[TheFarm07]

By clogging the paint with our sagging man, and by channeling her into the paint, she was shooting into a shot blocker.

In other words, Tara is the best scouting coach in the country. I never cease to be impressed by how well she takes away the other team's best weapon, year after year, personnel after personnel, almost without fail.

Yes, this is her defensive genius.  Her version of the "scouting report defense" has great success against teams with 1 or two dominant players.  It is perfect for our own personnel because they have the intelligence to execute sophisticated defensive game plans even when we do not always have elite athletes at all five positions.   It has a weakness, though--when playing against teams that have 3 or 4 or even 5 equally talented offensive players then her bottomless bag of tricks does not work so well.  Also a weakness is when we force an unexpected player on the opposition to carry their offense and they do--resulting in stars with limited production and unheralded others with plenty.  In our (fortunately few) losses this is often the way we lose.  

For example, our elite 8 loss to Washington in 2016, when we "held" Plum to 26 but gave up double digit points to three other Washington players, or last year's loss at Cal where we kept Anigwe to a respectable 11 points but let Asha Thomas score 25.   And most instructive is the loss at Gonzaga this year, where we held their leading scorer Zykera Rice who shoots 52% and 14 pg to 1/6 shooting for 4 points, but gave up 20 points and 15 points to two players who are averaging 8 and 9 ppg.  There was a game earlier this year when we were guarding a devastatingly good three point shooter only to let a freshman who had barely played hit a mess of treys--since we had no scouting report on her!  (That may have been Idaho?)

Tara is a genius at scouting teams, as was perhaps best on display against Baylor this year.  But it works by exploiting weaknesses.  We sag off of the poor shooters and double the good ones.  I have seen Tara deliberately leave an opposing player open, daring her to shoot, while using her "defender" to cut off passes to the most talented shooters.  It is a little like what other teams did to Sniezek at times.  However, teams where all five players can score are the hardest for Tara to defend.

Agreed 81, that's how our run in the NCAA tournament often comes to an end, when we come up against a top tier team with too many threats to shut down and we can't keep up with them

What can help mitigate this weakness however is our own varied myriad of threats that the other team can't all shut down. Hopefully, with Tara's haul of recruiting classes, that will be what happens over the next few years. One example of a lineup that Tara can send out next season of Brown, Williams, Hull, Jones, and Dodson will be mighty difficult to defend (and that is just one of many iterations that Tara will have at her disposal and virtually all of them will be a handful for opponents). Our incoming class promises offensive firepower: from one description Ashten Prechtel sounds like another version of Alanna coming in (a post player with the range to hit the 3), Jump is an extremely potent 3-point threat, we've all seen Belibi's dunking prowess and Jones' accolades speak for themselves. Combined that with DiJonai's tenacity and penchant for big shots, Kiana's ability to hit insane long-range 3-pointers and her crossover leaving defenders in the dust, Fingall's eagerness to get back on the court after her knee injury, I can go on and on... If our defense can come up with big stops, then our offense can surely rise to the occasion

Even this year and without Fingall, we are fielding our own team which is very difficult to defend. If you try doubling on one of the "Big Three," the Hull sisters, Dodson, Jerome, Fingall (before she got injured), Anna, Brown, have all proven they can make opponents pay for leaving them space.

[TheFarm07]

By clogging the paint with our sagging man, and by channeling her into the paint, she was shooting into a shot blocker.

In other words, Tara is the best scouting coach in the country. I never cease to be impressed by how well she takes away the other team's best weapon, year after year, personnel after personnel, almost without fail.

Yes, this is her defensive genius.  Her version of the "scouting report defense" has great success against teams with 1 or two dominant players.  It is perfect for our own personnel because they have the intelligence to execute sophisticated defensive game plans even when we do not always have elite athletes at all five positions.   It has a weakness, though--when playing against teams that have 3 or 4 or even 5 equally talented offensive players then her bottomless bag of tricks does not work so well.  Also a weakness is when we force an unexpected player on the opposition to carry their offense and they do--resulting in stars with limited production and unheralded others with plenty.  In our (fortunately few) losses this is often the way we lose.  

For example, our elite 8 loss to Washington in 2016, when we "held" Plum to 26 but gave up double digit points to three other Washington players, or last year's loss at Cal where we kept Anigwe to a respectable 11 points but let Asha Thomas score 25.   And most instructive is the loss at Gonzaga this year, where we held their leading scorer Zykera Rice who shoots 52% and 14 pg to 1/6 shooting for 4 points, but gave up 20 points and 15 points to two players who are averaging 8 and 9 ppg.  There was a game earlier this year when we were guarding a devastatingly good three point shooter only to let a freshman who had barely played hit a mess of treys--since we had no scouting report on her!  (That may have been Idaho?)

Tara is a genius at scouting teams, as was perhaps best on display against Baylor this year.  But it works by exploiting weaknesses.  We sag off of the poor shooters and double the good ones.  I have seen Tara deliberately leave an opposing player open, daring her to shoot, while using her "defender" to cut off passes to the most talented shooters.  It is a little like what other teams did to Sniezek at times.  However, teams where all five players can score are the hardest for Tara to defend.

Agreed 81, that's how our run in the NCAA tournament often comes to an end, when we come up against a top tier team with too many threats to shut down and we can't keep up with them

What can help mitigate this weakness however is our own varied myriad of threats that the other team can't all shut down. Hopefully, with Tara's haul of recruiting classes, that will be what happens over the next few years. One example of a lineup that Tara can send out next season of Brown, Williams, Hull, Jones, and Dodson will be mighty difficult to defend (and that is just one of many iterations that Tara will have at her disposal and virtually all of them will be a handful for opponents). Our incoming class promises offensive firepower: from one description Ashten Prechtel sounds like another version of Alanna coming in (a post player with the range to hit the 3), Jump is an extremely potent 3-point threat, we've all seen Belibi's dunking prowess and Jones' accolades speak for themselves. Combined that with DiJonai's tenacity and penchant for big shots, Kiana's ability to hit insane long-range 3-pointers and her crossover leaving defenders in the dust, Fingall's eagerness to get back on the court after her knee injury, I can go on and on... If our defense can come up with big stops, then our offense can surely rise to the occasion

Even this year and without Fingall, we are fielding our own team which is very difficult to defend. If you try doubling on one of the "Big Three," the Hull sisters, Dodson, Jerome, Fingall (before she got injured), Anna, Brown, have all proven they can make opponents pay for leaving them space.