09-24-2012, 08:13 PM
***EDIT: Reposted from the beginning of the season. See how your predictions turned out. ***
This year is shaping up to be a very challenging one for Tara to coach, with the loss of Nneka and the injury to Aly. I'm really wondering what this team is going to look like.
Guards. With Alex Green and Jasmine Camp coming back from injuries to join last year's starters Amber Orrange and Toni Kokenis, plus newcomer Kiran Lakhian and junior Sara James--we are much deeper at guard this year than last. I wonder if we will see some three guard sets--which sounds somehow "wrong" for Stanford. Jasmine showed us early last season that she could be productive against the likes of Connecticut (before her injury), while we have not seen Alex or Kiran play yet. I think we have too many great guards not to use three of them at the same time on occasion. Fortunately Toni and Amber both showed the ability to drive to the basket last year, which gave us a new dimension. But Stanford's three point shooting last year was the worst in team history, and there could be a lot of rotation until at least one of them gets hot from beyond the arc. We can't rely completely on three point shooting from a wing like Bonnie--a shooting guard is supposed to shoot the three, and we need someone who can do it in consistently in at least the mid 30% range.
Posts. Chiney Ogwumike will clearly get as much time as she can handle, but I am guessing that with Nneka gone, every team will double Chiney and force us to use someone else to score. That person will often be Joslyn Tinkle, who has always been good offensively and might have a big year now that she will probably get a lot of minutes. Her defense seemed to improve last year, and at times her offense was superb--but there were other times she struggled to score against taller, physical teams. Who will be the primary backups to those two posts? With Aly out it might be that Tess Picknell will get quite a lot of time for a frosh--her reputation is as a defensive stopper, it will be interesting to see if she can develop her offensive game. Perhaps she could become a Kali Benett type player. Tess may be asked to body up Griner when we play Baylor, for example. But the adjustment to college is difficult--even Nneka was significantly more limited her frosh year. That makes me think that there might be a big role for Mikaela Ruef, who is coming back from injury. Mikaela was playing wing last I remember--but that was because we had more posts than we needed, and she always seemed a little out of place on the wing. Maybe this will be a chance for her to spend some time inside. Will this be Mikaela's break-out year?
Wing. This is the one area that I think we never really got figured out last year. Tara went back and forth between Taylor Greenfield, who seemed like a more rounded player who was able to play decent defense from the start, and Bonnie Samuelson, who often was our best three point shooter. But Bonnie was not always consistent, and Taylor had limited offensive output, so midway through the year Tara began to let Joslyn play out there instead, much like she had with Mikaela the year before. And so, as sometimes happened in previous years, we seemed to play a lot with three natural posts--Nneka and Chiney and Joslyn. Several of us like Erica Payne's moves to the basket and hope that she would develop. Tara answered a question last year about her to the effect that she would get more minutes if she started scoring more--meaning that she needed to finish more of those moves. Remembering Tara'a addage that the greatest improvement usually comes between the freshman and sophomore years makes me suspect that Erica, Bonnie, and Taylor should all be expected to improve significantly from last year, and the one of them who improves the most will get the starting job.
Overall. Given Tara's track record of adjusting her schemes to her personnel, my guess is that she will find a way to play the best five players she has, and even she does not know right now who those five will be. Just like last year, the starting lineup could well evolve and change over the first eight weeks of the season or so. The alternate schemes could put pressure on our wing spot, with either a 3rd natural guard or a 3rd natural post taking that slot. Given the injury to Aly, I would guess that it is less likely that we do the three post rotation very much this year.Â
This year is shaping up to be a very challenging one for Tara to coach, with the loss of Nneka and the injury to Aly. I'm really wondering what this team is going to look like.
Guards. With Alex Green and Jasmine Camp coming back from injuries to join last year's starters Amber Orrange and Toni Kokenis, plus newcomer Kiran Lakhian and junior Sara James--we are much deeper at guard this year than last. I wonder if we will see some three guard sets--which sounds somehow "wrong" for Stanford. Jasmine showed us early last season that she could be productive against the likes of Connecticut (before her injury), while we have not seen Alex or Kiran play yet. I think we have too many great guards not to use three of them at the same time on occasion. Fortunately Toni and Amber both showed the ability to drive to the basket last year, which gave us a new dimension. But Stanford's three point shooting last year was the worst in team history, and there could be a lot of rotation until at least one of them gets hot from beyond the arc. We can't rely completely on three point shooting from a wing like Bonnie--a shooting guard is supposed to shoot the three, and we need someone who can do it in consistently in at least the mid 30% range.
Posts. Chiney Ogwumike will clearly get as much time as she can handle, but I am guessing that with Nneka gone, every team will double Chiney and force us to use someone else to score. That person will often be Joslyn Tinkle, who has always been good offensively and might have a big year now that she will probably get a lot of minutes. Her defense seemed to improve last year, and at times her offense was superb--but there were other times she struggled to score against taller, physical teams. Who will be the primary backups to those two posts? With Aly out it might be that Tess Picknell will get quite a lot of time for a frosh--her reputation is as a defensive stopper, it will be interesting to see if she can develop her offensive game. Perhaps she could become a Kali Benett type player. Tess may be asked to body up Griner when we play Baylor, for example. But the adjustment to college is difficult--even Nneka was significantly more limited her frosh year. That makes me think that there might be a big role for Mikaela Ruef, who is coming back from injury. Mikaela was playing wing last I remember--but that was because we had more posts than we needed, and she always seemed a little out of place on the wing. Maybe this will be a chance for her to spend some time inside. Will this be Mikaela's break-out year?
Wing. This is the one area that I think we never really got figured out last year. Tara went back and forth between Taylor Greenfield, who seemed like a more rounded player who was able to play decent defense from the start, and Bonnie Samuelson, who often was our best three point shooter. But Bonnie was not always consistent, and Taylor had limited offensive output, so midway through the year Tara began to let Joslyn play out there instead, much like she had with Mikaela the year before. And so, as sometimes happened in previous years, we seemed to play a lot with three natural posts--Nneka and Chiney and Joslyn. Several of us like Erica Payne's moves to the basket and hope that she would develop. Tara answered a question last year about her to the effect that she would get more minutes if she started scoring more--meaning that she needed to finish more of those moves. Remembering Tara'a addage that the greatest improvement usually comes between the freshman and sophomore years makes me suspect that Erica, Bonnie, and Taylor should all be expected to improve significantly from last year, and the one of them who improves the most will get the starting job.
Overall. Given Tara's track record of adjusting her schemes to her personnel, my guess is that she will find a way to play the best five players she has, and even she does not know right now who those five will be. Just like last year, the starting lineup could well evolve and change over the first eight weeks of the season or so. The alternate schemes could put pressure on our wing spot, with either a 3rd natural guard or a 3rd natural post taking that slot. Given the injury to Aly, I would guess that it is less likely that we do the three post rotation very much this year.Â
