Preview:
Stanford plays UC Davis at Maples, Wednesday at 7pm.
This is part of what has become a regular series. UC Davis apparently is content to come to Maples, where we last played them on December 20, winning 92-52. In that game Cam and Kiki dominated, but Bosgana, Demetre, and Agara all had double digit scoring. Here is the thread from last year:
https://thecardboard.org/board/showthrea...#pid405688
UC Davis is coached by Jennifer Gross, who has been there for 14 years, along with her husband Joe Teramoto. In 2019 Jennifer and Joe came to Stanford three times to help Tara and our team learn the Princeton offense, since they having been running it to perfection for many years. It is one of those Tara coaching sorority stories--she frequently engaged professionally with other coaches in a way that seems unusual to some outsiders. In any case, since they taught us our offense, we have regularly played them. Needless to say, both teams know each other’s plays inside and out. We also sometimes bump into them in the NCAA tournament, since Davis usually gets there and is often in our region, playing at Maples in the 1st or 2nd game.
The talent and height disparity has always guaranteed us the win before now, but it is always a bit dangerous playing a team that knows our offense so very well. On the other hand, I imagine our defense is going to take Davis a bit by surprise—I doubt they will handle it as well as Gonzaga did, and we saw what it did to Gonzaga.
Last year at a chalk talk we were told that Davis sometimes uses a weird “junk defense,” although we did not see it that time. Will be interesting to see if Gross pulls a few rabbits out of the hat to try to make the game competitive. If so, that could be one of them.
Davis slaughtered its first two patsy opponents by more than 60 points each, but then just lost to San Diego State 77-83 on Friday. In that game Davis was led by 5’11” senior guard Tova Sabel, who transferred in from Penn State. Sabel had 26 points, 10 coming form the free throw line, so I expect she is a slasher. Also with 26 points was 5’10” junior guard Nya Epps. She went 11/14 with some treys mixed in, so she seems like an accurate shooter.
Their center is 6’3” Megan Norris, who was 5/7. She is from Menlo Park, so locals around Stanford might have seen her in high school.
UC Davis played their starters for over 30 minutes with the exception of Norris, and several other players got double digit minutes. They seem like they have some depth.
All in all, it is important not to look ahead to Indiana. Gonzaga may have had an off night—they certainly had a rash of injuries that depleted their team—and if Davis plays its best game then we could see something more competitive than we did on Sunday. But the fact that I am not worried about this game worries me!
Stanford plays UC Davis at Maples, Wednesday at 7pm.
This is part of what has become a regular series. UC Davis apparently is content to come to Maples, where we last played them on December 20, winning 92-52. In that game Cam and Kiki dominated, but Bosgana, Demetre, and Agara all had double digit scoring. Here is the thread from last year:
https://thecardboard.org/board/showthrea...#pid405688
UC Davis is coached by Jennifer Gross, who has been there for 14 years, along with her husband Joe Teramoto. In 2019 Jennifer and Joe came to Stanford three times to help Tara and our team learn the Princeton offense, since they having been running it to perfection for many years. It is one of those Tara coaching sorority stories--she frequently engaged professionally with other coaches in a way that seems unusual to some outsiders. In any case, since they taught us our offense, we have regularly played them. Needless to say, both teams know each other’s plays inside and out. We also sometimes bump into them in the NCAA tournament, since Davis usually gets there and is often in our region, playing at Maples in the 1st or 2nd game.
The talent and height disparity has always guaranteed us the win before now, but it is always a bit dangerous playing a team that knows our offense so very well. On the other hand, I imagine our defense is going to take Davis a bit by surprise—I doubt they will handle it as well as Gonzaga did, and we saw what it did to Gonzaga.
Last year at a chalk talk we were told that Davis sometimes uses a weird “junk defense,” although we did not see it that time. Will be interesting to see if Gross pulls a few rabbits out of the hat to try to make the game competitive. If so, that could be one of them.
Davis slaughtered its first two patsy opponents by more than 60 points each, but then just lost to San Diego State 77-83 on Friday. In that game Davis was led by 5’11” senior guard Tova Sabel, who transferred in from Penn State. Sabel had 26 points, 10 coming form the free throw line, so I expect she is a slasher. Also with 26 points was 5’10” junior guard Nya Epps. She went 11/14 with some treys mixed in, so she seems like an accurate shooter.
Their center is 6’3” Megan Norris, who was 5/7. She is from Menlo Park, so locals around Stanford might have seen her in high school.
UC Davis played their starters for over 30 minutes with the exception of Norris, and several other players got double digit minutes. They seem like they have some depth.
All in all, it is important not to look ahead to Indiana. Gonzaga may have had an off night—they certainly had a rash of injuries that depleted their team—and if Davis plays its best game then we could see something more competitive than we did on Sunday. But the fact that I am not worried about this game worries me!
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.makeagif.com%2Fmedia%...ipo=images]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.makeagif.com%2Fmedia%2F3-23-2014%2FJZpWL4.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=3046b9f54827c926c72671a72d5d87b7b8e0fb11c3f2650afdc3d029c28a75ba&ipo=images)
