(02-21-2022, 02:48 PM)martyup Wrote: How did Sabally fail to block that shot? She just stood there and watched the ball go up and in the basket. She put her hands up too late.
4 factors occur to me:
sabally was guarding kiki; pinto was guarding haley. kiki created room for haley by pushing her defender, sabally, away from the play. (they were battling forcefully. kiki could easily have been called for a moving screen; sabally could have been called for impeding kiki.). i doubt sabally could have gotten close enough to haley to help without leaving kiki. but had she left kiki to double haley, haley would have passed to kiki for the easy bucket. we saw haley/kiki connect on that high/low several times.
i would guess that, like the rest of us, sabally didn't expect haley to shoot, after the whistle, as she was falling down. players tend to relax after a whistle.
the legs of the fallen primary defender, pinto, were in the way of sabally stepping forward to get close enough to block. stepping on pinto might well have injured one of them or both.
lastly, sabally had 4 fouls at that point; stepping towards a driving haley risked a fifth.