Very happy for the win.
First, my observations about Ogden. Ogden had 2 points in the first quarter, and she was consistently passing up open shots. It was obvious that her confidence was not there. In the second quarter she took a three which hit the rim, bounced around, and finally went in. I saw her face as she turned around to head back on defense. She was grinning from ear to ear. After that lucky bounce-in for a trey, she went on to score 12 points in the quarter, going 3/3 from three point range. Her defense also looked better. Clearly, when her confidence switch gets turned on she is a different player.
Second, our defense was indeed remarkably better in the second half. Here are the combined points for the Cavender twins by quarter:
1. 17
2. 9
3. 2
4. 7
I am not sure what we did, but it worked. Clardy looked much better on defense in the second half. I also thought Harriel gave us some good minutes on defense.
As I told the Cardboarders at the half, our offense is a different offense when Demetre is hitting her threes. It is not just that we miss her points when she is slumping. We need her points to open the floor for everyone else. Demetre's offensive slumps have been very difficult to recover from. Thank goodness she was "on" tonight.
Finally, a lot of nice Princeton-like cuts in the game. Miami does not have the length that a team like Duke has, and so they could not deflect those feeder passes. Instead of generating turnovers, they generated points. They finally worked the way they were supposed to work.
First, my observations about Ogden. Ogden had 2 points in the first quarter, and she was consistently passing up open shots. It was obvious that her confidence was not there. In the second quarter she took a three which hit the rim, bounced around, and finally went in. I saw her face as she turned around to head back on defense. She was grinning from ear to ear. After that lucky bounce-in for a trey, she went on to score 12 points in the quarter, going 3/3 from three point range. Her defense also looked better. Clearly, when her confidence switch gets turned on she is a different player.
Second, our defense was indeed remarkably better in the second half. Here are the combined points for the Cavender twins by quarter:
1. 17
2. 9
3. 2
4. 7
I am not sure what we did, but it worked. Clardy looked much better on defense in the second half. I also thought Harriel gave us some good minutes on defense.
As I told the Cardboarders at the half, our offense is a different offense when Demetre is hitting her threes. It is not just that we miss her points when she is slumping. We need her points to open the floor for everyone else. Demetre's offensive slumps have been very difficult to recover from. Thank goodness she was "on" tonight.
Finally, a lot of nice Princeton-like cuts in the game. Miami does not have the length that a team like Duke has, and so they could not deflect those feeder passes. Instead of generating turnovers, they generated points. They finally worked the way they were supposed to work.