[81alum]

All in all, I'm encouraged. We were down two starters (Lexie and Sniezek) with a third in major foul trouble (Smith), and that gave our juniors an opportunity to shine. It's kind of now or never for Fingall to develop into a reliable post presence, so I'm really hopeful this was her coming out party and we will see many more games like this in the future. OTOH- Smith has got to figure out how to avoid fouls, because she was picking them up at a rate of one foul per two minutes until Tara left her in at the end.

(I've revised the preview at the top for American, coming up pretty early today.)

I am also highly encouraged.  If nothing else, it is much more fun to watch a more offensive team like the one we seem to have this year.  Having depth means that not absolutely everything depends upon 2-3 key players staying hot, healthy, and out of foul trouble.  There is a much bigger margin for error, as we saw last night that with Lexie going out and 3 players sitting on the bench with 2 fouls in the first half we managed to stay ahead.  There have been years past in which we would not have been so resilient.

I also agree that our defense absolutely must improve or else we will be at risk against certain kinds of teams with a couple of speedy take-it-to-the-basket guards.  I think that might be why Tara is giving us some practice with a zone.  The normal way we would defend those types of guards in our sagging man is to have one guard not sagging and to have someone else help by cutting off the lane.  Last night it sounds as if we didn't get help soon enough.  When help comes late it results in fouls.  (I don't think that was the main issue with Alanna since I think at least of couple of her fouls were on offense.) 

As for the disparity in fast break points:  FGCU sacrificed all hope of offensive rebounds to get back on defense and prevent any fast break points from us.  In our case, I think FGCU's fast break points mostly came off turnovers and were not a function of our defense not running the floor fast enough.  To our credit, we cut back on turnovers in the second half--after 10 in the first we had 6 in the second.  So we seemed to be learning, also an encouraging sign.

[81alum]

All in all, I'm encouraged. We were down two starters (Lexie and Sniezek) with a third in major foul trouble (Smith), and that gave our juniors an opportunity to shine. It's kind of now or never for Fingall to develop into a reliable post presence, so I'm really hopeful this was her coming out party and we will see many more games like this in the future. OTOH- Smith has got to figure out how to avoid fouls, because she was picking them up at a rate of one foul per two minutes until Tara left her in at the end.

(I've revised the preview at the top for American, coming up pretty early today.)

I am also highly encouraged.  If nothing else, it is much more fun to watch a more offensive team like the one we seem to have this year.  Having depth means that not absolutely everything depends upon 2-3 key players staying hot, healthy, and out of foul trouble.  There is a much bigger margin for error, as we saw last night that with Lexie going out and 3 players sitting on the bench with 2 fouls in the first half we managed to stay ahead.  There have been years past in which we would not have been so resilient.

I also agree that our defense absolutely must improve or else we will be at risk against certain kinds of teams with a couple of speedy take-it-to-the-basket guards.  I think that might be why Tara is giving us some practice with a zone.  The normal way we would defend those types of guards in our sagging man is to have one guard not sagging and to have someone else help by cutting off the lane.  Last night it sounds as if we didn't get help soon enough.  When help comes late it results in fouls.  (I don't think that was the main issue with Alanna since I think at least of couple of her fouls were on offense.) 

As for the disparity in fast break points:  FGCU sacrificed all hope of offensive rebounds to get back on defense and prevent any fast break points from us.  In our case, I think FGCU's fast break points mostly came off turnovers and were not a function of our defense not running the floor fast enough.  To our credit, we cut back on turnovers in the second half--after 10 in the first we had 6 in the second.  So we seemed to be learning, also an encouraging sign.