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/
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/
