[TheFarm07]

Mbdude, whether or not your approach is wise, it's not how Tara always approaches rotations. She is a master of nullifying the other team's best player by finding a defensive match up against them. It's often why Dijonai gets sent in mid-game with a specific defensive assignment. See, for example, how hounded Pivec was last year in our game against OSU. I generally agree with your approach on offense, but Tara has an exceptional reputation for taking away the other team's best strength, and that often depends on specific guarding assignments. That, in turn affects how much we want to prioritize our best offensive players versus our best defensive match-ups.

Ideally, our best offensive players would also be our best defensive players as well, so there would be no trade off necessary. I don't have empirical evidence off the top of my head, but I feel like over the past few years, our losses in the postseason have partly been to teams which have too many offensive weapons to contain and so even when we use our best defensive players to contain our opponent's strength, they have other possibilities at their disposal, while we often sacrifice offensive firepower for better defensive skills.

As we have been talking about Kiana vs. Marta, let them be our example. Though Marta is a great conductor of our offense and our primary perimeter defender, she doesn't really generate offense on her own. Her primary move is to drive to the basket, which doesn't always work, especially against capable defenders/tall posts waiting for her in the paint. As we have seen, teams have significantly sagged off of her while she has the ball, because they know she won't shoot the ball.

Conversely, Kiana is much more versatile offensively. She can shoot the 3-pointer, she can hit the midrange jumper and she can drive to the basket. Her defender can't sell out expecting her to do one thing or another, which makes her much more potent at generating her own offense.

A defending team can almost double up one of our other players like Alanna when Marta has the ball, because they are not worried about being burned by a jump shot. Case in point, over three seasons, Marta has made 96 three point attempts combined during that period while Kiana in just her freshman season made 71 three point baskets.

Having said that, 81 points out that we have a plethora of tremendous guards in our conference: Ionescu, Slocum, Melgoza, etc., not to mention when we face a team like Baylor, our posts already have their hands full guarding Lauren Cox and Kalani Brown and can't really come to assist our guards. So, having a good perimeter defense is key.

We'll see if we can have the best of both worlds going forward. We scored 115 points against Idaho, but also let them hit 60% from long-range as well, which didn't hurt us, but must not have felt good either.

[TheFarm07]

Mbdude, whether or not your approach is wise, it's not how Tara always approaches rotations. She is a master of nullifying the other team's best player by finding a defensive match up against them. It's often why Dijonai gets sent in mid-game with a specific defensive assignment. See, for example, how hounded Pivec was last year in our game against OSU. I generally agree with your approach on offense, but Tara has an exceptional reputation for taking away the other team's best strength, and that often depends on specific guarding assignments. That, in turn affects how much we want to prioritize our best offensive players versus our best defensive match-ups.

Ideally, our best offensive players would also be our best defensive players as well, so there would be no trade off necessary. I don't have empirical evidence off the top of my head, but I feel like over the past few years, our losses in the postseason have partly been to teams which have too many offensive weapons to contain and so even when we use our best defensive players to contain our opponent's strength, they have other possibilities at their disposal, while we often sacrifice offensive firepower for better defensive skills.

As we have been talking about Kiana vs. Marta, let them be our example. Though Marta is a great conductor of our offense and our primary perimeter defender, she doesn't really generate offense on her own. Her primary move is to drive to the basket, which doesn't always work, especially against capable defenders/tall posts waiting for her in the paint. As we have seen, teams have significantly sagged off of her while she has the ball, because they know she won't shoot the ball.

Conversely, Kiana is much more versatile offensively. She can shoot the 3-pointer, she can hit the midrange jumper and she can drive to the basket. Her defender can't sell out expecting her to do one thing or another, which makes her much more potent at generating her own offense.

A defending team can almost double up one of our other players like Alanna when Marta has the ball, because they are not worried about being burned by a jump shot. Case in point, over three seasons, Marta has made 96 three point attempts combined during that period while Kiana in just her freshman season made 71 three point baskets.

Having said that, 81 points out that we have a plethora of tremendous guards in our conference: Ionescu, Slocum, Melgoza, etc., not to mention when we face a team like Baylor, our posts already have their hands full guarding Lauren Cox and Kalani Brown and can't really come to assist our guards. So, having a good perimeter defense is key.

We'll see if we can have the best of both worlds going forward. We scored 115 points against Idaho, but also let them hit 60% from long-range as well, which didn't hurt us, but must not have felt good either.