Hey, Carnac. Your sentence "no other Uconn player played their normal game Friday" is correct. That is why it kind of ticks me off to see someone blame the loss on one player, one who played consistently well all season and was one of the most consistent players in all of WCBB. Living in St. Louis where we don't even have a message board for the women's team, some of the Uconn fans don't seem to appreciate how fortunate you are to have the team you have. We just had the two best seasons in SLU women's basketball history and neither resulted in an invitation to the NCAA Tournament or generated much city wide excitement. Some in Connecticut are just too spoiled, imo. My biggest regret about the loss is that Collier did not show the country just how good she really is. And she is very good. I believe she will get that opportunity in the FF two more times.
Donald, thanks for the kind response. Other than Gabby, I purposefully did not mention any other UConn player. We all saw the game. We know that THE TEAM did not play their normal "A" game. Geno said all year "
If we play our A game, no one is going to beat us". He was right!! No one did. FACT: UConn fans are not use to losing. Some fans took this loss tongue-in-cheek (knowing it would end at some point), and were cordial in their comments, while others were enraged, and felt compelled to point fingers and lay blame. Collier did not showcase the skill set than earned her "
1st team All-America" status this season. She had a bad game for which some credit should go to MSST. They scouted and defended her well. She showed the country
all season what she could do leading up to Friday's game. This one game did/does not define her season.
Her selection to the AA team was well deserved in my opinion. I was ecstatic to learn of her selection, just as I was about Gabby and Katie Lou also being selected. I'm a little jaded as far as Napheesa is concerned. She and Crystal Dangerfield are
MY two favorite players on this team. I like
ALL of the girls, but those two are my favorites. One poster commented that (and I agree) if the starting 5 (never mind the bench) had played their
normal game, UConn would have won.
I, like many other Husky fans, was disappointed by the loss. They spoiled me rotten, and lulled me into a false sense of security, by winning games they were not favored to. Beating teams deemed far more formidable than MSST. This was not suppose to a "bridge too far", but alas, it was.
Collier did not lose this game.
The team lost the game. Unless Collier was out there on the court by herself, you cannot lay any blame at her feet.
You win as a team, you lose as a team. If Gabby had scored 31 points instead of 21, things would have turned out different. Collier's name would have never been mentioned.
Collier was having trouble finding her rhythm, that's why Geno sat her for unusually long periods of time. During the post game presser, one could tell that Gabby had been crying after the game (as do most teams when they lose a game of that magnitude). She does not have a "poker" face. She was wearing her emotions on her sleeve. Kia however managed to pull it together during the presser. I'm sure Gabby had lots of moral support in the locker room after the game. No doubt there was a considerable amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth behind the (closed to the public) locker room doors. For the freshmen and sophomores, it was their first loss at UConn.
While I was disappointed at the outcome, conversely, I was very proud of our team's overall success. A tip 'o the turban to Geno, his staff and ALL of the players. They over achieved this year. It's no wonder that Geno was voted "
Coach of the year" by his peers. It was truly a pleasure (and fun) to watch their games this season. I waited until the next day to post my comments. I thought it best to let my emotions simmer down first.
It was not our year.! If it was, we would have won. I wrote in another thread that this loss closely mirrored the Stanford loss in several ways. I'm hoping that next year's team will rebound from THIS loss in the
same exact fashion they did from the Stanford loss..........a 111 game win streak! I could live with that. I look at it this way, As disappointing as the year ended for us, I understand and take solace in the fact that there are a lot of
other teams in Division 1 WCBB that would just love to trade places with us, and have the 36-1 season that we did. A quick glance at the tea leaves tells me that our 2017-2018 team will be a championship caliber team. I'm already looking forward to next season.
