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Message: [QUOTE="oldhusky, post: 4757145, member: 9844"] Agree with your Senechal assessment completely. If reasonably healthy this team should be able to significantly upgrade over Lou's production last year. Paige and Azzi can be as good and probably better at shooting and scoring and are both much better all around players. Lou was incredibly important last year but easy to improve upon this year with more time from 2 All American candidates. What I think is vastly underrated by some posters here is how much the loss of Dorka could affect us and then Jana's injury as well. In terms of impact on this season Dorka's loss is way way more important than Lou's. Instead of upgrading Lou with more Paige and Azzi, we are looking at replacing Dorka (a first team WNBA rookie team) with a high level recruit, but a first year inexperienced player coming off a serious injury, and/or a third year player that hasn't shown at least yet, that she is playable in contested games. Now both of those players could meet or exceed expectations, but expecting either to be as good as Dorka last year seems pretty unlikely to me. One way we could be as good or better at the 4 and 5 minutes would be if Ice is the real deal and Aubrey is available for significant minutes at the 4. In that case you could have a potent three big rotation with Aaliyah, Aubrey and Ice. Last year we were great for starters with Dorka and Aaliyah, and largely used a three big rotation with Ayanna as the third big most of the time and the drop-off when we took a starter out was huge, and of course Ayanna was fighting injury issues too. If Ice is good enough to start, but maybe not as good as Dorka last year we should have a star off the bench in Aubrey, a big upgrade over at least Ayanna's production last year. Aubrey is a proven star backup at the 4, and is probably available to be used upfront unlike last year. Aailyah can play some at the 5, so if Amari and Ayanna want much playing time they either need to be a better option than Ice or Aubrey, or Geno could use a short three big rotation even if he expands it substantially in the backcourt. If Ayanna or Amari step up and give us a very good 4th or even 5th big, then Aubrey could back up Aaliyah and still be available to help out on the wing, which is a role I hope she can play this year. Time will tel,l but I hope we can do better than a three big rotation, not having confidence in the bench beyond that, and praying we have no injuries. Both Ayanna and Amari were probably affected by injuries last year and if healthy maybe we see a big bounce from both. [/QUOTE]

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