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WBB: Stanford 62 UW 52 - Viking_Guy - 02-12-2011

Blech.  Ugh.  And other expletives of disgust.

Stanford survived its worst performance in years at Maples today, outlasting the Huskies, their own shooting and a trio of less-than-even-the-Pac-10-norm-for-competence officials.

Washington, in the meantime, returned to its Chris Gobrecht-era strategy against the Cardinal: if you can\'t beat them, beat them up.

And it nearly worked.

The first half was one of the roughest, most loosely officiated periods I\'ve seen outside of games against Tennessee in Knoxville and the game that shall remain nameless against the thugs Penichero, Machinguana et al.  Washington was called for 11 fouls, and it could\'ve and should\'ve easily been 15-18.  Essentially, Tia Jackson appears to have instructed her players to hit, hit and hit some more, especially every time Stanford got the ball into the post.  And the officiating crew decided to "let \'em play."

Every time Chiney or Nneka got the ball down low, they got hit.  If they tried to go up for a shot, they got bodied.  Twice in the first half, Jeanette Pohlen got called for a charge when she collided with a set Husky defender - because another defender essentially shoved her into that player as Jeanette tried to cut back inside the defender.  And Pohlen, trying to drive into the heart of the Husky zone, got hammered twice as she rose up to shoot, both times leading to balls coming nowhere near the rim, and neither time called either a foul or a deflection by the defender.

How bad was it?  Ten minutes into the game, Washington had been called for their fifth foul, and Stanford had scored EIGHT points.  Luckily, the Stanford defense was holding up, and UW only had 10.

The key?  Washington was playing a 2-3 zone, and Stanford couldn\'t get the ball inside, because every time the ball went in, the Huskies would hack away, and calls were few and far between.  So the Cardinal would revert to their bad habit of tossing the ball around the perimeter.  That wouldn\'t have been that bad, except for the fact that, given looks at open 3 pointers, they were missing - not badly, but they couldn\'t knock anything down.

Strong inside play by Nneka and Chiney in the latter stages of the first half started to right the ship; they played through the fouls, with the two sisters scoring all but two of Stanford\'s points over the last ten minutes of the first half, the vast majority at the free throw line.  In that stretch, Stanford had three field goals, one each for Chiney, Nneka and Jeanette, and shot 8-10 from the free throw line.

They got the lead out to 8, at 22-14, but the Huskies\' mammoth, and I mean that in the sense of elephantine, center Regina Rogers basically bulldozed her way to an offensive rebound and converted, and, after a Chiney offensive board and stickback, Kristi Kingma shook Lindy in a sign of things to come to get free for a short 12 foot jumper and-1 opportunity when Lindy brushed her arm.  Kingma missed the FT, and the teams went into the lockerroom with Stanford leading 24-18.

The key stat at the half?  Stanford, 0-11 from 3 point range.  With UW hitting everyone inside and sending them to the line, crashing down out of their 2-3 zone to slap at the ball when it was in the post, there were open looks to be had - Jeanette and Kayla in particular had wide-open chances that they just couldn\'t knock down.  It kept the Huskies in the game.

Or rather, it kept the Huskies as a team in the game.  Individual players began to get in (deserved) foul trouble, especially down in the post.  But Stanford still couldn\'t hit from outside, and began to have issues at the free throw line as well, often going 1-2 and keeping UW in the game.  And then Kingma started to get going.  Lindy to put it kindly did not have a very good defensive game against her, unlike the game in Seattle.  Part of it was that Stanford\'s help defense when Kingma drove again seemed to be late, but also, Lindy dropped a bit too far off her inside the arc, and Kingma started to hit from 23 or 24 feet.  

Stanford had managed to push it out to a 10 point lead when Kingma hit her first.  But the play that really kept them in the game was a blown call by official Kyle Bacon, who called Nneka for her third personal foul as she grabbed Rogers\' left arm on defense.  Of course, Rogers had just brought her elbow up into Nneka\'s face when she did that to try to throw Nneka off-balance, so it seemed a rather odd call.  But when Nneka left, Stanford\'s inside offense lost half its punch, and with the outside still ice-cold, Chiney had to keep on trooping to the FT line.  And every time Stanford got out to a 10 point lead, there was Kingma with another 3.  Then she hit two in a row, and UW was only down 4, 39-35, with under 12 minutes left.

The Cardinal kept working the ball inside, kept drawing fouls, and finally UW started to lose players (albeit one on an absolutely ludicrous mistake, again by Kyle Bacon).

More...


Re: WBB: Stanford 62 UW 52 - Viking_Guy - 02-12-2011

Stanford first got starter McKenzie Argens disqualified, then in came Regina Rogers, operating with four fouls.  With Stanford ahead 42-38, Nneka got to the endline against Mollie Williams (#34).  Williams definitely hacked her, and Bacon signaled a foul.  Then proceeded to say it was against #43, Rogers, and was therefore her fifth foul.  Rogers was standing about 15 feet away from where the contact occurred.

I don\'t know if he saw another foul off the ball on Rogers, but it definitely appeared as if he signaled the wrong number and disqualified the wrong player.

And Stanford still couldn\'t hit an outside shot.  Even when Pohlen sent one through the hoop, it was waved off because the Huskies had committed a foul underneath.  And, with Nneka on the bench after picking up her fourth, Stanford held onto a precarious 3-5 point lead.

Which was whittled down to 3 on a Morton three off a feed from Kingma at 44-41, then to 2 on 1-2 FTs after Jos missed Stanford\'s SEVENTEENTH consecutive shot from 3 point range.  Stanford again pushed it out to 5 on free throws, in the process fouling out Washington\'s third inside player, Williams, on three fouls in 52 seconds of game time.  Kingma again hit a 3 to cut it back to 2, and the two teams traded FTs, before the single biggest shot of the game.

All credit to Toni Kokenis.  Left wide open at the wing of UWs 2-3 zone, she didn\'t let the fact that Stanford was 0-18 from 3 point range phase her.  Launched, and connected.  Stanford up 5, and the lead never got below 4 again in the game.

Not to say there weren\'t still anxious moments, but Kingma finally missed a three, and with all of UW\'s posts either sitting or in foul trouble (their fourth, Heard, fouled out in the last two minutes), Stanford got free on the offensive boards for stickbacks to make up for their continual shooting woes.  I was extremely relieved when the buzzer finally sounded.


Not to put too fine a point on it - this was Stanford\'s worst game in years.  Not this year, but multiple years.  Not just because of the officiating (more on that in a moment), but because, against a fairly simple and not very quick 2-3 zone, their offense became very predictable, and with their inability to hit from outside, ineffective.

How about 1-21 for a stellar 4.9% from 3 point range for the game?  The Ogwumikes raised the overall shooting level up by hitting 14-22, over 60%, inside the arc.  And that percentage would\'ve been even higher if they hadn\'t drawn probably 15 fouls between them every time they touched the ball down low.

Defensively?  Again, they left Lindy LaRocque on an island, and Tara\'s unwillingness to come out of a man into a more floating defense let Kingma drive against her time and time again, forcing rotations and leaving shooters open on the baseline for 12-14 footers.  If Lindy dropped off, Kingma hit from 3 out to 25-26 feet.  Especially in the second half, I would\'ve liked to have seen something more creative on defense when it became clear that Kristi was UW\'s only real offensive weapon, especially with Rogers in foul trouble.  Maybe a trap on Kingma to force her to give up the ball?  Or something?

On the officiating - they set the tone early in the first half, letting them play to the extent that Nneka got hit across both forearms as she went up to shoot, the ball hit the underside of the rim, and not a whistle to be heard.  Given the looseness of the whistles on the Huskies\' defense, the fact that 4 players fouled out gives you an idea of how physical a game it was.  And, as I mentioned, the mistakes ran both ways - the missed call on Rogers was probably the most egregious of the game, but there were plenty of other candidates.

More generally, UW showed other teams what you can do, if you\'re willing to simply beat up on Stanford.  I would\'ve like to see Stanford try to pick up their physicality a bit - most of the fouls that were called on the Cardinal were not nearly as physical as those committed by the Huskies.  And in a game called this loosely (at least for the first half and the first part of the second), it will throw Stanford\'s offense off its game.

The scary part of the game?  Stanford had exactly 5 players score, and two of them, Jeanette and Toni, only had 3 points apiece, with Nneka, Chiney and Kayla hitting for 22, 21 and 13 respectively.  

Statistically, either Nneka or Chiney deserves the gameball, but I\'m going to give it to Toni, for that one shot.  Stanford was on its heels, reeling under a barrage of Kingma 3s, with an 11 point lead cut to 2, when she hit it.  It didn\'t end the game, but it put Stanford back on balance a bit.  For a freshman to hit that shot in that situation gives me hope for next year when Jeanette is gone.

Ugh.  Yuck.  Hoping not to see the rest of our opponents take too much of a lesson from this game, or the last three weeks are going to be some ugly basketball.  And hoping not to see Mr. Bacon on the same court as Stanford again this year.

VG


Re: WBB: Stanford 62 UW 52 - CompSci87 - 02-13-2011

Thanks for explaining Nneka\'s foul on Rogers. I was wondering how Nneka had managed to foul Rogers\' elbow with her face. I didn\'t see the subsequent arm grab that was apparently all the official saw.

I\'m sure glad Stanford came out with the win and with everybody in one piece.


Re: WBB: Stanford 62 UW 52 - M T - 02-13-2011

A good summary, except maybe you didn\'t make it seem as bad as it really was.   This was a game that Stanford was ready to lose.  Without the foul outs, Stanford might have lost.    Kingma was clearly the heroine for UW.  The O sisters, esp. Nneka, saved the game for Stanford.

I agree heartily about the officiating.  They made errors on both sides.  I also agree on the #34/#43 error.  I wonder if the officials can go to the monitor to make sure they got the right player\'s number.

I previously expressed my concern about what would happen if the 3-ptrs didn\'t fall.  This time we survived it.  Would we survive this against UCLA or in the NCAA tourney?  I don\'t want to think about it.

So, what can be done if this happens again?  Shoot through it?  Well, Jeannette was 0 for 6;  Kayla was 0 for 8.  Seems like they tried that.  (With a season avg of 24%, Kayla might try other scoring strategies.)

What triggers this kind of performance?  It wasn\'t a tight defense on outside shooting.  Once it has started in the game, frustration tends to keep it going, but was there a reason it started?  I suspect part of the problem was a lack of feeling the game was a challenge, so the team maybe wasn\'t as focused.   Both today and Thursday, I wondered if the team had a hard workout earlier in the day. (I presume not.)

I didn\'t see pre-game warm-ups.  Before the 2nd half, the 3pt practice seemed pretty normal, maybe a little less successful than normal, but not very noticably.

We\'re not used to seeing Stanford being outshot (except for the DePaul game) 45.2% to 36.5%.   Counting only 2pt shots, Stanford shot 18 of 31 (58%) vs the season avg of 53.7%, so the shooting woes were really limited to 3ptrs.  

With the statistics different because of the FG%, it would be best to look at rebounding percentages, not raw numbers.  Stanford\'s rebound %age was pretty even between the two halves and quite close to their season average (46% O, 67% D).  

Tara puts a pretty face on this, calling it good to get a wake up.  I expect she wishes she\'d been quoted saying how well UW did and how good Kingma was.  She said Stanford had too many turnovers for what UW was doing, which may be true, but 12TO is less than the team\'s average.  The 69.7% FT% is not too much below the 74.4% season avg.



Re: WBB: Stanford 62 UW 52 - meos - 02-13-2011

Some adversity now is not all bad. Shows how fragile getting a "win" can be. Perimeter players need a better Plan B when shots are not falling.
Such as, getting Kayla off the 3-point line and instead position her at the foul line as a key passing target might be one plan. Then instead of having the guards spacing out behind the 3-point line, flair inside the 3-point line as Kayla is getting the ball in the middle. The idea is to take shorter (perimeter) shots until a rhythm is established on bad shooting nights. Of course layups always help. Getting closer can also give more opportunities for perimeter players to draw fouls to get to the foul line to score.

The downside is after responding poorly overall to "very physical" play, the team is likely to see a lot more of it.

Re: WBB: Stanford 62 UW 52 - ceece - 02-13-2011

IF the refs had called more than 30% of the fouls, the Huskies would have had to suit up the kids mopping the floor by the second half. It was infuriating to see the wide range of cheap shots by so many of them, not just the big posts.

My "favorite" no-call was with about 10 minutes left, when #40 made an enormous over-the-back foul on a rebound, going over Kayla\'s shoulder with both arms and very nearly smacking the ref in the head. He, of course, called the ball out of bounds off Kayla.

I also liked the foul by #22 where she jumped way up and hit Tinkle (I think) on the body with both arms and one foot simultaneously. Can you call three fouls on one move?

I wasn\'t too worried about the ref getting the UW players\' numbers wrong, since both of those players were going to foul out in short order anyway (and both did).

Honestly, I\'m just glad nobody got hurt. Although that ref could have used that smack upside the head.