WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43

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WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - 81alum - 12-28-2018

Preview:

CSU Northridge comes to town, and they are no Buffalo. They are 6-7 and ranked 148 by Massey. They lost to Idaho by 15 points who is a common opponent, lost to scholarship-less Harvard by 20, to Cal by 25, and to USC by 16. They did beat Washington State. The games have tended to be low scoring, so either they play slow or they have good defense or both. Offensively, they are led by Channon Fluker with 17 points and 12 rebounds per game, a 6'4" center senior who is their one dominate player. Our bigs will have a good challenge from her. Nobody else is in double figures, although they have a couple of competent 3 point shooters by percentage--who just have not shot that much.

To me, the real story will be whether Lexie and Marta get any time--will they be coming back from their injuries? And can we get back on track with a dominant performance against an overmatched team, after a somewhat lackluster performance in Buffalo?

Overview:

We dominated, as expected. I won't do a full write-up as the comments below, particularly from 2006 and Farm07, summarize and analyze the game very effectively. Every uninjured player got into the game and every player except Kiana scored.

Chalk Talk:

Before the game I asked Kate about our rebounding, since we lost the rebounding battles to USF, Gonzaga, Baylor, and were virtually tied with Buffalo. Kate pointed out that before we played Buffalo we were #1 in the country in defensive rebounding. Offensive rebounding is down because we are shooting the ball better. Against Baylor we were out rebounded by 15 "but we made the ones we had to." Kate got some laughs from the crowd about my question, but I am still not completely convinced. It seems as if our rebounding is inconsistent--how do we out rebound Tennessee by 15 but let Gonzaga out rebound us by 15?

Also we learned that Lexie, Marta, and Anna would not suit up, but they were hopeful that their rehabs were going well. The coaches have been trained not to reveal personal information about their players--probably would be a FERPA violation by some interpretations--and so we never get anything definitive about the injury situation. We can hope that they will complete their rehabs prior to USC next week, but there will have to be some rust even if they do.

The Game:

The first half was as dominate as any I have seen us play, ending with a 41-12 lead. We earned it by shutting down their primary offensive threat Channon Fluker, who Nadia and Maya seemed to handle quite well. The third quarter was a bit of a 13-11 mess, and nearly the whole fourth quarter was played with our final bench players in, and they could not keep up the defensive pressure. We lost the fourth quarter 15-20 with some very, very sloppy plays at the very end with a Jerome turnover and a Brewer turnover that resulted in easy points at the other end.

Performances:

Alanna collected 3 fouls and played only 18 minutes. Two of them I saw and were deserved. She reacted to one by slamming the ball to the ground. She is a highly emotional player--she was probably blaming herself. If I could find anything else negative about the game it is that Kiana Williams' shot seems to have left her--I hope temporarily. She was 0-6 today, and also had only 1 assist.

In fact, as a team, our shooting was not that great. I noticed in practice that few of the balls were going in. That unfortunately continued into the game as we shot a pedestrian 24% from three point range and 41% overall. Northridge played a very active zone and were not a pushover defense--I can see why their games have often been low scoring.

I would give player-of-the-game to Maya Dodson, who had a team leading 16 points, with several baskets scored using the jump-hook she has reputedly been working on intensively. I bet it felt good to her to have those go in after working so hard to add that shot to her repertoire. I said at the beginning of the season that this team would go as far as Maya could take it--by that I meant that we would be a very good team, but to be an elite team she would have to become an elite player. She seems to be making strides in that direction. Also, while not perfect, she did seem to do a reasonably good job defending Fluker.

Lacie Hull continues to impress. She scored 10 points on 4/7 shooting, but she has a deceptive quickness and reach with her arms which allowed her to collect 3 steals. Tara will be challenged when Lexie comes back to find time for both of these excellent freshmen.

Jenna Brown got 23 minutes. She showed some impressive bursts of speed when bringing the ball up court. She was only 1/6, but she did have 7 rebounds and 3 assists to 2 turnovers. She is developing and will continue to get better.

Conclusion:

This team is quite good. Last year we did not have blowouts in our favor like this one, nor did we beat Baylor and Tennessee. While there is a big focus on our outstanding class coming in, I continue to be optimistic about this year's team. I do think we are going to need Lexie in particular during the Pac 12 season, so I hope for her speedy return. But we will begin to find out more as we take on USC and UCLA next weekend/

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. CSU Northridge 2pm Saturday - Griffins78 - 12-29-2018

Anyone want two tickets to this game?

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. CSU Northridge 2pm Saturday - 2006alum - 12-29-2018

Just making sure I'm not missing something - there's not supposed to be sound for this livestream, right?

Edited to add: oddly, around 4:45 in the first it suddenly started playing for me.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. CSU Northridge 2pm Saturday - TheFarm07 - 12-29-2018

(12-29-2018, 03:06 PM)2006alum Wrote: Just making sure I'm not missing something - there's not supposed to be sound for this livestream, right?

Phew, not just me, then.

But sound just came on

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. CSU Northridge 2pm Saturday - 2006alum - 12-29-2018

Hah. pretty sure everyone watching the livestream from home would rather see the game itself than a notice about getting in line for the Conga line at the game.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. CSU Northridge 2pm Saturday - TheFarm07 - 12-29-2018

(12-29-2018, 03:16 PM)2006alum Wrote: Hah. pretty sure everyone watching the livestream from home would rather see the game itself than a notice about getting in line for the Conga line at the game.

Agreed, especially when it comes on when there's live playing going on

We lead 19-4 after one quarter, as Northridge has only one made FG in the first ten minutes

We have 22 shot attempts, but only have 19 points to show for it as we are shooting under 40% currently.

Williams and Fingall are a combined 1/9, but we do have 7 offensive rebounds

At the half, we are dominating 41-12 as expected

The defense has been the leading story, as Northridge is shooting 15.4% with only 4 made baskets in 20 minutes of play, they also have turned the ball over 10 times and we are dominating the boards 30-13. Their star center Fluker only has 2 points on 1/5 shooting.

Offensively, we've picked up our efficiency in the 2nd quarter, upping our shooting percentage to 46% from below 40% in the first quarter.

7 players have scored with 5 of them having at least 5 points, perhaps necessitated by Alanna's and Fingall's 2 fouls. The commentator is very correct that Alanna's propensity to pick up fouls is an Achilles' heel that better teams will surely look to exploit as the season progresses. However, our team's depth somewhat mitigates this problem, but we would rather have Alanna in the game.

Dodson leads all scorers with 10, showing some very good post moves and DiJonai already has 8 rebounds with her 5 points

(12-28-2018, 07:26 PM)81alum Wrote: To me, the real story will be whether Lexie and Marta get any time--will they be coming back from their injuries?

The announcer mentioned that Lexie, Marta and Anna Wilson are all unavailable for today's game

After today, we won't play again until Friday, so that gives us nearly another week to hopefully get one to all three of them healthy again

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. CSU Northridge 2pm Saturday - TheFarm07 - 12-29-2018

We lead 54-23 after three, as our offense stagnated against the zone and Northridge found their shooting touch late in the quarter to score in double digits in a quarter for the first time in the game.

Fingall picked up an early 3rd foul and Alanna got her 3rd late in the quarter as Kiana remains scoreless at 0/6. After a hot start to the season, she has cooled off considerably and will need to pick up her shooting range heading into Pac-12 play.

We win 69-43 as our bench players, well played like bench players, with 3 turnovers in 90 seconds (3 very ill-advised passes, 2 of them to no one in particular) at one point.

But the gap was too large as Tara used the opportunity to avoid any further injuries to key players and allow our bench players extended minutes of experience, so while painful in the short run, it should pay dividends down the road.

We shot just above 40% as a team with no one with an outstanding game shooting wise. We seemed to miss a lot of easy shots and some by a lot.

Dodson had a career-high 16 points, showing nifty jump hooks, but also forcing it up a couple times when she didn't have position and missing some easy shots as well, but certainly she is much improved and confident in attempting those shots. Now she needs continued experience and work to refine her skill set.

Alanna was 6/10 for 14 points, playing limited minutes overall due to early foul trouble and our large lead later in the game.

DiJonai collected 11 of our 53 rebounds to go along with 5 rebounds

Kiana was scoreless on a frigid 0/6 shooting afternoon

This game was what it was, a warm-up after Christmas break and before Pac-12 play begins in the new year.

The LA schools will pose much more of a challenge coming up and hopefully we'll have reinforcements in 6 days' time.

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. CSU Northridge 2pm Saturday - 2006alum - 12-29-2018

I felt like we were privy to a practice game. I can't remember us playing so deep into the bench so early - I'm guessing every non-injured player got at least 5 minutes of playing time. A little hard to judge this game as a result. Overall, I felt like our shooting from outside was not great, while our inside game continues to seem to develop well. We were able to get inside pretty easily vs. the 1-1-3 matchup zone, and even when the shots weren't falling, we were getting the o boards and getting second chance points.

Dodson looked really good. She seems to be improving practically game to game, and her moves under the basket are already the best I've seen from any Stanford player since the Ogwumikes - her footwork is excellent and she's so fluid and lengthy that unless she's double-teamed, she almost always finds a way around her defender.

Oddly quiet performance by Williams - she was the only player not to score on our entire team.

Too many silly fouls from Smith (even more than normal, IMHO), but solid offensive performance.

Good to see Lacie hit some jump shots, and she apparently had a +/- 31 while she was on the court. I feel like she's really improved a lot since the start of the season; the paradox of Lexie being out with the injury is the gap between them has probably closed a bit.

I like a lot of what Jerome was doing around the basket - boxing out so others court get the rebound, or finding holes in the defense to make a pass.

I continue to worry about Brown's refusal to try to shoot from beyond the arc - she seemed to decline to take advantage of the open looks and instead plow inside and throw something desperate up and hope for a foul. I want to see her taking at least 2 jump shots per game, because otherwise she's going to develop the same reputation that Sniezek has - you can sag on her for miles and not worry about it, which closes down the lanes inside. I don't really understand it, because she was the National High School Coaches Association Senior Girls' Basketball Athlete of the Year. How does that player suddenly lose her ability to shoot? I have to think it's mental, and I hope the coaches will work with her in practice to get her confident in her jump shots.

Carrington was her usual do-everything, glue self. Relatively quiet offensive performance, but the usual dazzling mix of steals, rebounds, and fast break plays.

Overall, I'll take it. But we definitely need to shake off the Christmas cobwebs and get ready for the SoCal schools next weekend...

RE: WBB: Stanford vs. CSU Northridge 2pm Saturday - TheFarm07 - 12-29-2018

(12-29-2018, 04:45 PM)2006alum Wrote: I continue to worry about Brown's refusal to try to shoot from beyond the arc - she seemed to decline to take advantage of the open looks and instead plow inside and throw something desperate up and hope for a foul. I want to see her taking at least 2 jump shots per game, because otherwise she's going to develop the same reputation that Sniezek has - you can sag on her for miles and not worry about it, which closes down the lanes inside. I don't really understand it, because she was the National High School Coaches Association Senior Girls' Basketball Athlete of the Year. How does that player suddenly lose her ability to shoot? I have to think it's mental, and I hope the coaches will work with her in practice to get her confident in her jump shots.

I was paying close attention to Brown whenever she was in the game after you pointed out that disturbing pattern and noticed that she drove to the basket and missed wildly, going 1/6. We don't need to be a Karlie Samuelson from long range, but we need her to make jumpers, even within the arc, to keep defenses honest

A similar mystery confounds me with Sniezek too. Even though Marta was not a national player of the year, she was nonetheless a top-50 recruit winning DC Player of the Year and I think scoring 2K+ points in high school, and she never found her jump shot in college.

I hope the same thing doesn't happen with Brown. National title contenders can threaten at all 5 positions and our Achilles' heel during our run in the late 2000s and early 2010s (the late Wiggins-Appel-Ogwumike era) where we were world-beaters otherwise was at the one. Though JJ Hones, Lindy La Rocque and Melanie Murphy were all fine players, it was a significant difference from the other 4 players on the field. I know Pohlen manned the one too, but we still had the other guard position to fill.

If Kiana can play the one and/or we can get another top PG recruit in 2020 besides Van Gytenbeek, like a Paige Bueckers, then it won't be as big of a deal. But it would be nice to have that depth at one.

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - 81alum - 12-29-2018

My write-up is done at the top.

I am waiting for Brown's jump shot to develop. And I hope Kiana gets hers back for USC.

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - BobK - 12-29-2018

Excellent posts. No comment on the game just hohum

It’s Lacie Hull. :)

JJ Hones And Jeanette Pohlen were very good point guards. Thus we got to Final 4s with them.

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - 2006alum - 12-29-2018

(12-29-2018, 05:54 PM)BobK Wrote: JJ Hones And Jeanette Pohlen were very good point guards. Thus we got to Final 4s with them.

True - but JJ battled injuries and then had an early exit from the team, while Jeannette had difficulties handling press defenses (which is more or less why we lost to Texas A&M in that heartbreaker of a semifinal in 2011) - that was why Tara would sometimes opt to bring Melanie Murphy in to handle the 1, because she was more fluid getting the ball up the court against the press. (Brown already seems to handle the press better than Jeannette did.) I always viewed Jeannette as a natural 2/SG who often had to play the 1/PG because we didn't have a "true 1" starter who was comparable to the rest of our starters - in that sense, her height made her more vulnerable to the press because short, speedy guards could poke the ball out more easily on her higher dribbles. At 6'0" and with terrific range on her three-pointer, she was a perfect SG.

Edited to add, from a 2010 Mechelle Voepel story on Pohlen:

Quote:"We all got thrown a curveball last year when JJ went down, because I was pretty much set at the 2 spot," Pohlen said. "JJ was doing a good job leading the team but then we had to adjust. The coaches made the decision to put me in the point guard position for the rest of the season.

"I had played it sophomore to senior year of high school, and I'd been playing it since a young age, too, even though I was tall. It gave me an advantage when I would get mismatches. In high school, you could do pretty much whatever. But I definitely didn't expect I'd be doing it here."

..."She is not necessarily a born point guard, like when I think of coaching someone like Dawn Staley or other guards out there," coach Tara VanDerveer said. "But she really makes our team go."

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - BobK - 12-29-2018

I will disagree. Jeanette getting hurt late against Texas A&M cost us the game.
JJ had an ACL and the team collapsed as she was the leader and heart of the team.

Yet they both played in Final 4 and final finals.

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - BostonCard - 12-29-2018

Here’s where losing out on Skylar Diggins to Notre Dame made the difference between a national championship or two and getting beaten in the final four.

BC

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - mbdude - 12-29-2018

"I continue to worry about Brown's refusal to try to shoot from beyond the arc - she seemed to decline to take advantage of the open looks and instead plow inside and throw something desperate up and hope for a foul. I want to see her taking at least 2 jump shots per game, because otherwise she's going to develop the same reputation that Sniezek has - you can sag on her for miles and not worry about it, which closes down the lanes inside. I don't really understand it, because she was the National High School Coaches Association Senior Girls' Basketball Athlete of the Year. How does that player suddenly lose her ability to shoot? I have to think it's mental, and I hope the coaches will work with her in practice to get her confident in her jump shots."

Her free throw shooting is also a problem since she handles the ball, and often gets fouled going to the basket. it would be tough to have her on the court in a close game

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - TheFarm07 - 12-29-2018

(12-29-2018, 06:34 PM)BobK Wrote: I will disagree. Jeanette getting hurt late against Texas A&M cost us the game.
JJ had an ACL and the team collapsed as she was the leader and heart of the team.

Yet they both played in Final 4 and final finals.

I don't have any info on JJ's dynamics with the rest of the team, so I can't really comment on that aspect

However, if memory serves me correctly and it's been nearly 8 years since that game (how fast time flies...), Texas A&M had already rallied by the time of Jeanette's injury and we were furiously trying to get back in the game. Her injury was certainly the nail in the coffin, having one of our senior leaders gone is never good, but we were already reeling (I'm not sure if Murphy had fouled out by that point, but I remember groaning when she picked up her 5th because she was our main counter against the A&M speedy guards--which was in line with my original point and 2006alum's post) and I remember thinking even if we won the game, we would be at a serious disadvantage in the national title game.

Anyway, my original point was that even if you counted Jeannette as a 1, we still had a noticeable difference at the other guard position, if compared to the All Americans we had at the other spots during that era. I am just saying I, as other posters here, hope that Brown does not acquire Sniezek's aversion to taking jump shots, as having legitimate scoring threats at all 5 positions would make us that much harder to defend.

Our current starting lineup of Williams/Hull/Carrington/Smith/Fingall has shooters at all 5 positions, defenses can't cheat off of one player too much to provide help for someone else, allowing us to find mismatches easier. As we talked about in our recaps last year, some of our offensive troubles came from having Sniezek and Kaylee on the floor at the same time, as the opposing team did not have to worry about them shooting a jumper with the open look and could focus on the other 3 players on the floor.

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - qwerty49 - 12-29-2018

(12-29-2018, 08:58 PM)mbdude Wrote: Her free throw shooting is also a problem since she handles the ball, and often gets fouled going to the basket. it would be tough to have her on the court in a close game

Hopefully these are all freshman adjustments. She does look a bit lost on the court at times. But you can see the raw ability.

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - CompSci87 - 12-30-2018

Tara was a bit more open about the injured players with the press after the game than Kate had been in the chalk talk. From the Chron:

Quote:Hull’s twin, Lexie, missed her seventh straight game because of a stress reaction in her left foot. Backup point guard Anna Wilson was out after taking a hit in practice. VanDerveer hopes both return next week. She said she has no timetable for point guard Marta Sniezek, who hasn’t played yet this season after injuring her thumb in practice.

https://m.sfgate.com/collegesports/article/Maya-Dodson-leads-way-as-Stanford-routs-Cal-State-13497890.php

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - BobK - 12-30-2018

4.4 Jeanette played Point for Stanford. We lost to Texas A&M by one point the killer being both Jeanette out and the fake foul on Nneka.

FYI, LOL my seat was 50 feet away.

RE: WBB: Stanford 69 CSU Northridge 43 - 2006alum - 12-30-2018

Good to hear about Lexie and Wilson - and it's really too bad for Sniezek that she's spending so much of her senior year on the bench with an injury.

BobK, no one disputes that Pohlen largely played the point after JJ was dismissed from the team in spring 2010, nor that she was an exceptional, top top player. But that still left us with 4 starter-worthy players (Ogwumikes x2, Pedersen and Pohlen) to fill 5 spots, so either the 1 or the 2 was not going to be filled by Pohlen. And Tara herself said that Pohlen was "not necessarily a born point guard" - she was visibly uncomfortable with press defenses, and Texas A&M exploited that: Pohlen had 7 turnovers in that game against Texas A&M, and if memory serves Tara had Murphy run the point after Pohlen had three turnovers in the first 5 or 6 minutes, simply to get the ball up the floor - Murphy played 27 minutes that game, the highest all season vs. an average of 8 per game. Yes, the phantom foul and having Pohlen on the bench hurt us in the end, but the game was only close at all because we had 22 turnovers and struggled at the 1 all game (and because Chiney fouled out in only 22 minutes).

To bring this back to my original point, it is simply that we didn't have a complete team at the 1-5 that year, and it's the reason we didn't lift the trophy when we should have. So the worry with Brown is the same one we've all had with Sniezek - no matter how good of a ball handler she is, if she won't take jump shots from behind the arc or inside it, it really hurts our offensive performance.