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Message: [QUOTE="willtalk, post: 2475139, member: 1220"] Basketball is all about Match ups and Timing. To start with Miss State presents match up problems to a lot of teams. Add the fact that both VV and McGowan had career games ( timing ) made it probable that Miss St. would win this game. I would caution people from reading too much into a single game. Basketball is an " one any given day sport". Still with the proper defensive adjustments Oregon might have done much better. Graves did not make all the adjustments available to him. For one thing he is an offensively minded coach who just likes to outscore his opponents. With McCowan and VV having career games that was improbable. The big blond gal you are referring to is Mark McGuires niece, Molly McGuire. Graves likes he because she can shoot from the outside. She is not the best defender Graves can put on the floor. This night he should have focused on defending McCowan. He still had the 6'6" Giomi red shirt freshman that might well have done a better job on McCowan. He does not play her a lot because she is not that good offensively, but just from my observation she appears to be relatively good on defense. She is one of the faster players on the team and covers a lot of ground. She also likes to put a body on the person she is defending. With her speed and height I am sure she would have been a better match up against McCowan defensively. She didn't really need to do that much except block out and keep McCowan off the offensive boards. McCowan just when over the other players who attenpted to block out. Giomi at 6'6" probably would have been successful doing that. But Graves wants offense and in this game it killed him. Both Hebard and McGuire seemed to not want to be that physical with McCowan probably to avoid fouling out. Giomi could have used 5 fouls on her to take her out of her rhythm. Another mistake he made in this game is not bringing in Sabbaly ( the versatile 6"4" freshman) earlier. As I stated before McGuire is not that quick and is not that good defensively because of that. Sabbally is a very good defender, plus she is the one person that could drive the lane and score against McCowan. She began to do that far too late in the game. The offense seemed to run much better when she had the ball in her hands. They seemed to press her less because with her height she could just pass over any traps. Once she started driving on McCowan, she got two fouls on two drives on McCowan. He height and quickness makes her able to challenge the much slower McCowan. They didn't give her the call on her last drive, even though she was knocked to the floor by some serious body contact from McCowan. They could have used her earlier to get McCowan in foul trouble. It was also suggested that the other Oregon players drive into her instead of trying to avoid her because she usually stayed in the "charge free" protected area under the basket. All in all there were a lot of adjustments that could have been made to make that difficult match up more manageable. But then again Graves is still experimenting and attempting to integrate his new players into last season lineup. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach