[TheFarm07]

I no longer try hard to analyze, but I will give it a go.  Something was off all weekend, what with Jones held out for mysterious, possibly disciplinary reasons, and the way the CO game played out.  We did not see the urgency, the hustle, that we are accustomed to seeing from some players, and some of the decision making was not up to the typical standard.  Rebounding being even is a sign we were outworked.  That is not usual.  May be as simple as life on the road has finally got to them.  Maybe also a bit of a letdown after some tough wins against top 10-15 level teams.  It will not help that cal is not playing the next few games so teams can just prep for us and will be better rested.

I also think we fans may have been overestimating what we have (raises hand- guilty!).  The team is excellent and talented but they are not a clear #1 in talent level.  I love Kiana, she's bailed the team out several times over her career, but as was posted above she is having a wildly inconsistent season, and she was inconsistent last season as well.  The defensive effort is usually there, offense is more like one great game out of 4 with the rest being very poor shooting or few shots taken.  She is not a big assist creator, so if her shooting is off, it really strains the offense.  Anna is more a glue player/defensive stopper who can shoot a few threes than a big scorer so when Kiana is struggling, we are not strong at guard on offense, not as a #1 team needs to be.  We need more consistent scoring and more assists out of our 1 and 2 spots.  When the offense is clicking, not a problem, but when things are a struggle, you need your main ballhandlers to make more good things happen.  

Our posts are all young, all sophs and frosh except Alyssa, who doesn't play much, so we get some inconsistent play from them.  I foresee continued improvement but I also expect we will see more growing pains against teams with really good posts, especially those with size and physicality.  We do not have an Ogwumike (yet) or an Alanna Smith (yet) where we can toss the ball inside and expect 15-17 points a game with 50%+ shooting from our primary big against good opponents.  Cameron is on the road to stardom, but not there yet.  When Fran is on, she looks like a star, but she still needs to learn to cope better with big, physical posts.  When she loses her way, like today, it is hard to pull her back to her best right now.  Experience will help.  

Lexie and Lacie are both tremendous glue players in my mind - both work crazy hard, both can shoot, and Lexie is a really good driver when the refs don't let her get clobbered.  When she is on, Lexie can score in bunches but she thrives in a system that gets her good shots and lanes to drive.  We can't just hand her the ball and say go.  The one player who can consistently get her own shot and make a high percentage is Hayley.  I know, I know, team game, and all players need the schemes to work for them to be successful.  It's just that we have really one player who I would say is a star, who can consistently dominate games.  Others might have star turns, but we are not loaded like when we had stars outside (Wiggins) and inside (Appel) or a post who was a 20/10 monster game after game like Chiney Ogwumike.

This is my round about way of saying, we have a great team, fun to watch, all that good stuff, but we do not have the talent level out there we had in the 2007 - 2012 or so.  We do not have the mix of inside star and outside star a dominant team kinda needs.  Sometimes we get great team-wide shooting and it seems like we do, or Kiana has one of her "on" games and we do, but we do not have that consistently.  This may be the deepest team with less drop off to the end of the roster in some time.  It is not the team with the most star power.  I know we crushed a lot of teams and beat UA, UO, and UCLA.  I still see a team with limitations that needs to play well within the scheme, not a team that can rely on a star or two to yank them through team-wide bad patches.  

Am I making any sense?  Maybe not.  Back to your regularly scheduled debating...

I agree with you completely. I believed I might have mentioned this a while ago, but this year's team is the deepest in terms of quality I've seen since I started following the program closely about fifteen years ago. However, the starters are not as talented 1-5 as it was when we made five consecutive final fours from 2008 to 2012. 

On an individual level, I also am in agreement on your assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each player. A friend of mine who is a UCLA fan asked me recently to compare Kiana and Onyenwere, I told him I would put Michaela above Kiana because she has been more consistent, game-in, game-out. Williams has been very streaky in her collegiate career and it seems that her cold streaks often outnumber her hot phases unfortunately. She kinda reminds me of a high-volume, low efficiency player, a la Odyssey Sims or Skylar Diggins where they will get 20 points but it will take them 20 shots to do so and she does not have the strength or height to drive and pick up fouls as easily as they did.

Haley showed today that she can be the offensive force to score points, but her decision making still needs some polishing as her 6 turnovers (largely a result of forcing passes inside that were picked off by a defender) showed.

Cameron's offensive skills are tantalizing but she is struggling with foul trouble on the defensive end and a concentrated effort by an opponent to pick on her defensively can limit her minutes right now.

[TheFarm07]

I no longer try hard to analyze, but I will give it a go.  Something was off all weekend, what with Jones held out for mysterious, possibly disciplinary reasons, and the way the CO game played out.  We did not see the urgency, the hustle, that we are accustomed to seeing from some players, and some of the decision making was not up to the typical standard.  Rebounding being even is a sign we were outworked.  That is not usual.  May be as simple as life on the road has finally got to them.  Maybe also a bit of a letdown after some tough wins against top 10-15 level teams.  It will not help that cal is not playing the next few games so teams can just prep for us and will be better rested.

I also think we fans may have been overestimating what we have (raises hand- guilty!).  The team is excellent and talented but they are not a clear #1 in talent level.  I love Kiana, she's bailed the team out several times over her career, but as was posted above she is having a wildly inconsistent season, and she was inconsistent last season as well.  The defensive effort is usually there, offense is more like one great game out of 4 with the rest being very poor shooting or few shots taken.  She is not a big assist creator, so if her shooting is off, it really strains the offense.  Anna is more a glue player/defensive stopper who can shoot a few threes than a big scorer so when Kiana is struggling, we are not strong at guard on offense, not as a #1 team needs to be.  We need more consistent scoring and more assists out of our 1 and 2 spots.  When the offense is clicking, not a problem, but when things are a struggle, you need your main ballhandlers to make more good things happen.  

Our posts are all young, all sophs and frosh except Alyssa, who doesn't play much, so we get some inconsistent play from them.  I foresee continued improvement but I also expect we will see more growing pains against teams with really good posts, especially those with size and physicality.  We do not have an Ogwumike (yet) or an Alanna Smith (yet) where we can toss the ball inside and expect 15-17 points a game with 50%+ shooting from our primary big against good opponents.  Cameron is on the road to stardom, but not there yet.  When Fran is on, she looks like a star, but she still needs to learn to cope better with big, physical posts.  When she loses her way, like today, it is hard to pull her back to her best right now.  Experience will help.  

Lexie and Lacie are both tremendous glue players in my mind - both work crazy hard, both can shoot, and Lexie is a really good driver when the refs don't let her get clobbered.  When she is on, Lexie can score in bunches but she thrives in a system that gets her good shots and lanes to drive.  We can't just hand her the ball and say go.  The one player who can consistently get her own shot and make a high percentage is Hayley.  I know, I know, team game, and all players need the schemes to work for them to be successful.  It's just that we have really one player who I would say is a star, who can consistently dominate games.  Others might have star turns, but we are not loaded like when we had stars outside (Wiggins) and inside (Appel) or a post who was a 20/10 monster game after game like Chiney Ogwumike.

This is my round about way of saying, we have a great team, fun to watch, all that good stuff, but we do not have the talent level out there we had in the 2007 - 2012 or so.  We do not have the mix of inside star and outside star a dominant team kinda needs.  Sometimes we get great team-wide shooting and it seems like we do, or Kiana has one of her "on" games and we do, but we do not have that consistently.  This may be the deepest team with less drop off to the end of the roster in some time.  It is not the team with the most star power.  I know we crushed a lot of teams and beat UA, UO, and UCLA.  I still see a team with limitations that needs to play well within the scheme, not a team that can rely on a star or two to yank them through team-wide bad patches.  

Am I making any sense?  Maybe not.  Back to your regularly scheduled debating...

I agree with you completely. I believed I might have mentioned this a while ago, but this year's team is the deepest in terms of quality I've seen since I started following the program closely about fifteen years ago. However, the starters are not as talented 1-5 as it was when we made five consecutive final fours from 2008 to 2012. 

On an individual level, I also am in agreement on your assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each player. A friend of mine who is a UCLA fan asked me recently to compare Kiana and Onyenwere, I told him I would put Michaela above Kiana because she has been more consistent, game-in, game-out. Williams has been very streaky in her collegiate career and it seems that her cold streaks often outnumber her hot phases unfortunately. She kinda reminds me of a high-volume, low efficiency player, a la Odyssey Sims or Skylar Diggins where they will get 20 points but it will take them 20 shots to do so and she does not have the strength or height to drive and pick up fouls as easily as they did.

Haley showed today that she can be the offensive force to score points, but her decision making still needs some polishing as her 6 turnovers (largely a result of forcing passes inside that were picked off by a defender) showed.

Cameron's offensive skills are tantalizing but she is struggling with foul trouble on the defensive end and a concentrated effort by an opponent to pick on her defensively can limit her minutes right now.