02-17-2013, 02:35 PM
MT--
UCLA is playing defense against stationary players by bodying up. As you said, the defender on Tess (I think it was Brewer), put her chin essentially on Tess' shoulder and of course got clipped when Picknell tried to swing the ball up and over. There was an additional bad offensive foul called on Ruef early on, when she was being guarded by either Limberger or Korver, a much smaller player. She took her down on the post and spread her arms to receive the ball. The defender essentially ran herself into Ruef's outstretched arms and collapsed theatrically backwards. Tweet, offensive foul. Mikaela wasn't swinging her arms or moving much at all.
And the refs up until the Picknell "flagrant" were definitely letting both teams hack without much consequence (at that point I think they had called a total of 8 fouls on both teams, with only about 2 minutes left in the half). Which definitely benefits UCLA; they're being allowed to really hammer the post players.
One problem I saw was that for a while Stanford went with 4 "bigs" (Ruef, Tinkle, Chiney, and Greenfield) and Amber against a smaller and much faster Bruins side, and had lots of problems initiating the offense against ball pressure; UCLA is not afraid of the drive by any of those players, so gets up on the body to deny easy passes.
VG
UCLA is playing defense against stationary players by bodying up. As you said, the defender on Tess (I think it was Brewer), put her chin essentially on Tess' shoulder and of course got clipped when Picknell tried to swing the ball up and over. There was an additional bad offensive foul called on Ruef early on, when she was being guarded by either Limberger or Korver, a much smaller player. She took her down on the post and spread her arms to receive the ball. The defender essentially ran herself into Ruef's outstretched arms and collapsed theatrically backwards. Tweet, offensive foul. Mikaela wasn't swinging her arms or moving much at all.
And the refs up until the Picknell "flagrant" were definitely letting both teams hack without much consequence (at that point I think they had called a total of 8 fouls on both teams, with only about 2 minutes left in the half). Which definitely benefits UCLA; they're being allowed to really hammer the post players.
One problem I saw was that for a while Stanford went with 4 "bigs" (Ruef, Tinkle, Chiney, and Greenfield) and Amber against a smaller and much faster Bruins side, and had lots of problems initiating the offense against ball pressure; UCLA is not afraid of the drive by any of those players, so gets up on the body to deny easy passes.
VG