I am not worrying too much about the Fever - not yet anyway. Like many other teams, they have many new players. The training camp is very short and there are only two exhibition games wherein they can work things out in real game time conditions. Not enough, of course.
CC has two basic roles to balance on offense:
1. As the PG and a lethal weapon, she has to learn to work with their system in order to make every one else effective. The whole team has to remember that in the times they moved the ball with spacing, they are presented with easier scoring opportunities and did score easily.
2. As a lethal scorer, she needs to scale down what she did at Iowa where she was the primary and dominant scorer, ao that scoring was a higher priority for her. For this team to progress, she must learn to shed those tendencies and learn to balance her two very important functions.
Right now, Boston is less effective than she was in the 2nd half of last year. Used properly, Katie Lou should be an effective floor spacer and she is not the only one.
Defense is another matter. Team defense requires connectivity between players on the floor and a determination by players to continually work hard. I wouldn't indict CC and Katie Lou for their defensive performances yet, even in man-to-man coverage. CC looks like she has good, quick hands, so she should be able to make a few steals, deflect balls. Katie Lou has a good sense of positioning. Both have good footwork which would be useful and effective in a switching man-to-man coverage or zone. In both cases, team connectivity is important and someone has to be vocal and direct the moving parts. The league is full of excellent players, so an uncoordinated defense will always look bad.
I think that as time goes by, they should be able to work things out.....there were a couple who really looked good perimeter defenders. As UConn teams have shown, it is a team game and it performs best at both ends when good connectivity has been achieved.
