[QUOTE="huskeynut, post: 1961378, member: 750"heesa and Gabby were in foul trouble with 4 each and both looked sick too. They would normally slide over to defend but didn't dare with the foul count. We can't get physical with other teams' bigs, we are not that big. We have to use what skills we have to outplay them. Geno has said as much ast and did so in the post game presser.[/QUOTE]
I think this is a really good point. Butler is getting criticized as if UConn lost the game and she gave up the winning shot. In the second half, much of the time when she was in, two of the team's top players were playing with four fouls (at least a couple of which were truly, dumb fouls) and the entire team was playing to not foul. If you're in there and your teammate is playing with 4, you don't want to foul, at least in part because you don't want to commit a foul which gives the ref the chance to make a mistake and tag your teammate with #5.
Besides, as Tony C said in another post, foul trouble leaves you defenseless. He's absolutely right. So the 5'6" player gets to drive in there and score because another foul, at that point in the game, would not be a good thing to happen.
If you want to to toss blame around, (though on a night like this, I'm not sure why anyone would feel the need to blame anyone), you might want to take a look at the two players who collected those fouls. Remember Geno's descriptions of fouls as what happens when the players are too slow or too lazy to do things right. Last night, the entire team was in a tough spot because Gabby and Napheesa had four fouls each.
Apropos of that, someone in an earlier post suggested the refs were a problem for UConn. Well they were, in the sense that UConn players committed fouls and got caught. I thought the refereeing was equally good or bad on both sides and in at least two cases, I thought UConn got the better of calls that could easily have gone the other way.
