A few follow up points.
1. ZONES. The same offense that was terrible in the 1st quarter gushed out 28 points in the fourth. That tells me that we are, in fact, capable of executing against the Oregon zone with this offense. I will be looking to watch the game again to figure out what the difference was. It was my impression that we came out tight, intimidated, and needed a little success to get our confidence. That plus all those entrance passes that became turnovers.
Keep in mind that we have TWO offenses, the Princeton and some sort of zone offense. This is the zone offense, and no it did not look very good, and it has never looked all that good. But also note that Oregon is the only team that has successfully zoned us this year. Texas, UCLA, and the tough games against Colorado were all about close player to player defenses. And Arizona and ASU are about to give us a heavy dose of the same.
2. BENCH. I have never seen Tara use the bench so little as she did in this game. Especially not this year. Not a single bench player got double digit minutes. Tara must believe that there were mismatch problems or confidence problems or something. Prechtel got 9 minutes and was almost all of our bench points--scoring 8. But she also picked up 2 fouls. I am a bit mystified as to why Prechtel does not get more playing time. I know it has to do with defense--perhaps if Prechtel played more, Hebard would have scored a lot more? I really don't know, but Prechtel seemed to help us in the stretches when we actually were scoring.
3. DRIVERS. Rather than criticize our offensive scheme--I think we need to come to grips with the fact that we have a real personnel weakness on this team that weakens any scheme we might use. I've said it before--after our injuries we now have a very limited ability to drive the ball to the rim, with Carrington and Jones and now even Brown out. Driving against a zone is always difficult, but without a viable threat we become one dimensional and easier to defend. Williams can drive, but we need someone bigger, taller, who could drive and finish with contact and generate free throws. For us that will be Jones and it used to be Carrington.
4. LEXIE. Lexie started and finished the game well, but during that disastrous stretch when we were stuck at 8 points, and then continuing until just before the half, she missed 9 shots in a row. That is the period when Oregon built its insurmountable lead.
5. ATTENDANCE. We had 6511 in attendance, the best I think we have done in YEARS. How many were there to watch Ionescu set her record? Where were all these people for some of our other great games?
Now, some quotes from Tara's press conference (she brought Lexie out.)
"Our team competed in spurts."
"Oregon is the number 1 team. It has all the weapons. I was disappointed we did not give them a better game. We did better than the last time we played them. We did better than we played them here last year. I am hopeful we will get a chance to play them again in the Pac 12 tournament."
Question: What is the challenge with Sabally. "First of all, she is not #1 on the defend list--it is guarding Ionescu on the pick and roll, and I think we did a really good job on that, and limiting Hebard to 4 points....We did not do a good enough job keeping Sabally off the glass."
"We made a good run but it was too little too late."
Tara praised our defense, particularly in the first half, but acknowledge "...but or offense, especially in the first half, the turnovers, the bad shots, we really struggle."
"We did not make shots that we needed to make, but I think we are capable of making those shots. There were some good shots that were missed. And there were some bad shots that were like....wow, where did they come from?"
"We needed to get to the free throw line more. We needed to make our free throws."
1. ZONES. The same offense that was terrible in the 1st quarter gushed out 28 points in the fourth. That tells me that we are, in fact, capable of executing against the Oregon zone with this offense. I will be looking to watch the game again to figure out what the difference was. It was my impression that we came out tight, intimidated, and needed a little success to get our confidence. That plus all those entrance passes that became turnovers.
Keep in mind that we have TWO offenses, the Princeton and some sort of zone offense. This is the zone offense, and no it did not look very good, and it has never looked all that good. But also note that Oregon is the only team that has successfully zoned us this year. Texas, UCLA, and the tough games against Colorado were all about close player to player defenses. And Arizona and ASU are about to give us a heavy dose of the same.
2. BENCH. I have never seen Tara use the bench so little as she did in this game. Especially not this year. Not a single bench player got double digit minutes. Tara must believe that there were mismatch problems or confidence problems or something. Prechtel got 9 minutes and was almost all of our bench points--scoring 8. But she also picked up 2 fouls. I am a bit mystified as to why Prechtel does not get more playing time. I know it has to do with defense--perhaps if Prechtel played more, Hebard would have scored a lot more? I really don't know, but Prechtel seemed to help us in the stretches when we actually were scoring.
3. DRIVERS. Rather than criticize our offensive scheme--I think we need to come to grips with the fact that we have a real personnel weakness on this team that weakens any scheme we might use. I've said it before--after our injuries we now have a very limited ability to drive the ball to the rim, with Carrington and Jones and now even Brown out. Driving against a zone is always difficult, but without a viable threat we become one dimensional and easier to defend. Williams can drive, but we need someone bigger, taller, who could drive and finish with contact and generate free throws. For us that will be Jones and it used to be Carrington.
4. LEXIE. Lexie started and finished the game well, but during that disastrous stretch when we were stuck at 8 points, and then continuing until just before the half, she missed 9 shots in a row. That is the period when Oregon built its insurmountable lead.
5. ATTENDANCE. We had 6511 in attendance, the best I think we have done in YEARS. How many were there to watch Ionescu set her record? Where were all these people for some of our other great games?
Now, some quotes from Tara's press conference (she brought Lexie out.)
"Our team competed in spurts."
"Oregon is the number 1 team. It has all the weapons. I was disappointed we did not give them a better game. We did better than the last time we played them. We did better than we played them here last year. I am hopeful we will get a chance to play them again in the Pac 12 tournament."
Question: What is the challenge with Sabally. "First of all, she is not #1 on the defend list--it is guarding Ionescu on the pick and roll, and I think we did a really good job on that, and limiting Hebard to 4 points....We did not do a good enough job keeping Sabally off the glass."
"We made a good run but it was too little too late."
Tara praised our defense, particularly in the first half, but acknowledge "...but or offense, especially in the first half, the turnovers, the bad shots, we really struggle."
"We did not make shots that we needed to make, but I think we are capable of making those shots. There were some good shots that were missed. And there were some bad shots that were like....wow, where did they come from?"
"We needed to get to the free throw line more. We needed to make our free throws."