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Dawn has essentially taken Pat Summit’s strategy of recruiting bigger, stronger and tougher athletes and using them to bludgeon their opponents with offensive rebounding and lay up lines, has added more and more skill along with that and has built another, better Tennessee in the SEC. This last season, after the devastating defeat to Iowa, she added the remaining, missing ingredient which was high percentage shooters. The results speak for themselves.
Meanwhile, the team, once again, that epitomizes the counter method to that strategy, UConn, continues to go the way of motion offense, ball movement, high percentage shot selection etc. They however, have been essentially rendered Hors de Combat these past three to four years, thus robbing everyone of seeing the matchup of these opposing styles. Styles that seem to be growing gradually closer rather than apart. Dawn has seen the necessity of better offense, while Geno has (aside from the injuries) seen the need for bigger, stronger players who, hopefully can still play the high skill, motion offense but who can also compete on the boards and under the basket. He has also, specifically this past season, put a renewed emphasis on lock down defense.
Who and what philosophy will come out ahead? Well, first the Huskies have to get fully healthy. If that happens then we will finally get to see a true competition between the two current colossi of Women’s Basketball! Meanwhile however, there are a number of programs that are gearing up to crash the party and render this two way competition moot. Texas, Notre Dame, LSU, UCLA, and USC have all instituted a crash build and have stocked their rosters with enough talent where they may be able to push their way through the closed doors and muscle themselves right onto the dance floor!
Of these, the two I find most likely to threaten Dawn, the current champion, and Geno, the #1 ranked challenger, are Texas and Notre Dame, both with great rosters and equally great coaches. LSU seems to have imploded a bit with all the controversy and stress and more particularly the loss of their best player to the draft. UCLA suffers from a lightweight coach in my opinion, though they do have talent and an elite big. USC is a bit of a puzzle as I am unsure of Gottlieb‘s chops as well and am not sure where the JuJu Watkins story is headed. Does Gottlieb have the gravitas and will to really coach her transcendent star or will this team continue to be JuJu and the rest?
Of course, there are usually one or three upstarts every year ala NC State this season, but I really doubt we’ll see a champion from outside the seven enumerated here. Clearly, SC is the favorite but UConn (if healthy) should be nipping at their heels followed by Texas, ND, LSU, UCLA, and USC. Duke is probably my wildcard with potential!
