Preview:
The scheduling gods were not kind to us on the last weekend of the regular season. Having just played two physical, emotional games at home, including a Monday evening game, we must travel to Colorado for a very early Thursday game. The normal Sunday to Friday schedule has been truncated at both ends! Furthermore, we will be playing at altitude for the first time this year, against a team and a coach that revels in the overly-physical style of push, grab, and hack. All season long I have been worried about this road trip--more so than the two road trips where we have already dropped games.
The Colorado thread from our home win is here:
https://thecardboard.org/board/showthrea...#pid379913
And the box score from that win is here:
https://gostanford.com/sports/womens-bas...core/37999
Since we beat Colorado at home, 62-49, Colorado has gone 6-2. They beat UCLA in overtime but lost to USC at home, swept the Oregon schools, swept the Washington schools and ASU, but suffered a defensive beat down at Arizona similar to our USC loss. That was their last game, losing 61-42.
Overall this year they are 21-6, 12-4 in conference which puts them in 3rd place a game ahead of Arizona (guess who Arizona is cheering for!) They are ranked 21 in the AP, 20th by Massey, and 21st in NET. If they beat us all kinds of weird things could happen, including a 3 way tie for 1st place in the conference, depending on how the rest of the weekend goes. In short, losing there creates ugly possibilities.
Colorado is still led by 4 players in double digit scoring, the same four as reviewed in the first Colorado preview. However, recently Tameiya Sadler, a 5'8" junior guard, has been coming off the bench and giving them points--leading them over the last two games.
While Colorado in the JR Payne era has been a bruising defensive team, this year they have 4 players shooting treys at 38% or higher, and doing it in some quantity. Somehow we need to guard the perimeter while simultaneously keeping their two centers out of the paint, and also stay in front of Sherrod. Arizona figured out how to do it last weekend, and we figured out how to do it last time out. But doing it while sucking air might be a different story.
Last time Colorado did its own version of the pack-the-paint strategy, and Jump went 5/10. Hitting threes in quantity against them will be crucial in loosening up their paint defense. Brink was only able to go 3/11, and Betts in limited minutes 0/2. Colorado picked its poison and opted to shut down our inside scorers. If they do it again, we need accuracy from long range.
The scheduling gods were not kind to us on the last weekend of the regular season. Having just played two physical, emotional games at home, including a Monday evening game, we must travel to Colorado for a very early Thursday game. The normal Sunday to Friday schedule has been truncated at both ends! Furthermore, we will be playing at altitude for the first time this year, against a team and a coach that revels in the overly-physical style of push, grab, and hack. All season long I have been worried about this road trip--more so than the two road trips where we have already dropped games.
The Colorado thread from our home win is here:
https://thecardboard.org/board/showthrea...#pid379913
And the box score from that win is here:
https://gostanford.com/sports/womens-bas...core/37999
Since we beat Colorado at home, 62-49, Colorado has gone 6-2. They beat UCLA in overtime but lost to USC at home, swept the Oregon schools, swept the Washington schools and ASU, but suffered a defensive beat down at Arizona similar to our USC loss. That was their last game, losing 61-42.
Overall this year they are 21-6, 12-4 in conference which puts them in 3rd place a game ahead of Arizona (guess who Arizona is cheering for!) They are ranked 21 in the AP, 20th by Massey, and 21st in NET. If they beat us all kinds of weird things could happen, including a 3 way tie for 1st place in the conference, depending on how the rest of the weekend goes. In short, losing there creates ugly possibilities.
Colorado is still led by 4 players in double digit scoring, the same four as reviewed in the first Colorado preview. However, recently Tameiya Sadler, a 5'8" junior guard, has been coming off the bench and giving them points--leading them over the last two games.
While Colorado in the JR Payne era has been a bruising defensive team, this year they have 4 players shooting treys at 38% or higher, and doing it in some quantity. Somehow we need to guard the perimeter while simultaneously keeping their two centers out of the paint, and also stay in front of Sherrod. Arizona figured out how to do it last weekend, and we figured out how to do it last time out. But doing it while sucking air might be a different story.
Last time Colorado did its own version of the pack-the-paint strategy, and Jump went 5/10. Hitting threes in quantity against them will be crucial in loosening up their paint defense. Brink was only able to go 3/11, and Betts in limited minutes 0/2. Colorado picked its poison and opted to shut down our inside scorers. If they do it again, we need accuracy from long range.