[81alum]

Since Candace Wiggins Stanford hasn't had anyone with real ability to take it hard to the hoop and finish or dish to the wings. It seems clear that Tara's preferred strategy is to go for a talented, very big 5, surround her with a couple of accurate outside shooters, and a guard who can set things up and feed the posts. 

McPhee was superb at slashing to the hoop.  Lexie could do it well, too, though not as well as McPhee.  Tara would love to have a Wiggins or a McPhee on this team, but she doesn't.  She went hard after Rice, but did not get her.

I'm inclined to think Tara recruits the best players she can regardless of position, and then tries to mold the offense around whoever she gets.  We sometime forget it is Stanford--and it is not football--meaning there are no allowances in WBB for players who can't meet the highest academic standards.  We can get great players, but we can't pick and choose them by position.  So in recent years she has hit the jackpot with big players and struck out on the elite guards (I would count Jones as a wing, personally)--Osborne, Rice, Watkins.  Apparently we came close in each case.  This has created an imbalance of talent on this team--a much stronger frontcourt than backcourt.

In her presser Tara was very supportive of Lepolo and Nivar, but it is clear that she feels that they need experience to more fully develop and be able to exert leadership in running the offense.  It is perfectly plausible that merely "good" guards can fit within a system and be very successful, but in the absence of elite talent what is needed is experience, which we sorely lacked.

So, I was asked what the problem was this year?  It is obvious: offense.  Our defense was excellent statistically, but our offense sputtered.  Why is that?  I do think it was spacing the floor, and agree that the main problem was that our perimeter shooting was not strong enough to open space inside.  

This year's offensive scheme did not work.  We abandoned the Princeton which our graduating guards Lexie-Lacie-Wilson had spent years learning, and went to the "flow" offense since it was supposedly simpler for our new guards to learn.  Jump had never been a starter, Emma-Nnopu had barely played, Nivar and Lepolo were freshmen.  Well, the new scheme turned out to work poorly for this group.  The "flow" needs to flow--the ball needs to be in constant motion, whether via pass or dribble. But often our ball handlers stopped that motion while looking for an opening, and when they did the defense tightened up on them. To counter this, it is my impression that the "flow" needs a lot of quality screening, and we never became a good screening team this year.  When Brink tried to screen she got called for many offensive fouls--a very slender "big" does not make for a great screener.  Many of the teams we played against ran screens much better than we did.  Just note the difficulties getting Jump open for three point attempts.

While Tara is quite famous for her flexibility in changing offensive schemes to suit her personnel, this year she failed to find a scheme that worked for the people she had.  We were told that she tried a new system after the dreadful USC loss--so she was rather desperately trying to find something that worked better as the weaknesses of our offense became apparent.

I'm not enough of a coach to know what system would have worked better.  Perhaps with all the great post depth we should go back to the "triangle" from the old Appel/Ogwumike days.  Tara abandoned the "triangle" after Chiney graduated since by then we had inexperienced posts and much better guards--Lili Thompson and Amber Orrange--and she wanted to screen for them and make them into the main engines of the next offense.  That lasted several years, but then with Jones coming and the arrival of "position less basketball" Tara left that offense to go the the Princeton, and we won a national championship with it.  There were horrific growing pains with the Princeton, but eventually it jelled.  But then with the loss of all our experienced guards she left the Princeton and installed the "flow", and, in my opinion, the "flow" flopped--either the scheme did not fit our personnel, or the personnel lacked the requisite skills to run it properly.

That is the best I can do late at night before a work day, heartsick for our team.

[81alum]

Since Candace Wiggins Stanford hasn't had anyone with real ability to take it hard to the hoop and finish or dish to the wings. It seems clear that Tara's preferred strategy is to go for a talented, very big 5, surround her with a couple of accurate outside shooters, and a guard who can set things up and feed the posts. 

McPhee was superb at slashing to the hoop.  Lexie could do it well, too, though not as well as McPhee.  Tara would love to have a Wiggins or a McPhee on this team, but she doesn't.  She went hard after Rice, but did not get her.

I'm inclined to think Tara recruits the best players she can regardless of position, and then tries to mold the offense around whoever she gets.  We sometime forget it is Stanford--and it is not football--meaning there are no allowances in WBB for players who can't meet the highest academic standards.  We can get great players, but we can't pick and choose them by position.  So in recent years she has hit the jackpot with big players and struck out on the elite guards (I would count Jones as a wing, personally)--Osborne, Rice, Watkins.  Apparently we came close in each case.  This has created an imbalance of talent on this team--a much stronger frontcourt than backcourt.

In her presser Tara was very supportive of Lepolo and Nivar, but it is clear that she feels that they need experience to more fully develop and be able to exert leadership in running the offense.  It is perfectly plausible that merely "good" guards can fit within a system and be very successful, but in the absence of elite talent what is needed is experience, which we sorely lacked.

So, I was asked what the problem was this year?  It is obvious: offense.  Our defense was excellent statistically, but our offense sputtered.  Why is that?  I do think it was spacing the floor, and agree that the main problem was that our perimeter shooting was not strong enough to open space inside.  

This year's offensive scheme did not work.  We abandoned the Princeton which our graduating guards Lexie-Lacie-Wilson had spent years learning, and went to the "flow" offense since it was supposedly simpler for our new guards to learn.  Jump had never been a starter, Emma-Nnopu had barely played, Nivar and Lepolo were freshmen.  Well, the new scheme turned out to work poorly for this group.  The "flow" needs to flow--the ball needs to be in constant motion, whether via pass or dribble. But often our ball handlers stopped that motion while looking for an opening, and when they did the defense tightened up on them. To counter this, it is my impression that the "flow" needs a lot of quality screening, and we never became a good screening team this year.  When Brink tried to screen she got called for many offensive fouls--a very slender "big" does not make for a great screener.  Many of the teams we played against ran screens much better than we did.  Just note the difficulties getting Jump open for three point attempts.

While Tara is quite famous for her flexibility in changing offensive schemes to suit her personnel, this year she failed to find a scheme that worked for the people she had.  We were told that she tried a new system after the dreadful USC loss--so she was rather desperately trying to find something that worked better as the weaknesses of our offense became apparent.

I'm not enough of a coach to know what system would have worked better.  Perhaps with all the great post depth we should go back to the "triangle" from the old Appel/Ogwumike days.  Tara abandoned the "triangle" after Chiney graduated since by then we had inexperienced posts and much better guards--Lili Thompson and Amber Orrange--and she wanted to screen for them and make them into the main engines of the next offense.  That lasted several years, but then with Jones coming and the arrival of "position less basketball" Tara left that offense to go the the Princeton, and we won a national championship with it.  There were horrific growing pains with the Princeton, but eventually it jelled.  But then with the loss of all our experienced guards she left the Princeton and installed the "flow", and, in my opinion, the "flow" flopped--either the scheme did not fit our personnel, or the personnel lacked the requisite skills to run it properly.

That is the best I can do late at night before a work day, heartsick for our team.