[TonyLima]

Tough room, man.

My happiest thought for the night: unlike last year and a bit of this year, we showed how to play with a lead down the final stretch. Not a ton of turnovers, not dribble until the last 8 seconds and heave something up and not missing fre throws. To be positive, we played with poise , played smart and put Tennessee away.

To this worry wort, that was a very positive and important thing to see at the end of a big game.

Exactly. I think I'm kind of at the same place 81Alum is w/r/t this game, and honestly, with our team in general. We won a national championship last year by scoring a total of two more points than our opponents in the semis and finals combined. In both games we let double digit or near-double digit leads slip late. But we still won. And so too did we today. This team gets out to improbable leads. It also gets sloppy for long stretches. It creates beautiful cuts. And sometimes send passes to that ghost sixth player no one else on the court can see. I've just come to accept it, because it is what it is. But you know what? We had a number of teams over the past two decades that were more disciplined and played cleaner basketball, and none of them won us a championship. So I'll take it.

The beauty of this game is we got so much of what we needed to build toward a repeat:
-We went on the road against what was easily the most intimidating crowd we've faced since whenever we last played at Arizona before the pandemic.
-Wilson and Prechtel have to have a renewed sense of confidence after the former really revived our offensive flow and defensive pressure, and the latter basically just bailed us out in the 4Q. If there were two players who should have felt a bit deflated this fall after their performances last season, it was them.
-Jones, who had been really quiet lately, made so much happen even when her shots weren't falling.
-Lexie had spurts of the kind of play that has made her such a glue player for us. 
-The team knows it basically doesn't need Brink to win against a top 10 opponent (I had gotten a bit worried we were getting a bit too reliant on her to carry our offense). 
-Jump has played heavy minutes back to back and been solid all the way along. 
-Iriafen is showing steely resolve in the paint in tight games. Tara can be confident in adding her into the rotation without much of a drop off in our paint presence.
-We were ice from the line, after so many abysmal games losing free points left, right, and center. Free throw shooting is a confidence game, and this had to feel good given how absolutely hostile the arena was with every trip to the line.

Honestly, I really can't think of how we could have asked for more from that game, other than those 7 bad minutes. But basketball is a game of runs, and I never thought for a moment that Tennessee wasn't going to come back when we got out to that 20 point lead. The law of averages, folks.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm starting my Xmas week as a very happy Stanford fan.

Sheer poetry. Thanks.

[TonyLima]

Tough room, man.

My happiest thought for the night: unlike last year and a bit of this year, we showed how to play with a lead down the final stretch. Not a ton of turnovers, not dribble until the last 8 seconds and heave something up and not missing fre throws. To be positive, we played with poise , played smart and put Tennessee away.

To this worry wort, that was a very positive and important thing to see at the end of a big game.

Exactly. I think I'm kind of at the same place 81Alum is w/r/t this game, and honestly, with our team in general. We won a national championship last year by scoring a total of two more points than our opponents in the semis and finals combined. In both games we let double digit or near-double digit leads slip late. But we still won. And so too did we today. This team gets out to improbable leads. It also gets sloppy for long stretches. It creates beautiful cuts. And sometimes send passes to that ghost sixth player no one else on the court can see. I've just come to accept it, because it is what it is. But you know what? We had a number of teams over the past two decades that were more disciplined and played cleaner basketball, and none of them won us a championship. So I'll take it.

The beauty of this game is we got so much of what we needed to build toward a repeat:
-We went on the road against what was easily the most intimidating crowd we've faced since whenever we last played at Arizona before the pandemic.
-Wilson and Prechtel have to have a renewed sense of confidence after the former really revived our offensive flow and defensive pressure, and the latter basically just bailed us out in the 4Q. If there were two players who should have felt a bit deflated this fall after their performances last season, it was them.
-Jones, who had been really quiet lately, made so much happen even when her shots weren't falling.
-Lexie had spurts of the kind of play that has made her such a glue player for us. 
-The team knows it basically doesn't need Brink to win against a top 10 opponent (I had gotten a bit worried we were getting a bit too reliant on her to carry our offense). 
-Jump has played heavy minutes back to back and been solid all the way along. 
-Iriafen is showing steely resolve in the paint in tight games. Tara can be confident in adding her into the rotation without much of a drop off in our paint presence.
-We were ice from the line, after so many abysmal games losing free points left, right, and center. Free throw shooting is a confidence game, and this had to feel good given how absolutely hostile the arena was with every trip to the line.

Honestly, I really can't think of how we could have asked for more from that game, other than those 7 bad minutes. But basketball is a game of runs, and I never thought for a moment that Tennessee wasn't going to come back when we got out to that 20 point lead. The law of averages, folks.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm starting my Xmas week as a very happy Stanford fan.

Sheer poetry. Thanks.