[2006alum]

It was almost a reverse scouting report defense.  We let their top two players score all but ten of their points, and shut down everyone else.  I think only four players scored any sort of point, and the top two accounted for 49/59 points.

BC

In contrast, our leading scorer for the season, Lexie, only scored 3 points.  If that happened in a game last year (Alanna only scoring 3 points) we are probably losing said game.  Even though our offense has room to grow, I really like our depth and versatility.  It makes us much harder to defend vs last year.  Last year our opponents knew that we were trying to feed Smith in the post and that she rarely passed the ball back out.  So they would try and get a steal on the entry pass and if that failed then double or triple team her when she caught the ball.  This year it seems like the only player who gets special defensive attention is Jump because they don’t want her going off from 3.  Makes things easier for Lexie, Williams, Jones and Fingall to score when they aren’t the focal point of the opponents defense.

I'm with you 100%, BosCard. Although we are still committing way too many turnovers and occasional pass-around-without-ever-shooting possessions, on the whole, we are more versatile, and Tara has more possible permutations, than I can ever remember. All four of our frosh are averaging >10 minutes per game, and I doubt Tara has ever played so many frosh so extensively. Given how many permutations are on court in any given game, more turnovers are inevitable, because each set of players has had less time to practice passing to each other and internalizing each other's moves/habits/"tells". 

Moreover, we're doing all of this while replacing over 2.5 starters' worth of playing minutes lost to injury (Carrington and Dodson) or graduation (Smith and Coffee). It's inevitable that we will have some sloppy play on offense or some defensive miscues. Without Carrington, I definitely don't see us beating Oregon. But in the long term, I haven't felt this excited about the upside potential of a Stanford WCBB since the days of the Wiggins/Appel era.

[2006alum]

It was almost a reverse scouting report defense.  We let their top two players score all but ten of their points, and shut down everyone else.  I think only four players scored any sort of point, and the top two accounted for 49/59 points.

BC

In contrast, our leading scorer for the season, Lexie, only scored 3 points.  If that happened in a game last year (Alanna only scoring 3 points) we are probably losing said game.  Even though our offense has room to grow, I really like our depth and versatility.  It makes us much harder to defend vs last year.  Last year our opponents knew that we were trying to feed Smith in the post and that she rarely passed the ball back out.  So they would try and get a steal on the entry pass and if that failed then double or triple team her when she caught the ball.  This year it seems like the only player who gets special defensive attention is Jump because they don’t want her going off from 3.  Makes things easier for Lexie, Williams, Jones and Fingall to score when they aren’t the focal point of the opponents defense.

I'm with you 100%, BosCard. Although we are still committing way too many turnovers and occasional pass-around-without-ever-shooting possessions, on the whole, we are more versatile, and Tara has more possible permutations, than I can ever remember. All four of our frosh are averaging >10 minutes per game, and I doubt Tara has ever played so many frosh so extensively. Given how many permutations are on court in any given game, more turnovers are inevitable, because each set of players has had less time to practice passing to each other and internalizing each other's moves/habits/"tells". 

Moreover, we're doing all of this while replacing over 2.5 starters' worth of playing minutes lost to injury (Carrington and Dodson) or graduation (Smith and Coffee). It's inevitable that we will have some sloppy play on offense or some defensive miscues. Without Carrington, I definitely don't see us beating Oregon. But in the long term, I haven't felt this excited about the upside potential of a Stanford WCBB since the days of the Wiggins/Appel era.