WBB: Oregon 74 Stanford 66 - Printable Version

WBB: Oregon 74 Stanford 66 - Printable Version

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RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - CompSci87 - 02-24-2020

(02-24-2020, 08:27 PM)treetop11 Wrote: Our girls are too nice and don't have the same competitive spirit like Ionescu and the ducks. Did you see Sabrina jump off the bench to take care of the inbound pass? When you close to 5 =, how do you let Oregon run it up to 19 again - on your home court!

See #12 in white.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - treetop11 - 02-24-2020

Our team is so dumb. We have to play faster on O rather than run down the clock, especially late in the game when trailing, move, move the ball, shoot!

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - GK3 - 02-24-2020

(02-24-2020, 08:41 PM)treetop11 Wrote: Our team is so dumb. We have to play faster on O rather than run down the clock, especially late in the game when trailing, move, move the ball, shoot!

Agreed 100%. We simply do not move the ball well at all. We spread 4 people out and have our point guard dribble and try (I guess) to find someone open to pass the ball towards. Our offense is terrible. Based on our recruiting rankings we are not playing up to that talent level. We have struggled to beat a number of lower ranked teams this year and may well struggle early and lose in the tournament. Compared to other good Stanford teams I think this one would lose in a match up.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - cardcrimson - 02-24-2020

(02-24-2020, 08:48 PM)GK3 Wrote:
(02-24-2020, 08:41 PM)treetop11 Wrote: Our team is so dumb. We have to play faster on O rather than run down the clock, especially late in the game when trailing, move, move the ball, shoot!

Agreed 100%. We simply do not move the ball well at all. We spread 4 people out and have our point guard dribble and try (I guess) to find someone open to pass the ball towards. Our offense is terrible. Based on our recruiting rankings we are not playing up to that talent level. We have struggled to beat a number of lower ranked teams this year and may well struggle early and lose in the tournament. Compared to other good Stanford teams I think this one would lose in a match up.

Fire the coach. . . .

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - Farm93 - 02-24-2020

Oregon has beaten great teams by a lot more than 8 points, so it was a good loss. Which is sometimes important to selection committees.

It may be hard to accept, but the current Oregon roster is capable of a better team game than the available Stanford roster.

Hopefully Stanford will see them 2 more times this year.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - StanFanFam13 - 02-24-2020

(02-24-2020, 08:41 PM)treetop11 Wrote: Our team is so dumb. We have to play faster on O rather than run down the clock, especially late in the game when trailing, move, move the ball, shoot!

Respectfully requesting that you cool it with the "dumb," "piss poor," etc. We'd all like to have seen that game go differently, and yes, it's particularly frustrating that at times it felt winnable. Oregon is a great team, but as others have pointed out, we had ill-advised shots and some that just weren't falling, and we didn't capitalize as well as we could have on the few holes that did show up in their defense. That said, there is no quit in this team. They've clawed their way back in other games, and while it wasn't enough today, I loved seeing Ashten stepping up big and knocking down threes when we were down late, Lexie keep shooting even when things hadn't been going her way, and Ki scrapping out on the floor for essentially the entire game.

Looking forward to these Arizona schools and grateful that we have a team of incredible young women—and their talented coaches—who play their hearts out for our entertainment. Time to dust themselves off and get back to it.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - M T - 02-24-2020

Stanford did slightly beat the spread predicted at RealtimeRPI. Losing to Oregon at home by 8 is 10 points better than UConn.

I guess I am glad the team didn’t shut down and kept fighting back. It does give me hope we can do better if we meet them in Vegas or New Orleans

Seems some posters are writing home from Camp Granada

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - Mudhead - 02-24-2020

(02-24-2020, 09:12 PM)StanFanFam13 Wrote:
(02-24-2020, 08:41 PM)treetop11 Wrote: Our team is so dumb. We have to play faster on O rather than run down the clock, especially late in the game when trailing, move, move the ball, shoot!

Respectfully requesting that you cool it with the "dumb," "piss poor," etc. We'd all like to have seen that game go differently, and yes, it's particularly frustrating that at times it felt winnable. Oregon is a great team, but as others have pointed out, we had ill-advised shots and some that just weren't falling, and we didn't capitalize as well as we could have on the few holes that did show up in their defense. That said, there is no quit in this team. They've clawed their way back in other games, and while it wasn't enough today, I loved seeing Ashten stepping up big and knocking down threes when we were down late, Lexie keep shooting even when things hadn't been going her way, and Ki scrapping out on the floor for essentially the entire game.

Looking forward to these Arizona schools and grateful that we have a team of incredible young women—and their talented coaches—who play their hearts out for our entertainment. Time to dust themselves off and get back to it.

Well said StanFam. Our team is so good and capable of being great that it’s easy to attribute periods of slack play to not caring or not knowing what to do. We are not as good as Oregon and would probably lose 7 out of 10 games to the . Let’s hope one of our three is in the PAC-12 tournament and another in the NCaAs

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - 2006alum - 02-24-2020

There are no girls on our team - they're women. And they are getting the same Stanford degree I got, so they're hardly stupid. As for recruiting rankings, three of our starters missed between half and all of one of the past two seasons with lower leg injuries. And a fourth was unranked as a recruit. Oregon starts two top 5 recruits and 2 other projected top 8 WNBA players.

With friends like this, who needs enemies? More later once I have a chance to watch the game, but an 8 point loss is better than I was fearing.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - teejers1 - 02-24-2020

(02-24-2020, 09:34 PM)2006alum Wrote: There are no girls on our team - they're women. And they are getting the same Stanford degree I got, so they're hardly stupid. As for recruiting rankings, three of our starters missed between half and all of one of the past two seasons with lower leg injuries. And a fourth was unranked as a recruit. Oregon starts two top 5 recruits and 2 other projected top 8 WNBA players.

With friends like this, who needs enemies? More later once I have a chance to watch the game, but an 8 point loss is better than I was fearing.

Yeah, TT can get a little heated in his posts on hoops (though usually the commentary is on the mark). 5 observations from this evening's game:

1. Ionescu a fabulous college player . . . will be an average pro (at best). She has no foot speed, and she won't be able to out muscle those in pro leagues. Also, she won't get benefit of the whistle as she did on a few calls tonight. None of this should take away from the fact that she has put together an All Time Great college career.

2. Ki is Stanford's most indispensable player. She also makes WAY too many bad decisions for an elite point guard, including - as TT rightly noted - walking the ball up when Stanford needed to push the pace; dribbling out WAY too much of the shot clock and then dumping the ball to a teammate who is then in a horrible position; and forcing some bad passes. I get that she is exhausted out there - but just because she is tired does not mean she can take the air out of the ball when we need to run. And the fact that she is so tired is on Tara to no small degree. Give Wilson more minutes to spell Ki.

3. There is one person who has great upside for Stanford - who can turn Stanford from a good team to a contender. That's Prechtel. She needs to be infused with confidence, and that comes with PT . . . plain and simple. She hit a couple good treys in Q4, but it was obviously too little, too late. She can't help the team from the bench, Tara. And I know she made some bad decisions/played weakly in 1H (but who didn't on the roster tonight); still, empowerment comes primarily with PT. I'd ramp her time up.

4. Oregon's zone was effective, even when it didn't do much other than slow our ball movement up the court. And it was especailly effective when, for some inexplicable reason, Ki dribbles it into a double team at the sideline just after the half court line. Good grief, that's Y ball decision-making. Bottom line: Oregon was better coached tonight (as much as it pains me to say it).

5. N/W/S all of the above, Stanford can beat Oregon. Truthfully. Yeah, Lexie had a career game, but everyone else on the roster can play better. Much better. Stanford did a lot of thins reasonably well tonight - including rebounding and D - and a couple bad breaks resulted in easy layups for Oregon. 8 points is hardly an insurmountable differential - heck, take away the two times when the ball just dropped down from a miss to Ionescu alone under the hoops (one time, two Stanford players knocked each other down); take away the ridiculous breakdown on the in-bounds play (again giving Ionescu a layup), and take away the failure by Fingall to box out on a trey miss by the Oregon star (who got her own rebound and scored on a take to the rack). That's 4 simple fixes, and 8 points.

The differential isn't as great as some here think.

But kudos to Oregon and their fans who showed in force at Maples. It was fun being there, even in defeat.

P.S. More music form the band; less canned music piped through speakers.

P.P.S. Last thing: ingress/egress to Maples was a freaking DISASTER. The guys at the Maples lot are clueless. They were turning away cars - which backed up all the way back to El Camino - saying lot was full. I walked in and saw 3 empty spaces, plus more cars exiting as people left Stanford for work. I was on foot, so it didn't affect me. But it was pretty embarrassing to see. Finally told the guy letting cars out on Campus Drive that he had to tell those yahoos on the detour route that there were spaces in the lot, and they should make sure that all spots are full when they close the lot. HELLO?!?

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - 81alum - 02-24-2020

(02-24-2020, 09:52 PM)teejers1 Wrote:
(02-24-2020, 09:34 PM)2006alum Wrote: There are no girls on our team - they're women. And they are getting the same Stanford degree I got, so they're hardly stupid. As for recruiting rankings, three of our starters missed between half and all of one of the past two seasons with lower leg injuries. And a fourth was unranked as a recruit. Oregon starts two top 5 recruits and 2 other projected top 8 WNBA players.

With friends like this, who needs enemies? More later once I have a chance to watch the game, but an 8 point loss is better than I was fearing.

Yeah, TT can get a little heated in his posts on hoops (though usually the commentary is on the mark). 5 observations from this evening's game:

1. Ionescu a fabulous college player . . . will be an average pro (at best). She has no foot speed, and she won't be able to out muscle those in pro leagues. Also, she won't get benefit of the whistle as she did on a few calls tonight. None of this should take away from the fact that she has put together an All Time Great college career.

2. Ki is Stanford's most indispensable player. She also makes WAY too many bad decisions for an elite point guard, including - as TT rightly noted - walking the ball up when Stanford needed to push the pace; dribbling out WAY too much of the shot clock and then dumping the ball to a teammate who is then in a horrible position; and forcing some bad passes. I get that she is exhausted out there - but just because she is tired does not mean she can take the air out of the ball when we need to run. And the fact that she is so tired is on Tara to no small degree. Give Wilson more minutes to spell Ki.

3. There is one person who has great upside for Stanford - who can turn Stanford from a good team to a contender. That's Prechtel. She needs to be infused with confidence, and that comes with PT . . . plain and simple. She hit a couple good treys in Q4, but it was obviously too little, too late. She can't help the team from the bench, Tara. And I know she made some bad decisions/played weakly in 1H (but who didn't on the roster tonight); still, empowerment comes primarily with PT. I'd ramp her time up.

4. Oregon's zone was effective, even when it didn't do much other than slow our ball movement up the court. And it was especailly effective when, for some inexplicable reason, Ki dribbles it into a double team at the sideline just after the half court line. Good grief, that's Y ball decision-making. Bottom line: Oregon was better coached tonight (as much as it pains me to say it).

5. N/W/S all of the above, Stanford can beat Oregon. Truthfully. Yeah, Lexie had a career game, but everyone else on the roster can play better. Much better. Stanford did a lot of thins reasonably well tonight - including rebounding and D - and a couple bad breaks resulted in easy layups for Oregon. 8 points is hardly an insurmountable differential - heck, take away the two times when the ball just dropped down from a miss to Ionescu alone under the hoops (one time, two Stanford players knocked each other down); take away the ridiculous breakdown on the in-bounds play (again giving Ionescu a layup), and take away the failure by Fingall to box out on a trey miss by the Oregon star (who got her own rebound and scored on a take to the rack). That's 4 simple fixes, and 8 points.

The differential isn't as great as some here think.

But kudos to Oregon and their fans who showed in force at Maples. It was fun being there, even in defeat.

P.S. More music form the band; less canned music piped through speakers.

P.P.S. Last thing: ingress/egress to Maples was a freaking DISASTER. The guys at the Maples lot are clueless. They were turning away cars - which backed up all the way back to El Camino - saying lot was full. I walked in and saw 3 empty spaces, plus more cars exiting as people left Stanford for work. I was on foot, so it didn't affect me. But it was pretty embarrassing to see. Finally told the guy letting cars out on Campus Drive that he had to tell those yahoos on the detour route that there were spaces in the lot, and they should make sure that all spots are full when they close the lot. HELLO?!?

Good post. Agreed all around.

My write-up done at the top.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - Mudhead - 02-24-2020

(02-24-2020, 09:12 PM)StanFanFam13 Wrote:
(02-24-2020, 08:41 PM)treetop11 Wrote: Our team is so dumb. We have to play faster on O rather than run down the clock, especially late in the game when trailing, move, move the ball, shoot!

Respectfully requesting that you cool it with the "dumb," "piss poor," etc. We'd all like to have seen that game go differently, and yes, it's particularly frustrating that at times it felt winnable. Oregon is a great team, but as others have pointed out, we had ill-advised shots and some that just weren't falling, and we didn't capitalize as well as we could have on the few holes that did show up in their defense. That said, there is no quit in this team. They've clawed their way back in other games, and while it wasn't enough today, I loved seeing Ashten stepping up big and knocking down threes when we were down late, Lexie keep shooting even when things hadn't been going her way, and Ki scrapping out on the floor for essentially the entire game.

Looking forward to these Arizona schools and grateful that we have a team of incredible young women—and their talented coaches—who play their hearts out for our entertainment. Time to dust themselves off and get back to it.

RE: WBB: Oregon 74 Stanford 66 - chimera - 02-24-2020

My general thought is that was a winnable game if we don't stink up the place early on. Sabally and Ionescu killed us, but overall Oregon did not shoot threes well, we rebounded fine, we held Hebard to very few points or rebounds, and Oregon scored much less than they usually do. Our offense against their zone was a mess. Agree with those above who said way too much time wasting on offense. Too slow getting the ball up court against minor pressure, too much standing and pointing while dribbling, and too many possessions going very late in the shot clock because of all the time wasting. At one point we were shooting something like 15% late first quarter or early second. Play the first half more like the second, which wasn't great but was better, and we are in the game with a chance to win maybe.

Just feels to me we rely to much on Williams to make stuff happen and she ends up dribbling way too much trying to get the offense moving. Is it the schemes or the execution that is the bigger problem? We just are not aggressive enough on offense. Is this offense just too easy to scout or something? We have the pg arranging the players around her on most possessions. Shouldn't they know already what to do without so much go here, go there?

Overall Oregon is just better, but this particular game was there to be won if we had played with more focus and more aggression on offense.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - yvonne - 02-25-2020

(02-24-2020, 08:51 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:
(02-24-2020, 08:48 PM)GK3 Wrote:
(02-24-2020, 08:41 PM)treetop11 Wrote: Our team is so dumb. We have to play faster on O rather than run down the clock, especially late in the game when trailing, move, move the ball, shoot!

Agreed 100%. We simply do not move the ball well at all. We spread 4 people out and have our point guard dribble and try (I guess) to find someone open to pass the ball towards. Our offense is terrible. Based on our recruiting rankings we are not playing up to that talent level. We have struggled to beat a number of lower ranked teams this year and may well struggle early and lose in the tournament. Compared to other good Stanford teams I think this one would lose in a match up.

Fire the coach. . . .

excellent

RE: WBB: Oregon 74 Stanford 66 - TheFarm07 - 02-25-2020

First off, before I contribute my 2 cents regarding tonight's game, I just wanted to comment that I believe fans can criticize sports teams, even collegiate ones and air frustrations without getting personal or needlessly attacking players' characters. I know that I occasionally let the emotion of the moment get to me and post something that goes too far. Now before hitting that Send button, I take a moment to read what I just wrote and consider the tone of my writing and whether I've crossed a line. I think we can critique decisions, level of play, effort level, play calling, etc. and refrain from calling the players or coaches themselves by unfounded names or characterizations.

I can sympathize with the level of frustration in this thread though. I was unable to watch the game tonight because I had to work late but after reading the comments, I can identify with the source of many of my fellow Cardboarders' consternation.

I am continually frustrated by the amount of unenforced errors in our turnovers. Too many times we force a high-risk, low-reward pass when there's nothing there. Even if it succeeds and we retain possession of the ball, it doesn't seem like we improved our position to score. These are all very smart ladies led by a Hall of Fame coach and I am not sure why we keep pressing the issue when there's little to gain from a pass into a double team or to a player closely guarded by a defender who could pick the ball away.

Secondly, I am exasperated by our lack of ability to solve zone defenses (and our offense in general). Season after season, we have been stymied by zone defenses and we do nothing during the shot clock until a desperation shot at the buzzer. I took this quote from a past game:

"The zone...mentioned also was frustrating. Player X, Player Y and Player Z tossed the ball around about 30 feet out, with little or no movement or screening off the ball."

This quote was not from this season or last year's or even the year before. It was taken from the Tennessee game in which Nneka scored 42 points EIGHT years ago. The players mentioned above was Greenfield, Kokenis and Lindy (who's now one of our assistant coaches). Yet, even as classes come in and out and we've had turnover of the entire roster, we still shut down at the sight of zone defenses. If these type of defenses were so effective, then every team would be using them. They are not impregnable; I've seen good offenses pick apart zone defenses before. We don't need to rely on long range shots either, we need to try to find soft spots in the zone.

Related to that, our offense leaves a lot to be desired. Whenever we have an end of the quarter scenario, where we are keeping for the last possession, I feel like we almost always wait until too little time is left before running a play and then we don't have a Plan B when Plan A is stopped. It seems like we don't have much confidence in running plays early in the shot clock sometimes. I feel like the experiment with the Princeton offense is not going as well as planned. Too many teams know our plays and even though we might score on the occasional backdoor cut, it's not as frequent enough to be consistent. I know Oregon with Ionescu and Hebard is well known for the pick and roll, but as far as I know, we are the only team with a "type" of offense or philosophy. Does Geno run a particular strategy? Is Mulkey known to implement a special philosophy?

Whatever it is, as chimera points out, our offense is not aggressive if it gets into the half court. We are wasting too much time on the shot clock without getting a good look at the basket. We can get over-reliant on one player and that can be easily countered with double teams and denying them the ball.

Perhaps also associated with that is our inconsistency. We can go on spurts where we can seemingly score at will and look like we can compete with anybody, but then there are other times even within the course of the same game, where we go cold and/or make a string of turnovers and let opponents into games without rhyme or reason (e.g. the end of the Oregon State game where we couldn't put them away with a 14-pt lead). I hate arrogance and not giving your opponent credit when credit is due, but sometimes I feel like we need some more cockiness on the team and the self-belief that we are better than our opponents.

We barely beat Colorado the two times that we played them. Meanwhile Oregon demolished them by 40+ points each time. Is Oregon 35 points better than us on a night-in, night-out scale? Though they beat us by a similar scoreline in Eugene, we proved tonight that the gap between our two teams is not that large. We have 9 All-Americans on our roster, but sometimes I feel like we play less than the sum of our parts, which leads to closer than should be games and the occasional loss against a team we should have beaten.

I know UConn is not our favorite team here on the board for many reasons, but you have to admire the consistency of their play. When was the last team UConn lost to a team with more than 4 or 5 losses during a season? Yes, they don't play in a strong conference, but it still takes incredible focus to not only be unbeaten in conference play but breeze through it season after season. After so many easy wins, you would think it would get harder to maintain the same level of motivation and skill every night, yet they still do it. Yes, they've lost by double digits this season, but those were to great teams. But when's the last time they lost to a non-elite team (i.e. not us or Baylor or Notre Dame or MS State, etc.)? You have to go way back to find one (St. John's back on Feb 18, 2012 is the last one I found). Meanwhile, we've had some head-scratching losses over the last few years.

I also agree that Kiana is a very good player who can come up with clutch shots as she did against Colorado, but she is not an All-American. Her shooting is too streaky and unreliable at times, especially her closer range shots (as good of a shooter that she can be, she surprisingly misses a lot of the midrange ones she should be making) and she doesn't get to the line to make up for it. Her drives to the basket are predicated on outfoxing and outmaneuvering her defenders rather than barrelling through them. I also like to see her make better decisions on some of her passing.

As a team, I also feel that we don't make as many open shots as other teams. As Tara pointed out during her press conference tonight, we missed some makeable shots. Though I didn't watch the game, I am not surprised. I feel like we are not as automatic as we should be when we have clean looks. I don't have any concrete evidence to support this assertion, only my memory (biased as it may be). Even making 2 or 3 more of these shots per game would be another 4 to 9 points potentially in a game.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - treetop11 - 02-25-2020

(02-24-2020, 09:12 PM)StanFanFam13 Wrote:
(02-24-2020, 08:41 PM)treetop11 Wrote: Our team is so dumb. We have to play faster on O rather than run down the clock, especially late in the game when trailing, move, move the ball, shoot!

Respectfully requesting that you cool it with the "dumb," "piss poor," etc. We'd all like to have seen that game go differently, and yes, it's particularly frustrating that at times it felt winnable. Oregon is a great team, but as others have pointed out, we had ill-advised shots and some that just weren't falling, and we didn't capitalize as well as we could have on the few holes that did show up in their defense. That said, there is no quit in this team. They've clawed their way back in other games, and while it wasn't enough today, I loved seeing Ashten stepping up big and knocking down threes when we were down late, Lexie keep shooting even when things hadn't been going her way, and Ki scrapping out on the floor for essentially the entire game.

Looking forward to these Arizona schools and grateful that we have a team of incredible young women—and their talented coaches—who play their hearts out for our entertainment. Time to dust themselves off and get back to it.

Sorry but can't sugar coat what is obvious - that's burying your head in the sand. In defense of our MBB team, I stated on TOS that I judge our teams by being competitive - win or lose. Our guys have no McD AAs and far, far less depth, yet they truly have fought much harder and been in every game but one to #1 Kansas (and we played a good second half in that). I don't see the morale win by losing "only" by 8 that some do, nor the fight to the end. Oregon dominated the whole game an at the end, they knew they had it hand and took their foot off the gas. When we cut the lead to 5, a tougher squad would have erased that margin or kept it that close to the end.
The disappointing part was that Oregon didn't really play that well - they were there for the taking. And with a large home crowd who could have provided the team energy, the team didn't provide energy and yes did dumb stuff - it's nothing short of dumb to throw a pass for example to a spot where not just on but two opposing players are much closer than your own. Most of our TOs were these dumb passes or shot misses that good players and good teams don't miss. So the home court crowd never had much of a chance to get into it and provide the type of hostile environment that we had in Eugene which can cause some pressure on the other team. As Tara said in her press conference, the team didn't hold up its end of the bargain.
Of course, this loss isn't the end of the world or the season for the team, and Oregon is a better team even if we had Carrington and Jones. Their top three are better than anybody we have and after that, their other players are on par with ours, other Kiana. But it goes back to being competitive. We weren't; many times our girls simply didn't hustle or go hard after loose balls. If Ionescu hadn't been ill and had a long day, she cold have gone for 40. As #4 playing #3 at home on the big stage, even if the opponent was better, the game should have see-sawed back and forth even if we eventually lost or lost by 8. I can eliminate the word piss, but the performance was still poor. And I'll bet that our players think the same, not that it was some kind of "victory" to end up only losing by 8. Hopefully, the loss will inspire them to do better and play harder moving ahead and get a shot to avenge the defeats in the P12 tournament.

RE: WBB: Oregon 74 Stanford 66 - Baez87 - 02-25-2020

Some games are "won" when your team scores fewer point than the opposition. This was one of those games.
In many ways this game was a set-up. Oregon had beaten Stanford by more that thirty points a few weeks earlier. At the beginning of the season, Oregon had beaten the US National Team that had been selected to represent the US in the coming Olympics. Tonight's game was being televised nationally by ESPN, not to highlight Stanford, but to feature a talent-ladened team led by the national player of the year, Sabina Ionescu. Ionescu had just flown up from LA where she had given a eulogy for Koby Bryant in the largest memorial ever given to a basketball player. Stephen Curry was court-side at Maples to see the Oregon star for the second time in three days. No one expected Stanford to win.
Things didn’t go Stanford's way much of the game. Oregon dominated at times while Stanford played uncharacteristically tight and out of sorts. Stanford fell roughly twenty points behind. Many players would have hung their heads at this point and given up.
But this team is not about quit! Tara adjusted the game strategy, the players dug deeply into their basketball souls and elevated their game. They scrambled, they fought, they gave up their bodies, they played hardnose defense, and hit difficult shots. In the final quarter, they outscored Oregon 28-18. This team refused to give up.
When the final buzzer sounded, Stanford came up eight points shy of their opponent's score. But they weren’t a beaten team. They walked off the court in gratitude, smiling and waving to their fans.
Some games are won when your team scores fewer points than the opponent. This was one of those games.

RE: WBB: Oregon 74 Stanford 66 - TheFarm07 - 02-25-2020

I will have to side with the half who takes no solace in this being "just" an eight-point loss. Yes, it wasn't a blowout like last time, but on the other hand, especially with the talent we have on the women's team, we can't be satisfied with moral victories. I can't verify the intensity of play but even from a statistical viewpoint, just looking at the stat sheet, we drew even with Oregon across several categories.

Yes Oregon is a great time and I would say the favorite in nearly every match-up they face. They have incredible talent at their top 3 positions. But we are not mince meat either. There comes a time where we can't just settle for second best. As I wrote in my previous post, we need a little mean streak in us. We need to maintain a higher level of play and hold ourselves accountable rather than just praising the other side. If we want to win a national title, we have to make fewer correctable mistakes.

RE: WBB: Oregon 74 Stanford 66 - qwerty49 - 02-25-2020

Question: Ionescu's 9th rebound, the record setter, looked to be an airball, or maybe a partial block, that never drew iron or backboard. So that's still a rebound?

Some observations about our post play:

-I wish they all played as tough and aggressively as Fingall did tonight.
-Dodson, alas, is still a project on offense, and isn't this her 3rd year in the program? The way they sag off her when she's just off the elbow, giving all that room, I wondered why she never once took that shot. Then I realized she's only a lifetime 48% FT shooter. But then I realized that shot is essentially a FT, and wouldn't most coaches be happy with 48% shooting from the field?
-I agree Prechtel has tremendous upside, makes some threes, but she sure takes some bad shots sometimes
-Jerome just seems too nice out there. Does her shot chart ever show anything except a spot-up three?

Welcome back, Lexie!

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. Oregon Monday 6pm - treetop11 - 02-25-2020

(02-24-2020, 09:52 PM)teejers1 Wrote:
(02-24-2020, 09:34 PM)2006alum Wrote: There are no girls on our team - they're women. And they are getting the same Stanford degree I got, so they're hardly stupid. As for recruiting rankings, three of our starters missed between half and all of one of the past two seasons with lower leg injuries. And a fourth was unranked as a recruit. Oregon starts two top 5 recruits and 2 other projected top 8 WNBA players.

With friends like this, who needs enemies? More later once I have a chance to watch the game, but an 8 point loss is better than I was fearing.

Yeah, TT can get a little heated in his posts on hoops (though usually the commentary is on the mark). 5 observations from this evening's game:

1. Ionescu a fabulous college player . . . will be an average pro (at best). She has no foot speed, and she won't be able to out muscle those in pro leagues. Also, she won't get benefit of the whistle as she did on a few calls tonight. None of this should take away from the fact that she has put together an All Time Great college career.

2. Ki is Stanford's most indispensable player. She also makes WAY too many bad decisions for an elite point guard, including - as TT rightly noted - walking the ball up when Stanford needed to push the pace; dribbling out WAY too much of the shot clock and then dumping the ball to a teammate who is then in a horrible position; and forcing some bad passes. I get that she is exhausted out there - but just because she is tired does not mean she can take the air out of the ball when we need to run. And the fact that she is so tired is on Tara to no small degree. Give Wilson more minutes to spell Ki.

3. There is one person who has great upside for Stanford - who can turn Stanford from a good team to a contender. That's Prechtel. She needs to be infused with confidence, and that comes with PT . . . plain and simple. She hit a couple good treys in Q4, but it was obviously too little, too late. She can't help the team from the bench, Tara. And I know she made some bad decisions/played weakly in 1H (but who didn't on the roster tonight); still, empowerment comes primarily with PT. I'd ramp her time up.

4. Oregon's zone was effective, even when it didn't do much other than slow our ball movement up the court. And it was especailly effective when, for some inexplicable reason, Ki dribbles it into a double team at the sideline just after the half court line. Good grief, that's Y ball decision-making. Bottom line: Oregon was better coached tonight (as much as it pains me to say it).

5. N/W/S all of the above, Stanford can beat Oregon. Truthfully. Yeah, Lexie had a career game, but everyone else on the roster can play better. Much better. Stanford did a lot of thins reasonably well tonight - including rebounding and D - and a couple bad breaks resulted in easy layups for Oregon. 8 points is hardly an insurmountable differential - heck, take away the two times when the ball just dropped down from a miss to Ionescu alone under the hoops (one time, two Stanford players knocked each other down); take away the ridiculous breakdown on the in-bounds play (again giving Ionescu a layup), and take away the failure by Fingall to box out on a trey miss by the Oregon star (who got her own rebound and scored on a take to the rack). That's 4 simple fixes, and 8 points.

The differential isn't as great as some here think.

But kudos to Oregon and their fans who showed in force at Maples. It was fun being there, even in defeat.

P.S. More music form the band; less canned music piped through speakers.

P.P.S. Last thing: ingress/egress to Maples was a freaking DISASTER. The guys at the Maples lot are clueless. They were turning away cars - which backed up all the way back to El Camino - saying lot was full. I walked in and saw 3 empty spaces, plus more cars exiting as people left Stanford for work. I was on foot, so it didn't affect me. But it was pretty embarrassing to see. Finally told the guy letting cars out on Campus Drive that he had to tell those yahoos on the detour route that there were spaces in the lot, and they should make sure that all spots are full when they close the lot. HELLO?!?

Agree with all you said and your specificity of problems. Only thing I nit pick is Lexie having a career game. She did play very well and scored big, but she was pretty bad early when she blew shots during that drought that allowed Oregon to build both its confidence and a brobdingnagian lead. Lexie to her credit did not let that take her out of the game and later came back to basically be our offense.
Last week I advocated for Tara to use multiple bigs to bother and contain Hebard even at the risk of foul trouble. We did contain her and without any serious foul trouble. But the differential is that we can't stop Ionescu. Even if we keep her from going off in scoring, her assists to others really hurt us. And we have no match up for Sabally - stopping both is tough. Like most said preseason still applies. Oregon has got us in terms of star, top talent and starting lineup; we have better depth,and arguably even with Di and Haley out. But we have to play faster pace, lots of energy, and use that depth as you point out. We did so in the first half at Eugene when we got a nice lead. We need to pressure on D, contest everything, get out and run, and not pass up open shots - take them and crash the boards, be physical and aggressive. Colorado doesn't match our talent, but they took us to the limit by ratcheting up their effort. The talent level overall on our roster vs Oregon is that much of a differential compared to us and CU. So yes, if we play smarter and harder, we can beat Oregon. We are not a top 4 team. We are a top 10 team who can beat anybody if play smart and hard.