[BostonCard]

So what is the point of this litany of opposing coaches?  They build on each other's work.  All of them saw what Smith did to us last game, and many of them can implement the same strategy with even better players.  When one has a break-through in exposing a weakness on our team, they all benefit.  This is why it is imperative that Tara and the coaches come up with a plan by Friday to overcome what I will call 1-sag-paint defense.  (The most athletic perimeter defender blanketing Jump and all others sagging into the paint to stop Brink and Jones.)   (By the way, this might in fact be an "official" junk defense, the box-and-1, with the 1 on Jump and the others sagging so much it might as well be a 4 man zone.)

I think we are reading too much into a bad offensive game by us.  I do think that Cal's strategy probably does give teams the best chance to beat us, but it does rely on shooters other than Jump having a cold night even when unguarded.  That happened last week, but is not guaranteed going forward.

Our three point shooting percentage is 35% overall; 29% if you exclude Jump's 57/119.  On Sunday, we shot 20%, 12.5% if you exclude Jump's 2/4 shooting.  Had the other women shot at their normal shooting percentage, we would have expected them to make 2-3 more threes and the close 60-56 game winds up being a more comfortable 10-13 point win.

It is easy to say that Smith "figured out" how to defend Stanford, and she probably did give her team the best chance to beat us, but it took a fair bit of bad three point shooting on our part, and we still won the game.  Play that game again, and maybe the non-Jump three point shooters go 9/16 instead of 2/16 and we blow Cal out.

BC

[BostonCard]

So what is the point of this litany of opposing coaches?  They build on each other's work.  All of them saw what Smith did to us last game, and many of them can implement the same strategy with even better players.  When one has a break-through in exposing a weakness on our team, they all benefit.  This is why it is imperative that Tara and the coaches come up with a plan by Friday to overcome what I will call 1-sag-paint defense.  (The most athletic perimeter defender blanketing Jump and all others sagging into the paint to stop Brink and Jones.)   (By the way, this might in fact be an "official" junk defense, the box-and-1, with the 1 on Jump and the others sagging so much it might as well be a 4 man zone.)

I think we are reading too much into a bad offensive game by us.  I do think that Cal's strategy probably does give teams the best chance to beat us, but it does rely on shooters other than Jump having a cold night even when unguarded.  That happened last week, but is not guaranteed going forward.

Our three point shooting percentage is 35% overall; 29% if you exclude Jump's 57/119.  On Sunday, we shot 20%, 12.5% if you exclude Jump's 2/4 shooting.  Had the other women shot at their normal shooting percentage, we would have expected them to make 2-3 more threes and the close 60-56 game winds up being a more comfortable 10-13 point win.

It is easy to say that Smith "figured out" how to defend Stanford, and she probably did give her team the best chance to beat us, but it took a fair bit of bad three point shooting on our part, and we still won the game.  Play that game again, and maybe the non-Jump three point shooters go 9/16 instead of 2/16 and we blow Cal out.

BC