Lili has been this year? From the best offensive player in the nation to 3/15, 1/5 from three point range.Â
Erica had yet another double-double, but she had to work hard for her 11 points. She wound up 5/9, but I would guess most of the misses were jumpers in the first half, and most of the makes were layups (and one jumper) in the second. She obviously has permission to shoot the 15 foot jumper this year, and sometimes they go down--but not with any consistency. Her 13 rebounds--5 offensive--were critical, and helped us out rebound C.al
Karlie is coming into her own this year, and quietly has been building her portfolio as our most consistent player. She had a game leading 15 points and shot 3/4 from three point range. She continues to take the ball to the rim when there is an opening. She hit 4/4 free throws, 6 rebounds and 4 assists, and won several scrappy hustle plays as usual. Today, she was our most valuable player.
Kaylee vacuumed up 15 rebounds--almost all defensive--had a couple of assists but only 3 points. She got into foul trouble attempting to keep Anigwe in check.
Marta started but soon left for Bri, who had 9 points and kept the defense honest. McPhee played quite a bit but was only 1/5. The coaches clearly want to see her defense improve. Kailee was healthy enough to play but had some real problems on defense and did not get a lot of minutes. She had one high post-to-the-basket move for a much needed basket in the second half, but I don't think she is 100%.
As a team we won rebounding, almost entirely because of Bird and Kaylee. We had 12 assists on 18 made baskets, so our passing was helping some. Turnovers at 15 seemed about average for us.Â
Conclusion:
Our defense is really, really good. Unfortunately, so too is ASU's and OSU's. Our offense right now depends on Karlie and Bird and Lili shooting well. WHen we go to C.al on Friday, all three had better be ready to shoot, because C.al is a better offensive team when they are at home, and they kept the game tonight highly competitive. We are not used to thinking of C.al as an easy win, but the truth is that C.al is not a good team just now, and we need a second win over them. And hopefully a win with no drama.
The best offense on the floor tonight was the California Rush, the 5th graders who performed at halftime. The national player of the week returned to earth with a 3-15 performance and showed that without her hot shooting we are quite mediocre on offense. Fortunately, California was even worse that we were, and we bludgeoned our way to a win in a relatively ugly game.
Pregame:
After a pair of much-needed wins over the Washington schools, we need another pair of wins over our cross bay rival if we are going to create something good out of this season. With only a one day turn-around there has not been much time to install a scouting report defense tailored to the C.al players. C.al, which began the season with high hopes, has been struggling mightily in conference play, where it is 2-8. This despite the fact that they have the best freshman in the country in Kristine Anigwe, who at 20 ppg is the nations #25 scorer. She also pulls down 9 rp, blocks shots, and makes most of her free throws. Not at all bad for a freshman, and she is only going to get better over the next four years. So what has gone wrong for C.al? Graduations, player dismissals, injuries...they have only 9 TOTAL players on their roster now, and 2 play very limited minutes. A successful strategy is to rotate a lot of fresh players against them and make them work hard until their energy flags in the fourth quarter, and many teams have exploited this. C.al is dangerous, though, ranked 67 out of 344 in scoring offense, and 260th in defense. But as we saw with UCLA, if C.al wants to go zone and our shooters go cold--why any defense can make us look bad under those circumstances.
Coaches notes:
Tempie got a rare chance to talk to us after a win. Tonight there were lots of excellent questions, even a question about a non-performing player. The greatest insight came when Tempie explained some of the complexities of our man defense based on analytics. Doubling a player who has a strong directional tendency when that player is to the right of the key, not doubling them when they are left of the key--stuff like that. I think it even impressed the hardcore basketball fans. And it is working quite well--defense is the only reason we have a winning record right now. She talked about the challenge of covering Anigwe. She also discussed the hope that we would build a good lead and have a chance to play a lot more players, given how many games we have had in so few days. She discussed McPhee playing well in the first half of the last game and getting pulled in the second--for nothing that she did, but because she and Karlie mainly share the same slot and Karlie was playing so well. She discussed the struggle to get freshmen integrated--Marta's need to score, Alanna's need for consistency, etc.Â
Flow of the Game
The first quarter repeated our general tendency to start out ice cold. The one bit of good news is that Bri hit a trey--her first in league play, believe it or not, and this created hope that global warming was helping her emerge from the ice age. But the bad news was that Lili looked nothing at all like the national player of the week, starting off missing a jumper, a trey, another trey, a jumper, a trey, a layup, another layup, another layup, another layup, yet another layup, until making her first basket--a trey, with 2:30 left in the third quarter. We were going to find out if we could win a game without our leading scorer, I guess.
In fact, the first half was simply appalling from an offensive standpoint. Am I hopelessly biased to think that C.al's offense was terrible because of our awesome defense, but our offense was terrible because...our offense was terrible? Ca.l did not leave a lot of open shooters, true, but they certainly did not seem to be playing suffocating defense a la ASU. As so often has happened, we often passed up semi-open shots hoping to get fully open shots that never materialized. Erica was taking 15 foot jumpers and not making them. By some act of divine intervention both teams reached the lofty heights of two dozen points in the half, and we took a commanding 25-24 point lead into halftime.Â
The third quarter was also dreadful, with Stanford outscoring C.al 10-9. I missed the crisp fast breaks of the California Crush by that point. Still, our defense stayed relatively solid, although the refs went from allowing anything at all to go in the paint to calling fouls on our double teams whenever Anigwe or Range decided to bump into our people. With eight minutes left in the game C.al had cut the lead to one point, and things were looking bleak--althought I was beginning to think that both teams might go scoreless for the final 8!. But then Karlie hit a trey, and a few minutes later Lili got two layups to go down, and and 8 point lead seemed almost insurmountable. It turns out it was. Free throws were all that was left.
Performances
Does anyone remember a Stanford player as streaky as Lili has been this year? From the best offensive player in the nation to 3/15, 1/5 from three point range.Â
Erica had yet another double-double, but she had to work hard for her 11 points. She wound up 5/9, but I would guess most of the misses were jumpers in the first half, and most of the makes were layups (and one jumper) in the second. She obviously has permission to shoot the 15 foot jumper this year, and sometimes they go down--but not with any consistency. Her 13 rebounds--5 offensive--were critical, and helped us out rebound C.al
Karlie is coming into her own this year, and quietly has been building her portfolio as our most consistent player. She had a game leading 15 points and shot 3/4 from three point range. She continues to take the ball to the rim when there is an opening. She hit 4/4 free throws, 6 rebounds and 4 assists, and won several scrappy hustle plays as usual. Today, she was our most valuable player.
Kaylee vacuumed up 15 rebounds--almost all defensive--had a couple of assists but only 3 points. She got into foul trouble attempting to keep Anigwe in check.
Marta started but soon left for Bri, who had 9 points and kept the defense honest. McPhee played quite a bit but was only 1/5. The coaches clearly want to see her defense improve. Kailee was healthy enough to play but had some real problems on defense and did not get a lot of minutes. She had one high post-to-the-basket move for a much needed basket in the second half, but I don't think she is 100%.
As a team we won rebounding, almost entirely because of Bird and Kaylee. We had 12 assists on 18 made baskets, so our passing was helping some. Turnovers at 15 seemed about average for us.Â
Conclusion:
Our defense is really, really good. Unfortunately, so too is ASU's and OSU's. Our offense right now depends on Karlie and Bird and Lili shooting well. WHen we go to C.al on Friday, all three had better be ready to shoot, because C.al is a better offensive team when they are at home, and they kept the game tonight highly competitive. We are not used to thinking of C.al as an easy win, but the truth is that C.al is not a good team just now, and we need a second win over them. And hopefully a win with no drama.