11-30-2022, 10:11 PM
I was at the game. It never really felt like we were going to lose, but Santa Clara hung around and would not let us pull away.
Offensively, we scored 80+ spread out evenly amongst many players. That was nice to see. Hannah Jump had another great game. Lepolo didn't play her best tonight. Brink was in foul trouble all game. Despite scoring well, it felt like our offense was not fluid. We missed a lot of easy shots and when we were in a scoring drought and needed an easy bucket. It didn't seem like we knew who we should get the ball to and where. Iriafen missed several close shots.
Defensively, was not a great performance. Santa Clara had great cutting, passing and perimeter shooting and there were many defensive breakdowns on our part. We did force at least two shot-clock violations however. Last game against Hawaii, we pressed a lot, forced turnovers, and had almost 20 transition points. We didn't do any of that tonight. We didn't turn them over or score in transition; we had 4 fast break points. I'm not really sure what our defensive identify is. I wish we would pick up full court more and be more disruptive defensively in trying to create turnovers and then turn that into offense. We have depth and could force the pace more IMO. Santa Clara should not be scoring more points in regulation than South Carolina did against us but they did tonight.
Will need to be better Sunday against Gonzaga. Santa Clara is not the 8th best team in their conference. They are much better and well coached. I think our team will be looking forward to a little break after Sundays game. We need some practice time to clean things up and continue to improve.
Offensively, we scored 80+ spread out evenly amongst many players. That was nice to see. Hannah Jump had another great game. Lepolo didn't play her best tonight. Brink was in foul trouble all game. Despite scoring well, it felt like our offense was not fluid. We missed a lot of easy shots and when we were in a scoring drought and needed an easy bucket. It didn't seem like we knew who we should get the ball to and where. Iriafen missed several close shots.
Defensively, was not a great performance. Santa Clara had great cutting, passing and perimeter shooting and there were many defensive breakdowns on our part. We did force at least two shot-clock violations however. Last game against Hawaii, we pressed a lot, forced turnovers, and had almost 20 transition points. We didn't do any of that tonight. We didn't turn them over or score in transition; we had 4 fast break points. I'm not really sure what our defensive identify is. I wish we would pick up full court more and be more disruptive defensively in trying to create turnovers and then turn that into offense. We have depth and could force the pace more IMO. Santa Clara should not be scoring more points in regulation than South Carolina did against us but they did tonight.
Will need to be better Sunday against Gonzaga. Santa Clara is not the 8th best team in their conference. They are much better and well coached. I think our team will be looking forward to a little break after Sundays game. We need some practice time to clean things up and continue to improve.