My initial thought about the brackets was that it would be the easiest ever for the committee because they would not have to take into account geography, travel distances, home courts for worse seeds, stuff like that. Now I think that those will help but the lack of inter-conference play combined with switching to a new metric - the NET - may make it harder to evaluate teams fairly. I really don't know who to "fear." I would prefer not to play Baylor due to the Carrington thing. I don't see a way we possibly meet UConn until the F4 so not going to worry about that.
Our defense has been excellent and our offense, while it can have rough patches, is very good. So would we rather play a team with great O and not so great D, thinking we should be able to stifle that offense with our top defense while our O should be able to score enough even if they get more points than we generally allow, or would we rather play a team with middling O and great D, thinking we can really crush that middling O and our offense has had enough success against good defenses that we would be ok slugging it out that way? There are plenty of teams with good O and D but not great at either, of course, but mostly those teams are not the scary ones. Teams with great O and D will be a handful that just depends on match-ups and who is hot that day.
I think our biggest worry is a team who excels inside with a very strong back to the basket post that would require a double team and maybe draw fouls on our bigs combined with enough shooters that doubling would leave us vulnerable in other places. Then again, if we just "let" them score a bit more than we would like inside but limit their threes while we knock down threes, maybe that is not such a big deal. Big, strong teams with great post play worry me because we don't really see that in the P-12 that much. UCLA is not an inside team. Onyenwere is a 3/4 who did not hurt us with post moves. Their bigs are not special. UA doesn't have a dominant big. OSU has a good big in Jones but just her and she is not as good as some we could face. Really good post players who can post up are not so common anymore.
I always worry about teams that have multiple great thee-point shooters because they can get hot no matter what you do.
Our defense has been excellent and our offense, while it can have rough patches, is very good. So would we rather play a team with great O and not so great D, thinking we should be able to stifle that offense with our top defense while our O should be able to score enough even if they get more points than we generally allow, or would we rather play a team with middling O and great D, thinking we can really crush that middling O and our offense has had enough success against good defenses that we would be ok slugging it out that way? There are plenty of teams with good O and D but not great at either, of course, but mostly those teams are not the scary ones. Teams with great O and D will be a handful that just depends on match-ups and who is hot that day.
I think our biggest worry is a team who excels inside with a very strong back to the basket post that would require a double team and maybe draw fouls on our bigs combined with enough shooters that doubling would leave us vulnerable in other places. Then again, if we just "let" them score a bit more than we would like inside but limit their threes while we knock down threes, maybe that is not such a big deal. Big, strong teams with great post play worry me because we don't really see that in the P-12 that much. UCLA is not an inside team. Onyenwere is a 3/4 who did not hurt us with post moves. Their bigs are not special. UA doesn't have a dominant big. OSU has a good big in Jones but just her and she is not as good as some we could face. Really good post players who can post up are not so common anymore.
I always worry about teams that have multiple great thee-point shooters because they can get hot no matter what you do.