Gonna give a shout out to Saniya

[HuskyNan]

Saniya played 16 minutes against a tough team in a big game. She played very well, I thought, dished an assist, stole the ball, didn't turn it over, and made a nice hoop while getting absolutely clobbered by a defender. She is looking lightyears more confident than the beginning of the season. Her coming on so strong is really important so that Geno can rotate Kia, Moriah, and Saniya, keeping everyone relatively fresh. Great stuff.

 

[cookie447]

........and her defense on Mitchell was spectacular! Thank you for this, Nan.

 

[Kevin G]

So happy for Soniya last night. I loved Geno's reaction to her when she came out the game. He gave her a huge smile and pat on the back.

 

[Shenandoah]

Agree, Nan. Saniya played MUCH better than the box score showed. One can see that she is light years ahead of the player she was early in the season. She "Gets it"!

 

[Striper69]

Didn't surprise me one bit...

 

[Intpseeker]

Last three games, I've been impressed by how much she is in the flow. She's fun to watch again.

 

[Waquoit]

Talk about grading on the curve...

 

[Aluminny69]

Agree, Nan. Saniya played MUCH better than the box score showed. One can see that she is light years ahead of the player she was early in the season. She "Gets it"!

Thanks, Nan. I was going to start a thread myself. Forgive me for repeating what I posted last night, but I think it bears repeating.

This is what the play-by-play shows:

Give Saniya her Props. When Saniya entered tonight's game at the 12:55 mark, the score was 18-15 SC, and Mitchell had 8 points. When Saniya came out of the game 6 minutes later at the 6:55 mark, the score was 28-20, and Mitchell had zero points. Enough said.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Thanks, Nan. I was going to start a thread myself. Forgive me for repeating what I posted last night, but I think it bears repeating.

This is what the play-by-play shows:

Give Saniya her Props. When Saniya entered tonight's game at the 12:55 mark, the score was 18-15 SC, and Mitchell had 8 points. When Saniya came out of the game 6 minutes later at the 6:55 mark, the score was 28-20, and Mitchell had zero points. Enough said.

Not nearly enough said. Typical game for her in the last two months since she got out of the early season confused funk after the change to a reserve role that certain posters are now calling a benching. But for at least 16 games now, she has been coming in at the key moments in the first half where UConn has been struggling and her lockdown D and 53% shooting with half coming from behind the arc has been just what Geno wants the 6th man type of players to do.

And in the long run, that 6th man "D and the bomb" role may be perfect for Saniya.

 

[TimeWillTell]

Also from last night...............SC scores the first 6 pts, cutting our lead to 10 pts.......the under 16 min timeout occurs....Saniya comes in, boom, we turn it back around again and pull away! What's that statistic called that is kept on all the players + or - for the minutes they are in there?? I'll bet Saniya's + score was real high last night!!

Good job Saniya and GREAT Win Huskies!!!

 

[MilfordHusky]

Saniya did have some games when her shot was off and confidence seemed to be lacking, but she has really turned it around. Last night, she scored off a pass from Morgan, despite getting body slammed. She was moving nicely without the ball and got wide open at least a couple of times. She also played good defense. As noted, her time on the floor coincided with our first big run.

 

[DobbsRover2]

And yeah, if you watch that first half sequence, it's like Saniya the Squid. She almost plasters herself to Mitchell wherever she goes and sticks those long wings in her face, and Mitchell does not get the ball almost at all and is completely taken out of the USCar offense, which promptly died. That is the unseen stat, the one that can help build her teammates' defensive stats, because without Mitchell the Gamecocks were taking a lot of bad shots in bad situations and simply looked lost without her.

The only time I saw a player scoring on Saniya was on one of Sessions' way-out 3s in the second half, and she's been a 20% 3-pt FG% shooter so the plan was to let her jack them. Just a shudown performance on Mitchell though when Saniya was guarding her.

 

[EricLA]

One other thing to note about Saniya - she moved very well on offense without the ball. There were at least 2 other occasions where she was completely wide open but the player with the ball completely missed her and she missed an opportunity to make a shot. That won't show up on the stat sheet of course, but I liked what I saw a lot. Maybe Ossiningpride was pleased too with the amount of PT etc she received...

 

[Paul1969]

She looked like the energizer bunny on Mitchell. It was fun to watch..

 

[ThisJustIn]

I'm confused. Didn't some experts assure me that she wouldn't play at all?

 

[JS]

I'm confused. Didn't some experts assure me that she wouldn't play at all?

I'm sure they'll be along shortly to identify themselves and 'fess up.

 

[OssiningPride]

One other thing to note about Saniya - she moved very well on offense without the ball. There were at least 2 other occasions where she was completely wide open but the player with the ball completely missed her and she missed an opportunity to make a shot. That won't show up on the stat sheet of course, but I liked what I saw a lot. Maybe Ossiningpride was pleased too with the amount of PT etc she received...

Very much pleased!

 

[dbmill]

Saniya did have some games when her shot was off and confidence seemed to be lacking, but she has really turned it around. Last night, she scored off a pass from Morgan, despite getting body slammed. She was moving nicely without the ball and got wide open at least a couple of times. She also played good defense. As noted, her time on the floor coincided with our first big run.

I was at the game last night, and there were two plays other then the play that Chong got clobbered where Chong went back door and was wide open under the basket, but the ball handler at the time was not able to get a pass to her. It was one of the few things to go wrong last night. Still, I was quite pleased to see her get that free underneath the basket several times.

 

[Goodgood]

Here is an old article that might help to see where she was coming from....

http://espn.go.com/espnw/athletes-l...ecruit-saniya-chong-thrives-pressure-ossining

 

[mrmojack]

She did a nice job. She played pretty good D on Mitchell and the back door
play was sweet. It looked to me that Nurse was having difficulty staying with
Mitchell. She banged a 3 early in the game when Nurse didn't get up on her.

I would not be surprised to see LSU and SEC teams try to face guard Mitchell
also. Mitchell is an excellent player and should go early in the WNBA draft.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Perhaps the toughest teams for USCar in the future will be any team that has a really good defensive guard (or tandem) that they can put on Mitchell to take her out of the Gamecock offensive flow. That's obviously no easy task, but a coach might even tell a player to basically forget about her offense for one game and devote all her energies to the defensive task. Kelly Faris was often in that position where she devoted much of her energy to her stopper role, and Tina Charles in the 2010 NC game had the role against Jayne Appel. In the case of USCar, Mitchell is so integral to so many parts of the offense right now that she seems like the player you need to keep in control. But again, UConn had the personnel to do it, and I'm not sure that other teams have the defensive stopper like Chong to get it done.

 

[geneticrex]

She is making nice strides, especially on the defensive end.

 

[msf22b]

She is making nice strides, especially on the defensive end.

Seems to me that her 3-point shot is doin… just fine at the moment

 

[CocoHusky]

Thanks, Nan. I was going to start a thread myself. Forgive me for repeating what I posted last night, but I think it bears repeating.

This is what the play-by-play shows:

Give Saniya her Props. When Saniya entered tonight's game at the 12:55 mark, the score was 18-15 SC, and Mitchell had 8 points. When Saniya came out of the game 6 minutes later at the 6:55 mark, the score was 28-20, and Mitchell had zero points. Enough said.

Saniya had a great game and contributed to the victory for which she deserves her props. Her most notable contribution was face guarding Tiffinay Mitchell which caused the SC offense to stall completely.
When Saniya entered the game at the 12:55 the score was actually tied 15:15. Mitchell had 5 points. At the 12:29 mark of the game Mitchell beat KML baseline and got fouled at the basket by Stewie. None of this was Saniya’s fault! Mitchell made the foul shot giving her 8 points and SC their biggest lead of the night. Over the next 6 minutes with Saniya in the game UCONN came back and pushed the lead to 28:20. Mitchell had 1 shot attempt over that six minute stretch most of which Saniya was guarding her. Outstanding defense! Ironically she logged nothing in the box score over those 6 minutes positive (points, assists, steals...) or negative (fouls, turnover…) - so the casual observer is going to wonder why we are singling out Saniya for praise. The people responding to this thread know exactly why.

 

[j66kicker]

Perhaps the toughest teams for USCar in the future will be any team that has a really good defensive guard (or tandem) that they can put on Mitchell to take her out of the Gamecock offensive flow. ........ In the case of USCar, Mitchell is so integral to so many parts of the offense right now that she seems like the player you need to keep in control. But again, UConn had the personnel to do it, and I'm not sure that other teams have the defensive stopper like Chong to get it done.

Bizarro universe, eh?