[81alum]

We have to beat South Carolina, which will be tough.  I don't mean to borrow trouble by looking past them, but I know the coaching staff always scouts the all three teams in advance, so I think we can do it too.  There is already another thread started for scouting South Carolina.

If we defeat South Carolina, then we will meet either St. Johns or Duke.  At this point I think it might be 50/50 which of those teams advance.  We played St. John's last year in round 2 at Maples, so we have a little experience with them.  I'll start us off on Duke and may return to this thread to add St. Johns in the days ahead.

***
Duke

Overall record:

Duke is 26-5.  Most of its losses were against very good teams: to the University of South Bend, Connecticut, Kentucky and Maryland, and most recently to North Carolina State (that last one is the outlier).  Three of the losses were by 2 points–only the Connecticut loss was not competitive.  Duke has not come up with a real marquee win this season, though.  The ranked teams it has beaten include Miami, Georgetown, Maryland, and Purdue.  Sagarin has them at 5, right behind Stanford at 4.  On RPI Stanford is 2nd and Duke is 10th. 

Offensive Stats:

Duke has the 10th best offense in the country at 75.4 ppg, behind Stanford that is 5th at 76.7. 
Duke is 5th in the country in 3pt field goal percentage at a whopping 37.9%,  We are...120th at 31.3%.  Strange that they make only 4.5 a game putting them as 192nd in made shots.  We, on the other hand, make 5.4 per game putting us at 109th.  Plainly, Duke takes a lot fewer 3 point shots than we do but makes them at a significantly higher rate.

The most impressive thing about Duke’s offense is how balanced it is.  All five starters at one point averaged more than 10 points a game (before injuries) –and none averages a lot more.  It has been pointed out that Stanford has been very good at focusing on and shutting down a key player here and there–that is simply not possible to do against Duke.  At least four of their players can be equal threats on offense, making our vaunted “scouting report defense” a whole lot harder to bring off.

As I reviewed the Duke players I kept thinking “this one is very accurate” and “this one is very accurate” and “this one is very accurate.”  In comparison with other teams we have played, this is a team that shoots the ball very well–for the season .477.  That is amazing.  Sure enough, Duke is #2 in the country tied with Connecticut and just behind Baylor.  Stanford is a couple of points behind them and in 8th place. 

Defensive Stats:

On defense, Duke is 39th at 55.4 ppg while Stanford is 33rd at 54.6 ppg.  Not much at all to separate us. 

Duke is 15th in rebounding margin with +7.5, while we are 6th at +10.6. 

Differences start to emerge with turnovers.  Assist/turnover ratio Stanford is 3rd and Duke is 26th.  Duke has almost as many assists as Stanford but considerably more turnovers.  Stanford is 7th with only 12.8 turnovers per game, Duke is 161st with 17.1 turnovers per game.  This is the first statistic that seems statistically significant. 


Duke’s depleted reserves:
Here is an excellent article on Duke’s current lack of depth and how they have handled it:

http://espn.go.com/womens-college-basket...orge-ahead

Duke has lost three players to injury and academics, and its star player Elizabeth Williams is playing with a stress fracture in her right leg.  This leaves them with eight scholarship players and a walk on. 

Player breakdown:

Against Vandy in the last tournament game, they used 8 players, but the 3 off the bench played for 8, 10, and 11 minutes, so they rely mostly on their starters:

Elizabeth Williams.  (31 minutes.)  6'3" frosh center.  She is their freshman star who has proven to be indispensable to this team.  She leads the team in scoring with 14.2 ppg, leads in rebounding with 8.1, blocks about 4 shots a game.  She makes .490 of her FG s but shoots just .596 of her free throws.  About half of her rebounds are offensive.  Just before the tournament it was revealed that she has a stress fracture in her right leg but that she would play through it.  She has been seen walking around with an inflatable cast, but apparently she is keeping to her practice schedule and playing normally.  He coach acknowledges that even if she is not 100% she is still very good and better than anything they could come up with off the bench.

Haley Peters.  (27 minutes).  6'3" sophomore g/f.  She makes .517 of her shots, making her the most accurate of their starters, and .744 of her free throws.  5.5 rpg but not much of a blocking threat.  Their 4th leading scorer at 11.1 ppg.

Chelsea Gray. (32 minutes).  5'11" sophomore point guard.  1.8 assist/turnover ratio with 6.2 apg.  Scores .457 of her FG s and .392 of her 3 point attempts.  Also leads the team with 85 steals.  Their second leading scorer at 12.2 ppg.

Tricia Liston ( 26 minutes.)  6'1" sophomore guard.  Third leading scorer at 11.8 ppg, shooting at .479.  She has made 53 three point shots this year at .453.  Nope, that is not a typo.  That is .453.  However, since she makes fewer than 2 of them per game she does not qualify to lead the country in 3 point percentage.  Still, she does take more 3 point shots than anyone else on her team.

Shay Selby.  (25 minutes) 5'9" senior guard.  Only 6.2 ppg–she seems to be starting after the loss of other starters in front of her who still show up on the stat sheets.  And clearly this position gets rotated more than the others.

[81alum]

We have to beat South Carolina, which will be tough.  I don't mean to borrow trouble by looking past them, but I know the coaching staff always scouts the all three teams in advance, so I think we can do it too.  There is already another thread started for scouting South Carolina.

If we defeat South Carolina, then we will meet either St. Johns or Duke.  At this point I think it might be 50/50 which of those teams advance.  We played St. John's last year in round 2 at Maples, so we have a little experience with them.  I'll start us off on Duke and may return to this thread to add St. Johns in the days ahead.

***
Duke

Overall record:

Duke is 26-5.  Most of its losses were against very good teams: to the University of South Bend, Connecticut, Kentucky and Maryland, and most recently to North Carolina State (that last one is the outlier).  Three of the losses were by 2 points–only the Connecticut loss was not competitive.  Duke has not come up with a real marquee win this season, though.  The ranked teams it has beaten include Miami, Georgetown, Maryland, and Purdue.  Sagarin has them at 5, right behind Stanford at 4.  On RPI Stanford is 2nd and Duke is 10th. 

Offensive Stats:

Duke has the 10th best offense in the country at 75.4 ppg, behind Stanford that is 5th at 76.7. 
Duke is 5th in the country in 3pt field goal percentage at a whopping 37.9%,  We are...120th at 31.3%.  Strange that they make only 4.5 a game putting them as 192nd in made shots.  We, on the other hand, make 5.4 per game putting us at 109th.  Plainly, Duke takes a lot fewer 3 point shots than we do but makes them at a significantly higher rate.

The most impressive thing about Duke’s offense is how balanced it is.  All five starters at one point averaged more than 10 points a game (before injuries) –and none averages a lot more.  It has been pointed out that Stanford has been very good at focusing on and shutting down a key player here and there–that is simply not possible to do against Duke.  At least four of their players can be equal threats on offense, making our vaunted “scouting report defense” a whole lot harder to bring off.

As I reviewed the Duke players I kept thinking “this one is very accurate” and “this one is very accurate” and “this one is very accurate.”  In comparison with other teams we have played, this is a team that shoots the ball very well–for the season .477.  That is amazing.  Sure enough, Duke is #2 in the country tied with Connecticut and just behind Baylor.  Stanford is a couple of points behind them and in 8th place. 

Defensive Stats:

On defense, Duke is 39th at 55.4 ppg while Stanford is 33rd at 54.6 ppg.  Not much at all to separate us. 

Duke is 15th in rebounding margin with +7.5, while we are 6th at +10.6. 

Differences start to emerge with turnovers.  Assist/turnover ratio Stanford is 3rd and Duke is 26th.  Duke has almost as many assists as Stanford but considerably more turnovers.  Stanford is 7th with only 12.8 turnovers per game, Duke is 161st with 17.1 turnovers per game.  This is the first statistic that seems statistically significant. 


Duke’s depleted reserves:
Here is an excellent article on Duke’s current lack of depth and how they have handled it:

http://espn.go.com/womens-college-basket...orge-ahead

Duke has lost three players to injury and academics, and its star player Elizabeth Williams is playing with a stress fracture in her right leg.  This leaves them with eight scholarship players and a walk on. 

Player breakdown:

Against Vandy in the last tournament game, they used 8 players, but the 3 off the bench played for 8, 10, and 11 minutes, so they rely mostly on their starters:

Elizabeth Williams.  (31 minutes.)  6'3" frosh center.  She is their freshman star who has proven to be indispensable to this team.  She leads the team in scoring with 14.2 ppg, leads in rebounding with 8.1, blocks about 4 shots a game.  She makes .490 of her FG s but shoots just .596 of her free throws.  About half of her rebounds are offensive.  Just before the tournament it was revealed that she has a stress fracture in her right leg but that she would play through it.  She has been seen walking around with an inflatable cast, but apparently she is keeping to her practice schedule and playing normally.  He coach acknowledges that even if she is not 100% she is still very good and better than anything they could come up with off the bench.

Haley Peters.  (27 minutes).  6'3" sophomore g/f.  She makes .517 of her shots, making her the most accurate of their starters, and .744 of her free throws.  5.5 rpg but not much of a blocking threat.  Their 4th leading scorer at 11.1 ppg.

Chelsea Gray. (32 minutes).  5'11" sophomore point guard.  1.8 assist/turnover ratio with 6.2 apg.  Scores .457 of her FG s and .392 of her 3 point attempts.  Also leads the team with 85 steals.  Their second leading scorer at 12.2 ppg.

Tricia Liston ( 26 minutes.)  6'1" sophomore guard.  Third leading scorer at 11.8 ppg, shooting at .479.  She has made 53 three point shots this year at .453.  Nope, that is not a typo.  That is .453.  However, since she makes fewer than 2 of them per game she does not qualify to lead the country in 3 point percentage.  Still, she does take more 3 point shots than anyone else on her team.

Shay Selby.  (25 minutes) 5'9" senior guard.  Only 6.2 ppg–she seems to be starting after the loss of other starters in front of her who still show up on the stat sheets.  And clearly this position gets rotated more than the others.

[meos]

The President says ...  St. Johns
          Karma says ...  Duke

[meos]

The President says ...  St. Johns
          Karma says ...  Duke

[81alum]

St. Johns

Overall record:

St. Johns is 22-9.  By far their biggest win was beating Connecticut at Connecticut by one point.  A couple of weeks later, though, Connecticut demolished St. Johns 74-53.  Hard to know if they were the same two teams.  St. Johns is ranked 14th in the AP poll and 21st in the coaches poll, and picked by President Obama to beat Duke and beat us and go to the final four.  Sagarin’s ratings has St. Johns at 14 and even worse (19) on his predictor scale.  St. Johns is 11 on the RPI schedule and 6 in strength of schedule.  For compaison, Sagarin has Stanford at 4 and RPI has Stanford at 2.

Offensive Stats:

St. Johns is 170th in the nation in scoring offense, at 62 points per game, behind Stanford that is 5th at 76.7. It is 332nd in the nation in 3 pt. field goals per game at 2.2, compared to Stanford at 109 or 5.4 baskets per game.  Their accuracy is not bad–they come in at 59th hitting 41.5% of their shots, compared with Stanford in 8th place at 45.7%. 

Looking at those offensive stats you might wonder how dangerous St. Johns is on offense.  Keep in mind, though, that the St. John’s offense has caught fire in the tournament so far.  Well, caught “fire” for them, scoring 69 against Creighton and 74 against Oklahoma.  Those are two of the higher scoring games for St. John’s thisl year, which has won games while scoring as few as 51, 54, 54, and most typically in the low 60s..


Defensive Stats:

St. Johns is 45th in scoring defense at 55.9 ppg, while Stanford is 33rd at 54.6 ppg. Not much at all to separate us.

Duke is 144th in rebounding margin with +.9, while we are 6th at +10.6.

Assist/turnover ratio Stanford is 3rd and St. John’s is 90th.  On straight turnovers Stanford is 7th with only 12.8 turnovers per game, St. John’s is also very good at 17th with 13.9 turnovers per game.  Both teams are pretty low on steals per game, with Stanford being extremely low.

Player breakdown:

The five starters against Oklahoma in the last St. John’s game were:

Amber Thompson (22 minutes.) 6'2" Frosh forward–their tallest starter.  6.2 ppg partly because she is in only about half the time.  But her accuracy is 45.4% and she pulls down about 3 offensive rebounds and 3 defensive rebounds in that limited time each game.

Da’Shena Stevens (29 minutes.) 6'1" Senior forward.  Their best offensive post, scores about 11 ppg and about 6 rebounds per game.  42.3% accuracy and shoots fts at 71.6%.

Nadirah McKenith (36 minutes.) 5'7" Junior point guard.  Leads the team in assists with 5.4 apg. Second in scoring with 12.3 ppg, shooting 42.5% of her fgs.  She steals 2-3 balls a game.

Eugenia McPherson (35 minutes.) 5'8" Junior guard.  She scored 21 against Oklahoma and often leads the team, averaging 12.9 ppg.

Shenneika Smith (40 minutes.) 6'1" Junior guard.  She scored 18 against Oklahoma. Leads the team in scoring with 12.7 ppg.  Also leads the team in rebounds, with 6.5 rpg. 68% FT shooter, 30% 3 pt shooter, 43.6% FG shooter.  She is tall for a guard and it shows in her accuracy in two point range and rebounding.  St. John’s is far from a one-player team, but this is the player you want to scheme to stop.

In addition, this  player played significant time from the bench:

Mary Nwachukwu (22 minutes.)6'2" rs Sophomore forward. Only making 3.8 ppg but is very accurate at 47.5%.  Given the height of our players we might expect to see quite a bit of her.  Only making a couple of rebounds per game.

[81alum]

St. Johns

Overall record:

St. Johns is 22-9.  By far their biggest win was beating Connecticut at Connecticut by one point.  A couple of weeks later, though, Connecticut demolished St. Johns 74-53.  Hard to know if they were the same two teams.  St. Johns is ranked 14th in the AP poll and 21st in the coaches poll, and picked by President Obama to beat Duke and beat us and go to the final four.  Sagarin’s ratings has St. Johns at 14 and even worse (19) on his predictor scale.  St. Johns is 11 on the RPI schedule and 6 in strength of schedule.  For compaison, Sagarin has Stanford at 4 and RPI has Stanford at 2.

Offensive Stats:

St. Johns is 170th in the nation in scoring offense, at 62 points per game, behind Stanford that is 5th at 76.7. It is 332nd in the nation in 3 pt. field goals per game at 2.2, compared to Stanford at 109 or 5.4 baskets per game.  Their accuracy is not bad–they come in at 59th hitting 41.5% of their shots, compared with Stanford in 8th place at 45.7%. 

Looking at those offensive stats you might wonder how dangerous St. Johns is on offense.  Keep in mind, though, that the St. John’s offense has caught fire in the tournament so far.  Well, caught “fire” for them, scoring 69 against Creighton and 74 against Oklahoma.  Those are two of the higher scoring games for St. John’s thisl year, which has won games while scoring as few as 51, 54, 54, and most typically in the low 60s..


Defensive Stats:

St. Johns is 45th in scoring defense at 55.9 ppg, while Stanford is 33rd at 54.6 ppg. Not much at all to separate us.

Duke is 144th in rebounding margin with +.9, while we are 6th at +10.6.

Assist/turnover ratio Stanford is 3rd and St. John’s is 90th.  On straight turnovers Stanford is 7th with only 12.8 turnovers per game, St. John’s is also very good at 17th with 13.9 turnovers per game.  Both teams are pretty low on steals per game, with Stanford being extremely low.

Player breakdown:

The five starters against Oklahoma in the last St. John’s game were:

Amber Thompson (22 minutes.) 6'2" Frosh forward–their tallest starter.  6.2 ppg partly because she is in only about half the time.  But her accuracy is 45.4% and she pulls down about 3 offensive rebounds and 3 defensive rebounds in that limited time each game.

Da’Shena Stevens (29 minutes.) 6'1" Senior forward.  Their best offensive post, scores about 11 ppg and about 6 rebounds per game.  42.3% accuracy and shoots fts at 71.6%.

Nadirah McKenith (36 minutes.) 5'7" Junior point guard.  Leads the team in assists with 5.4 apg. Second in scoring with 12.3 ppg, shooting 42.5% of her fgs.  She steals 2-3 balls a game.

Eugenia McPherson (35 minutes.) 5'8" Junior guard.  She scored 21 against Oklahoma and often leads the team, averaging 12.9 ppg.

Shenneika Smith (40 minutes.) 6'1" Junior guard.  She scored 18 against Oklahoma. Leads the team in scoring with 12.7 ppg.  Also leads the team in rebounds, with 6.5 rpg. 68% FT shooter, 30% 3 pt shooter, 43.6% FG shooter.  She is tall for a guard and it shows in her accuracy in two point range and rebounding.  St. John’s is far from a one-player team, but this is the player you want to scheme to stop.

In addition, this  player played significant time from the bench:

Mary Nwachukwu (22 minutes.)6'2" rs Sophomore forward. Only making 3.8 ppg but is very accurate at 47.5%.  Given the height of our players we might expect to see quite a bit of her.  Only making a couple of rebounds per game.

[81alum]

After compiling these stats, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'm pulling for St. John's to beat Duke, but I expect Duke to beat St. Johns.  That is partly because we have played St. John's more recently (one year ago) and the last time we played Duke I seem to recall it did not go well.  Plus St. John's just seems like an easier team to scheme than Duke.

That said, if we lose to South Carolina I will be back and miserably attempt to delete all these posts in this thread in an attempt to forget that I ticked off the basketball gods.

Go Stanford!  Beat South Carolina!

There, that felt better.

[81alum]

After compiling these stats, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'm pulling for St. John's to beat Duke, but I expect Duke to beat St. Johns.  That is partly because we have played St. John's more recently (one year ago) and the last time we played Duke I seem to recall it did not go well.  Plus St. John's just seems like an easier team to scheme than Duke.

That said, if we lose to South Carolina I will be back and miserably attempt to delete all these posts in this thread in an attempt to forget that I ticked off the basketball gods.

Go Stanford!  Beat South Carolina!

There, that felt better.

[Viking_Guy]

81--

Another reason to pull for the Johnnies - Duke plays a heckuva lot of 2-3 zone, and they're good at it.  Often they pressure to halfcourt and then drop back into said zone, which is one of the defensive strategies I've worried about facing this year.  I think both St. John's and South Carolina are more player-to-player oriented, given their relative athleticism on the perimeter.

As you say, first things first.  Beat the Gamecocks!

VG

[Viking_Guy]

81--

Another reason to pull for the Johnnies - Duke plays a heckuva lot of 2-3 zone, and they're good at it.  Often they pressure to halfcourt and then drop back into said zone, which is one of the defensive strategies I've worried about facing this year.  I think both St. John's and South Carolina are more player-to-player oriented, given their relative athleticism on the perimeter.

As you say, first things first.  Beat the Gamecocks!

VG

[treefan]

I know we lost at Cameron, but I thought we had last W at Maples vs Dule.

Agree, prefer Jonnies to Dook

SC first

[treefan]

I know we lost at Cameron, but I thought we had last W at Maples vs Dule.

Agree, prefer Jonnies to Dook

SC first

[81alum]

I know we lost at Cameron, but I thought we had last W at Maples vs Dule.

Agree, prefer Jonnies to Dook

SC first

The losses stick in my mind while the wins vanish from memory....yes, you are correct.

We beat Duke at Maples on 12/15/09 71-55.  Kayla had 22 points to lead us.

We lost to Duke at Duke on 12/16/08 52-56.  Jayne had 16 points but it was not enough.

[81alum]

I know we lost at Cameron, but I thought we had last W at Maples vs Dule.

Agree, prefer Jonnies to Dook

SC first

The losses stick in my mind while the wins vanish from memory....yes, you are correct.

We beat Duke at Maples on 12/15/09 71-55.  Kayla had 22 points to lead us.

We lost to Duke at Duke on 12/16/08 52-56.  Jayne had 16 points but it was not enough.

[81alum]

So, now we know it will be Stanford vs. Duke.

VG mentioned that Duke plays a lot of 2-3 zone.  The announcers today kept saying that Duke is predictable about switching to a "matchup zone" at some point in each game.  What is a matchup zone?  While we are at it, how should we go about playing this team that is shooting the lights out in the tournament?

[81alum]

So, now we know it will be Stanford vs. Duke.

VG mentioned that Duke plays a lot of 2-3 zone.  The announcers today kept saying that Duke is predictable about switching to a "matchup zone" at some point in each game.  What is a matchup zone?  While we are at it, how should we go about playing this team that is shooting the lights out in the tournament?

[Griffins78]

Here's a good write up on a site with a lot of good info:

http://www.coachesclipboard.net/MatchUpZone.html

[Griffins78]

Here's a good write up on a site with a lot of good info:

http://www.coachesclipboard.net/MatchUpZone.html

[81alum]

Duke and Stanford seem statistically very close in many categories.  In addition, while there has been much press about how thin Duke has become given that they have lost 3 players for the season--their rotation looks very similar to Stanford's rotation at this point.  Each team plays  7-8 players--so that is another category that now looks similar to me.  We've lost three players too.

Duke seems to turn the ball over more than we do. 

Duke shoots the three with much higher accuracy than we do--but they shoot it less often.

Duke favors the match-up zone while we tend to favor man defense.

My guess is that Duke will absolutely pack it in and do everything possible to prevent Nneka and Chiney from getting the ball inside, daring us to shoot threes and jumpers.  We will have to solve this with good three point shooting and possibly a West Virginia caliber performance from Amber, penetrating, pulling up, and dishing.  Given how Nneka played last night and given that Chiney seems banged up, I would expect they might copy the first Ca.l game and double team Nneka and dare Chiney to do her thing.  I really hope that Chiney is ready for a big game.

I'm worried about our defense.  Elizabeth Williams and Haley Peters will hold their own against Nneka and Chiney and get her share of points.  By comparison, Peters is more accurate and Williams is much more creative than the Ca.l posts.    Guarding Chelsea Gray might well be Toni's job, since Toni often gets the best perimeter player.  Chelsea Gray has a similar assist/turnover ratio as Toni but is a better shooter this year at 39% (Toni 28%) from three and 45% (Toni 37%) overall.  Also worrisome is that the least productive of their starters--Shay Selby--had an awesome game last night and is turning them into a 5-headed monster.

I think Jake Curtis has this one pegged:

Ogwumike's supporting cast will need to play better in Monday's game against No. 2 seed Duke, or else the Cardinal will not get a chance to play Baylor and Griner in the national semifinals next Sunday, April 1, in Denver.

(Of course, he assumes that Baylor will get past Tennessee, which played them close earlier this year.)

http://www.examiner.com/stanford-cardina...ts_article

[81alum]

Duke and Stanford seem statistically very close in many categories.  In addition, while there has been much press about how thin Duke has become given that they have lost 3 players for the season--their rotation looks very similar to Stanford's rotation at this point.  Each team plays  7-8 players--so that is another category that now looks similar to me.  We've lost three players too.

Duke seems to turn the ball over more than we do. 

Duke shoots the three with much higher accuracy than we do--but they shoot it less often.

Duke favors the match-up zone while we tend to favor man defense.

My guess is that Duke will absolutely pack it in and do everything possible to prevent Nneka and Chiney from getting the ball inside, daring us to shoot threes and jumpers.  We will have to solve this with good three point shooting and possibly a West Virginia caliber performance from Amber, penetrating, pulling up, and dishing.  Given how Nneka played last night and given that Chiney seems banged up, I would expect they might copy the first Ca.l game and double team Nneka and dare Chiney to do her thing.  I really hope that Chiney is ready for a big game.

I'm worried about our defense.  Elizabeth Williams and Haley Peters will hold their own against Nneka and Chiney and get her share of points.  By comparison, Peters is more accurate and Williams is much more creative than the Ca.l posts.    Guarding Chelsea Gray might well be Toni's job, since Toni often gets the best perimeter player.  Chelsea Gray has a similar assist/turnover ratio as Toni but is a better shooter this year at 39% (Toni 28%) from three and 45% (Toni 37%) overall.  Also worrisome is that the least productive of their starters--Shay Selby--had an awesome game last night and is turning them into a 5-headed monster.

I think Jake Curtis has this one pegged:

Ogwumike's supporting cast will need to play better in Monday's game against No. 2 seed Duke, or else the Cardinal will not get a chance to play Baylor and Griner in the national semifinals next Sunday, April 1, in Denver.

(Of course, he assumes that Baylor will get past Tennessee, which played them close earlier this year.)

http://www.examiner.com/stanford-cardina...ts_article