The hit at 12:56. What happened?

[DobbsRover2]

Although there's been a lot of discussion of KML's shredding or shredding of Mitchell on the step back 3 in the second half of the USCar game, something pretty frightening happened in the first half with the score at 15-15 at the 12:56 mark when UConn was on a break and Kia missed a lay-up. Stewie went down in a heap after contact with Dozier. No camera views were shown from the front so it is unclear what happened, though you can see Dozier's right elbow moving toward Stewie on the box out before they merged together.

After recovering, Stewie got hit with a foul on the next play on a questionable call on a block attempt of Mitchell's wrap-around layup, and it seemed to take her awhile to fully get physically back in the flow though she did have the ferocious stuff on Mitchell a minute and a half later and had a basket during the 13-0 run that turned the game around.

Geno certainly was beefing at the refs around the 13 minute mark, and without good visuals it's hard to say for sure, but man did Dozier's hit look vicious.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

Not Dozier's right, but her left elbow caught Stewie in the middle and it was quite the jab. Deliberate? Who's to say. The official had his eyes on the ball action, but would have been screened from her left elbow anyway. Should we meet again I'm sure the physicality will escalate.

 

[Intpseeker]

I wound and re-wound that play, and could not see anything definitive, but using a little simple physics, force was applied to Stewie's midsection, and Dozier was the only one close enough to do the applying. This was just one of a few fairly chippie plays by SC.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Not Dozier's right, but her left elbow caught Stewie in the middle and it was quite the jab. Deliberate? Who's to say. The official had his eyes on the ball action, but would have been screened from her left elbow anyway. Should we meet again I'm sure the physicality will escalate.

Nah, definitely was the right elbow that did the damage, and you can see Stewie start to crumple while Dozier's left arm is straight down in block out mode. The left elbow does swing up as she moves away after the hit but I'm not sure it made much contact with Stewie, and the damage had already been done.

Just a guess, but that right Dozier elbow that comes in higher up would have had to have been pulled down with a quick kidney shot as Stewie goes behind her to have caused that reaction and fall.

And yes, there may be some memories down the road, because both Stewie and Dozier are juniors and might play three games against each other in the future.

 

[geneticrex]

Don't get mad.

Don't get even.

Get one up.

 

[mhshuskies]

Similarly at the 4:28 mark in the second half Stewie nearly gets her arm ripped off by #41. Stewie has her boxed out on a SC free throw attempt. The free throw is good and as UCONN inbounds the ball, the SC player spins around and hooks Stewie's arm on a whip through. Stewie is then shaking her arm and shoulder likes she has lost feeling and so she is literally shaking it off. I think she is getting used to being banged around.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Wow, now that you point it out, that is a really cheap and vicious gratuitous grab and whip-and-rip with an overhead twist.

That's the big player Alaina Coates, and can't say I'll feel too much sadness if she gets a terminal case of missed bunnies and other b-ball maladies for the rest of the season, or that she matches up with another big player on an opposing team that shares her love of "swing your partner round and round."

Also glad that KML totally blew off Mitchell's defense on the next possession and buried a 3 to keep the hurtin' going on the chipsters.

 

[UConnCat]

Coates was whistled with 6:45 left in the game for a high foul as Stewie cut through the lane. Her elbow was up and loose. Fortunately, the contact was not direct. Coates played poorly but chippy play is not a good response.

 

[CTHUSKY74]

I felt as I watched the game live, especially in the first half, that SC was intentionally aggressive and physical attempting to slow down our offensive game and grind us down in their offensive end. That is the way every team that has had any modicum of success against us was able to do it, even when it only postponed the inevitable onslaught that came in the later part of the first half or the second half. In that first part of the game I saw two plays where Mo was trying to move around a pick and she was physically restrained by the post player and pushed toward the basket so she could not get to Mitchell to guard the three point shot. The refs were letting them do what they wanted without calling some clear offensive fouls. Later, I felt they were calling the fouls more evenly but SC still got away with a few egregious ones like Stewie being decked with the elbow. I know that some SC fans thought we got the benefit of more foul shots but even the announcers were careful to point out that we defend better than the rest of the country without fouling. We definitely earned those foul shots, even the cheapie "and ones", because there was so much contact that we played through and still made shots. I guess that refs decided that our shooting was so accurate that there couldn't have been fouls on those plays. I believe that this approach has worked well with other teams who are not as offensively gifted and can be disrupted more easily than we can. It also is more effective against teams who have fewer scorers than we do who can be shut down if you take them away.

 

[mhshuskies]

Coates was whistled with 6:45 left in the game for a high foul as Stewie cut through the lane. Her elbow was up and loose. Fortunately, the contact was not direct. Coates played poorly but chippy play is not a good response.

Maybe she was taking punk lessons from Mr. Wilson?

 

[Striper69]

Stewie needs to do a lot of abdominal exercises so those things don't phase her.

 

[Shenandoah]

One can do all of the ab work that you want, but if you get hit in either the solar plexus or liver, you're going to fold up.

 

[DobbsRover2]

One can do all of the ab work that you want, but if you get hit in either the solar plexus or liver, you're going to fold up.

No way! I've seen lots of movies where these guys punch each other over and over down there and in other places and they don't even feel it and keep on whacking at each other until one remembers he has an automatic packed in his belt. You aren't telling me that's just fantasy, are you?

But yeah, unfortunately it's an easy blow action to hide, especially since as in this case the ref's eyes are on the ball handler. Probably the only reason that it doesn't happen more often is that what goes around comes around to bit you back, and if players like Dozier and Coates get reputations, especially among the SEC teams for this kind of stuff, the action against them can get chippy from the start, and you can get incidents like the Auburn-Alabama punch-out that led to the Tiger being kicked off the team.