[JohnR34231]

watkins was 6/11 from 3 and 14/26 overall. most of the 2's were long, mid-range shots, not layups. it's hard to win a game against a performance like that. in my memory, we've only seen that kind of play twice before, from allison feaster and from kelsey plum. 

i don't think the issue was bad defense. watkins was guarded well on most shots. she was just steph curry last night, unguardable. the only defense that worked pretty well was double-teaming juju, so i wish we had done it more. as i recall it wasn't leading to a flurry of made, open 3s by usc's other guards.

imo we had a chance of winning with bosgana rather than ogden playing the 3. elena has good and bad nights. last night she was pretty good. not that elena stopped watkins; none of our defenders did. rather that she gave us some offense - 6 points in 9 minutes. another 6 points from elena rather than ogden's zip in the same minutes sure would have helped. imo we were too rigid with our protocol of start the halves with elena, then rarely or never play her again. 

i agree that we seemed off, too. quite a few missed bunnies - some of them from the physical defense but not all. plus, cam, kiki, and brooke missed most of the open mid-range shots that they had consistently been making in recent months - right from the beginning of the game, even before they got beat up.

I think that this years team is really missing better guard play and a guard who can score consistently.  We have three players averaging in double figures, and Jump is barely at that level.  So we depend significantly on our bigs and when that isn't working we sort of fall apart. The threat of Iriafen and Brink should give us more opportunities to score from outside, but that isn't happening.  Our bigs are good enough that we can beat most teams relying on them, but against better teams, we have issues. 
I don't think that this is something that Tara can fix.  She has the players she has.  Where would we be if Kiki had chosen Stanford?

Presumably you mean "if JuJu had chosen Stanford."

Guessing GK3 meant Kiki (Rice), but yeah - also JuJu, Hidalgo, (fill in blank).  As I said, which you also reiterated above, we are who we are.....

No doubt our recruiting has fallen off in the last couple of years.
Not sure why. Hopefully Tara knows and can fix it.

[JohnR34231]

watkins was 6/11 from 3 and 14/26 overall. most of the 2's were long, mid-range shots, not layups. it's hard to win a game against a performance like that. in my memory, we've only seen that kind of play twice before, from allison feaster and from kelsey plum. 

i don't think the issue was bad defense. watkins was guarded well on most shots. she was just steph curry last night, unguardable. the only defense that worked pretty well was double-teaming juju, so i wish we had done it more. as i recall it wasn't leading to a flurry of made, open 3s by usc's other guards.

imo we had a chance of winning with bosgana rather than ogden playing the 3. elena has good and bad nights. last night she was pretty good. not that elena stopped watkins; none of our defenders did. rather that she gave us some offense - 6 points in 9 minutes. another 6 points from elena rather than ogden's zip in the same minutes sure would have helped. imo we were too rigid with our protocol of start the halves with elena, then rarely or never play her again. 

i agree that we seemed off, too. quite a few missed bunnies - some of them from the physical defense but not all. plus, cam, kiki, and brooke missed most of the open mid-range shots that they had consistently been making in recent months - right from the beginning of the game, even before they got beat up.

I think that this years team is really missing better guard play and a guard who can score consistently.  We have three players averaging in double figures, and Jump is barely at that level.  So we depend significantly on our bigs and when that isn't working we sort of fall apart. The threat of Iriafen and Brink should give us more opportunities to score from outside, but that isn't happening.  Our bigs are good enough that we can beat most teams relying on them, but against better teams, we have issues. 
I don't think that this is something that Tara can fix.  She has the players she has.  Where would we be if Kiki had chosen Stanford?

Presumably you mean "if JuJu had chosen Stanford."

Guessing GK3 meant Kiki (Rice), but yeah - also JuJu, Hidalgo, (fill in blank).  As I said, which you also reiterated above, we are who we are.....

No doubt our recruiting has fallen off in the last couple of years.
Not sure why. Hopefully Tara knows and can fix it.