[BostonCard]

I would like to see a pity verbal to help us heal from this loss.

Juju? Olivia? Joyce? Kendall? Hidalgo or Briggs? Be our silver lining...

A "pity verbal"? What does that mean? 

IMO, a good way of dealing with a tough loss is to get as clear as possible about what went wrong and about what resources the team lacked so that those problems can be definitely corrected instead of repeated the next time. Stanford's recruiting strategy hasn't changed in decades, nor has its related in-game strategy: feed bigs and hoist treys. We always have serious problems with teams that play our wings tightly since we usually don't have wings who can take it to the hoop and finish or a point guard to break down the D at the point, force the perimeter D to help stop the driver, and dish to the wings for open looks. I doubt we'll change either recruiting or the strategy.

I think this is demonstrably untrue, given that Stanford completely revamped its offensive philosophy from a triangle offense to a Princeton offense.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/sport...nford.html

In fact, the triangle offense was itself instituted in 2002, so the Princeton offense is at least the third offensive system we played.

Here's a description of the Princeton offense, which we switched to in 2017 or 2018.

https://halfcourthoops.substack.com/p/st...ffense?s=r

My guess is that UConn was just a well coached team that defended the Princeton well.  By not overpursuing passing lanes, they didn't get many turnovers (as Texas did) but they were generally not vulnerable to the backdoor cuts that are the mainstay of the Princeton.  In fact, other than Prechtel's beautiful assist to Lexie, we really struggled.  We had 10 assists on 23 field goals (43%); for the season we had 537 assists on 967 field goals (56%).  Even when we scored in the paint, many of those scores were based on Brink or Jones beating their defender 1-on-1 rather than being fed the basketball in position. 

BC

[BostonCard]

I would like to see a pity verbal to help us heal from this loss.

Juju? Olivia? Joyce? Kendall? Hidalgo or Briggs? Be our silver lining...

A "pity verbal"? What does that mean? 

IMO, a good way of dealing with a tough loss is to get as clear as possible about what went wrong and about what resources the team lacked so that those problems can be definitely corrected instead of repeated the next time. Stanford's recruiting strategy hasn't changed in decades, nor has its related in-game strategy: feed bigs and hoist treys. We always have serious problems with teams that play our wings tightly since we usually don't have wings who can take it to the hoop and finish or a point guard to break down the D at the point, force the perimeter D to help stop the driver, and dish to the wings for open looks. I doubt we'll change either recruiting or the strategy.

I think this is demonstrably untrue, given that Stanford completely revamped its offensive philosophy from a triangle offense to a Princeton offense.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/sport...nford.html

In fact, the triangle offense was itself instituted in 2002, so the Princeton offense is at least the third offensive system we played.

Here's a description of the Princeton offense, which we switched to in 2017 or 2018.

https://halfcourthoops.substack.com/p/st...ffense?s=r

My guess is that UConn was just a well coached team that defended the Princeton well.  By not overpursuing passing lanes, they didn't get many turnovers (as Texas did) but they were generally not vulnerable to the backdoor cuts that are the mainstay of the Princeton.  In fact, other than Prechtel's beautiful assist to Lexie, we really struggled.  We had 10 assists on 23 field goals (43%); for the season we had 537 assists on 967 field goals (56%).  Even when we scored in the paint, many of those scores were based on Brink or Jones beating their defender 1-on-1 rather than being fed the basketball in position. 

BC