[81alum]

You might think that we must have had good defense, right.  Not really, at least not for us. Our record number of fouls gave them our season high for FTA and FT.  Their rebounding domination led to a season high 22 second-chance points.  They tied our opponent's season high with 6 FBP.  I don't think they can blame their 10% 3PT% on our strong defense at the 3pt line.  But their offense in general was near average against us in many categories.

MT, you are right that we could have played much better defense.  I thought about our poor rebounding as I typed my remarks about our D last night.  Even so, C.al is the 21st best offensive team nationally (not allowing for strength of schedule) averaging 74 points a game and we held them to 21 points under their average.  That is not disastrous.  And Stanford overall is having its best defensive season in six years--maybe longer, I did not check.

Whatever we can do to improve our D would be welcome, but I think Tara's priorities have to center on getting our offense more consistently in sync.  It is the worst offense we have had in many years.  What I do not know is whether this is due mostly to the loss of Nneka, whether it is because Tara installed two new offensive schemes that did not "take", or whether our players are simply not as talented on offense as we thought they would be.  I'm hoping it is the second and that the players will continue to learn and improve in the new schemes.

[81alum]

You might think that we must have had good defense, right.  Not really, at least not for us. Our record number of fouls gave them our season high for FTA and FT.  Their rebounding domination led to a season high 22 second-chance points.  They tied our opponent's season high with 6 FBP.  I don't think they can blame their 10% 3PT% on our strong defense at the 3pt line.  But their offense in general was near average against us in many categories.

MT, you are right that we could have played much better defense.  I thought about our poor rebounding as I typed my remarks about our D last night.  Even so, C.al is the 21st best offensive team nationally (not allowing for strength of schedule) averaging 74 points a game and we held them to 21 points under their average.  That is not disastrous.  And Stanford overall is having its best defensive season in six years--maybe longer, I did not check.

Whatever we can do to improve our D would be welcome, but I think Tara's priorities have to center on getting our offense more consistently in sync.  It is the worst offense we have had in many years.  What I do not know is whether this is due mostly to the loss of Nneka, whether it is because Tara installed two new offensive schemes that did not "take", or whether our players are simply not as talented on offense as we thought they would be.  I'm hoping it is the second and that the players will continue to learn and improve in the new schemes.