Haley also made a couple of critical, head-scratching decisions in the 4th quarter when the game was in doubt:
At 2:45 left in the fourth quarter, she attempted a three-pointer with 20 seconds left on the shot clock. She was not that open, her specialty is not three point shooting and we were only down by 6, that was a poor decision.
At another point, Jones had an open lane to the basket but then she tried passing it to Prechtel and the ball got intercepted and turned over.
A significant reason we won last year's national semis against South Carolina and Arizona was that Jones knew she couldn't stop her in the paint with her midrange jumpers and her agility/maneuverability around the net.
While she had glimpses of it in tonight's game, she lapsed into her poor decision making choices at the worst time.
(04-01-2022, 09:55 PM)treetop11 Wrote: 11. Finally, I don't want to use the word choke or even wilted because everyone takes those as perjoratives and I don't mean to convey that kind of negative tone, but the mindset or emotions of our players didn't seem right. It wasn't a matter of not hustling, being aggressive, tough, or play with energy. They were fine and maybe even better than usual. Perhaps it was the pressure or expectations of winning and going after a repeat title that caused them to do things uncharacteristically or not be confident. The body language and demeanor just seemed off. Maybe somebody else who agrees that we were not ourselves can better describe what I'm trying to say.
I agree with all of your points but I wanted to highlight this. Especially on offense, all game long, for whatever reason, we seemed to second-guess ourselves and just was operating at less than full speed. It felt like I was watching the game on half speed sometimes. The passes weren't crisp, they were a lot of standing around and the players looked indecisive.