[cardfan1996]

I am so pissed for Cam mostly. What a generational talent and she does it the right way with being mentored by Paul Gasol, and seeking out all the right trainers for her professional development. And she was obviously still very much ill.  She deserved more from her coaches this entire year. She definitely would have been PAC-12 player of the year and First team All-American if her coaches surrounded her with players on the court the other teams would actually guard. She is almost pro-ready and has put herself in a great position for next year’s draft. Interestingly enough, she’d probably go #1 this year.

---

And, for all those who claim Tara does not take responsibility, she does. 

"This last month has been really hard.  We tried to rest our team as much as possible.  We needed to be playing better than we are right now.  I think our offense really struggled, and when that happens people try to do it by themselves, and I saw that throughout the whole game.  Both Haley and Cam felt like they needed to do it by themselves and that's on me.  We worked really hard every day to run offense, move the ball, set screens, and we struggled with it."

I am not enjoying all the silly stuff about people "getting run off the board" and all that.  If you state an opinion and others disagree, that is not getting run off, that is a discussion board.  It's cool if people take positions that are not popular, but they have to also take the pushback from opposing opinions.  Stop the martyr stuff.  Tara is not a poor coach.  The record speaks for itself.  She has her strengths and weaknesses, as do we all.  I don't think this was one of her better seasons.  I imagine she would agree.  

I replied with that quote because I think it was the essence of the problem all year - the offense was just not up to Stanford standards.  Maybe the reason we had so many games like this game with "silly" turnovers and less involvement from players other than Jones, Brink, and Jump was that the offense was simply not working well and players tried to do too much, make plays that were not there.  The team was less than the sum of its parts on offense.  That is not the fault of any player.  Not Lepolo's fault.  Not Jones' fault for trying to take on difficult drives.  The player and ball movement was never there.  It was a stagnant offense against aggressive, physical defenses.  I am not a coach so I have no idea if this was the best way or if there was a better way.  All I know is in never looked right.  I was not surprised at the way the game played out.  Sad for the players, disappointed that the great crowd got no joy, but not at all surprised.

Goodbye Funky Four, may your future endeavors be successful.  It's been a pleasure.  Good news on Jump.  Hope we run an offense that gets her open more next season.  Good luck to Belibi at Harvard.  If she plays ball there I will be rooting for her and them.  Good luck to Jones in the pros.  She's been a pleasure to watch.  I will be watching her and rooting for her in WNBA.  I don't know where Ashten will end up, but if she decides to play somewhere else I will root for her (knock wood it is at somewhere I can do that and root for the whole team too, if she does play another season elsewhere).

Being called names (which I was several times) is not pushback. I actually enjoy pushback especially if I learn something new I didn’t know about basketball. Sadly that didn’t happen with the “pushback.”

[cardfan1996]

I am so pissed for Cam mostly. What a generational talent and she does it the right way with being mentored by Paul Gasol, and seeking out all the right trainers for her professional development. And she was obviously still very much ill.  She deserved more from her coaches this entire year. She definitely would have been PAC-12 player of the year and First team All-American if her coaches surrounded her with players on the court the other teams would actually guard. She is almost pro-ready and has put herself in a great position for next year’s draft. Interestingly enough, she’d probably go #1 this year.

---

And, for all those who claim Tara does not take responsibility, she does. 

"This last month has been really hard.  We tried to rest our team as much as possible.  We needed to be playing better than we are right now.  I think our offense really struggled, and when that happens people try to do it by themselves, and I saw that throughout the whole game.  Both Haley and Cam felt like they needed to do it by themselves and that's on me.  We worked really hard every day to run offense, move the ball, set screens, and we struggled with it."

I am not enjoying all the silly stuff about people "getting run off the board" and all that.  If you state an opinion and others disagree, that is not getting run off, that is a discussion board.  It's cool if people take positions that are not popular, but they have to also take the pushback from opposing opinions.  Stop the martyr stuff.  Tara is not a poor coach.  The record speaks for itself.  She has her strengths and weaknesses, as do we all.  I don't think this was one of her better seasons.  I imagine she would agree.  

I replied with that quote because I think it was the essence of the problem all year - the offense was just not up to Stanford standards.  Maybe the reason we had so many games like this game with "silly" turnovers and less involvement from players other than Jones, Brink, and Jump was that the offense was simply not working well and players tried to do too much, make plays that were not there.  The team was less than the sum of its parts on offense.  That is not the fault of any player.  Not Lepolo's fault.  Not Jones' fault for trying to take on difficult drives.  The player and ball movement was never there.  It was a stagnant offense against aggressive, physical defenses.  I am not a coach so I have no idea if this was the best way or if there was a better way.  All I know is in never looked right.  I was not surprised at the way the game played out.  Sad for the players, disappointed that the great crowd got no joy, but not at all surprised.

Goodbye Funky Four, may your future endeavors be successful.  It's been a pleasure.  Good news on Jump.  Hope we run an offense that gets her open more next season.  Good luck to Belibi at Harvard.  If she plays ball there I will be rooting for her and them.  Good luck to Jones in the pros.  She's been a pleasure to watch.  I will be watching her and rooting for her in WNBA.  I don't know where Ashten will end up, but if she decides to play somewhere else I will root for her (knock wood it is at somewhere I can do that and root for the whole team too, if she does play another season elsewhere).

Being called names (which I was several times) is not pushback. I actually enjoy pushback especially if I learn something new I didn’t know about basketball. Sadly that didn’t happen with the “pushback.”