Gamecocks November

[JDuro]

Coach not only still going deep with her bench, but still willing to experiment while playing a top 25 caliber team, to figure out her squad for when it truly matters.

 

[TC22]

This team is very, very good. They need to gel and figure out rotations, but I think they are deeper than last year. Russell was an absolute steal in this class. LA is going to get a LOT of minutes. She is fun to watch. Aaliyah isn’t playing with the freeness she did last year, needs to quit trying to do too much. Defense needs to tighten up. We aren’t switching on screens. Hope we get to finish a season, even though it may be crazy. Nuts to think we will add 3 Top5 recruits plus Hall next year and only have 1 Sr. on this team.

 

[SCGamecock]

Amihere is going to have a big year. Us fans saw this coming from a mile away, but it’s nice to see her getting more and more comfortable out there. Boston is playing tight, she just needs to loosen up and remember who she is. She will. Russell is an absolute steal.. she can do everything at the guard spot. A true combo-guard. Not a SG pretending at PG and vice versa. Zia and Destanni are going to be a lethal backcourt this season and next. With our post players getting the most attention, they will have opportunities to score. I can see both averaging over 15 ppg.

 

[WFFL]

 

[JDuro]

 

[visitingcock]

58-52 Gamecocks going to the 4th

 

[jumpstart]

Well...I will admit when I am wrong. This South Carolina team is not better than last years. I am not even sure they are No. 1 at this point....in fact...I will say they are not.

 

[visitingcock]

79-72 final in Hack-a-Cock.

Dawn, make em shoot 100 free throwseach before they get on the plane for home. Destabilize can watch them

 

[JDuro]

They’re #1 until someone knocks them out, which is possible this coming week given the tough schedule they are in the middle of. But I’ll give them credit as they’ve gone more than half way across the country and beat a ranked team and one who will be in the not too distant future. I can’t think of any team who I would elevate and I’m certainly not going to move some team #1 for beating up on lesser competition. SC already did that themselves to start the season.

If this team was going to be vulnerable, it was going to be early in the season as this team is still transitioning without Ty and Kiki and Dawn is still playing with her rotations. Free throws are killing this team, something that definitely needs to improve. If there’s one glaring way that we miss Ty (85%) and Kiki (83%), it’s definitely FT shooting.

I posted on Twitter that I wouldn’t surprise me if Destanni plays herself on to these season ending PG awards lists and she’s not letting me down. Playing really well taking over Ty’s spot. Named Tournament MVP.

 

[triaddukefan]

 

[ReadR00ster]

BAHHH! We just got to get the momentum back like we had at the end of last year. South Dakota and Gonzaga are really tough teams but we are still trying to find the new leaders and I think that is happening. In a month or so this team will look like Show-time Lakers.

I made bold Statements about Henderson right before game 1 and feel like she is backing up what I said.

 

[Sluconn Husky]

Only 41 free throws today. Dawn would like a word with the refs.

 

[JDuro]

 

[JDuro]

 

[TC22]

Well...I will admit when I am wrong. This South Carolina team is not better than last years. I am not even sure they are No. 1 at this point....in fact...I will say they are not.

Who would you elevate to #1? We might not be that, but we are 3-0 and played 2 quality opponents. Right now Dawn is trying to figure out rotations so playing lots of people for lots of minutes. A lot of ranked teams have already lost and a lot of teams haven’t even played. Just asking for feedback.

 

[Gamecockfan77]

Haven't seen the Zags contest yet, but I think so far:

1. Henderson is fantastic in transition.
2. Cooke is picking up where she left off in conference season.
3. I do see it now with Amihere who is moving much better and more decisively. Monster on the boards, but at this point still a downgrade from Herbert Harriman.
4. Boston and Beal to this point don't appear to have made much progress from last season. I don't think Saxton/Amihere are as good fits beside Boston and Amihere is more ball dominant so I'm not sure where that goes. Beal's shooting stroke still looks like she isn't going to hit a high percentage.
5. Carolina has a guard/wing depth problem. Littleton is perhaps still recovering from double surgery and I'm not sure I see her doing much offensively. They need big strides from Russell which will be difficult to engineer against the schedule.
6. Too many instances of getting beat off the dribble on the perimeter without good help coming over. The court awareness seems to be diminished.

I did not expect this team to be as good as last season's squad.

South Dakota is a solid team just as I thought they were last season. But #1 probably cruises a bit more.

Not sure about the Zags or the game itself, but it seemed like it was way too close with no quarter really having a ton of separation from the box.

Team has a lot of growing to do to deserve the rating. But last season, they won a lot of games early without playing particularly well and then turned it up.

 

[WFFL]

Henderson has really stepped up to the plate this season with 2 games in she's been their best player IMO.

 

[visitingcock]

Henderson can shoot foul shots too. Give her the ball in the 4th when opponents are hand hacking.

 

[WFFL]

Gonzaga lost because they couldn't make a free throw to save their lives. Your not beating #1 shooting 30% from the foul line ever !

 

[Sluconn Husky]

Gonzaga lost because they couldn't make a free throw to save their lives. Your not beating #1 shooting 30% from the foul line ever !

SC missed more free throws than Gonzaga attempted.

 

[ConwayGmck]

Haven't seen the Zags contest yet, but I think so far:

1. Henderson is fantastic in transition.
2. Cooke is picking up where she left off in conference season.
3. I do see it now with Amihere who is moving much better and more decisively. Monster on the boards, but at this point still a downgrade from Herbert Harriman.
4. Boston and Beal to this point don't appear to have made much progress from last season. I don't think Saxton/Amihere are as good fits beside Boston and Amihere is more ball dominant so I'm not sure where that goes. Beal's shooting stroke still looks like she isn't going to hit a high percentage.
5. Carolina has a guard/wing depth problem. Littleton is perhaps still recovering from double surgery and I'm not sure I see her doing much offensively. They need big strides from Russell which will be difficult to engineer against the schedule.
6. Too many instances of getting beat off the dribble on the perimeter without good help coming over. The court awareness seems to be diminished.

I did not expect this team to be as good as last season's squad.

South Dakota is a solid team just as I thought they were last season. But #1 probably cruises a bit more.

Not sure about the Zags or the game itself, but it seemed like it was way too close with no quarter really having a ton of separation from the box.

Team has a lot of growing to do to deserve the rating. But last season, they won a lot of games early without playing particularly well and then turned it up.

As was touched on above, the team started out solid but not spectacularly last season - lost to Indiana, won a tight contest against Washington State, but then beat a Lauren Cox-less Baylor that our guard defensive play rattled their guards. That win kinda made the other loss and close win fade into the mind's recesses.

But we still went on the road after that to Temple - who we play at home this season - and win against them by only 7 pts, and people were saying that we were perhaps a bit over-rated being ranked as high as 6th at the time.

Then we started going on a tear: we beat Purdue and Duke by ~50 pts each, but when we hosted South Dakota at home, we barely pulled that game out by 13 pts. So I knew playing them in SD could possibly be a much tougher game.

We scored 8 more points, shooting 10 more shots. Basically completed the same % of shots and pulled down 2 fewer rebounds, while they had 7 more rebounds and shot 1.5% better from last year's game. We shot worse at the FT line this year than we did last year - if we shot the same % of the 29 attempts, we'd have scored 4 more points, and the score would've been 85-71: a 14-pt win compared to last year's 13-pt win. Not much difference between the two.

With the exception that last year's team had an established senior starter and leader at PG in Harris, and another senior with starts under her belt in Herbert-Harrigan. This season we have senior Grissett, who is still not a regular starter, junior Saxton who is getting her first starts as a Gamecock, junior Henderson who is the same as Saxton, and sophomores Boston, Cooke, and Beal.

The team is younger and less experienced from top to bottom, but perhaps deeper in talent, than last year's? They are in the midst of a pretty tough stretch: already played top-25 caliber opponents in So. Dakota and Gonzaga, getting ready to play ranked opponents in NC State and Iowa St. this week. A pretty solid 4-game stretch.

Boston just needs to not get into early foul trouble like she did in both tournament games, to allow herself to get into better flows for the games, as well as allow her fellow starters to play more in the unit they practiced in for each game. That will also allow the entire team to better find their roles, and settled into them. The free throw % may be an "it is what it is" type situation, but IMO it can still improve on what it's been thus far.

I DO like how Henderson has stepped up her game as a new starter: she is not as good of a ball distributor and on-ball defender that Ty was - she doesn't have that knack for intercepting balls in mid-pass in high traffic, or making sneak assaults behind oblivious ball-handlers to pick their pockets that Harris had, but she is a much more confident if not fearless scorer than Ty ever was, and will look to initiate offense more where Ty looked to get others into the offense more. She and Cooke will be a very dynamic offensive back-court tandem.

Beal is showing herself to be more confident in her own scoring, but its too early to say for sure. She's completing 50% of her shots right now, where at this point last year she started VERY poorly. Amihere is stepping up where I expected her to - she hasn't flexed out her 3-pt shooting touch yet that she showed last season, but she's just shy of averaging dbl-digit scoring, and is 2nd to Boston in team leads of rebounds and to Saxton in blocks per game.

Saxton has continued her very strong play as a new starter: she's averaging the fewest mpg of all starters with under 19 mpg, but is averaging 10.7 ppg, and 7.0 rpg, and is leading the team in steals and blocks. And she is converting her shot attempts at a mind-blowing rate, which she did last season as a reserve. I would love to see her minutes increase if possible, as she is an impact player for the team.

Grissett is an impact player as well, and freshman Russell has also shown glimpses of being a major contributor. Still too little a sample size for the team this season, but we'll add more to that on Thursday and Sunday against two very competitive opponents.....

 

[cockhrnleghrn]

View attachment 61845

You mad, bro?

 

[jumpstart]

Who would you elevate to #1? We might not be that, but we are 3-0 and played 2 quality opponents. Right now Dawn is trying to figure out rotations so playing lots of people for lots of minutes. A lot of ranked teams have already lost and a lot of teams haven’t even played. Just asking for feedback.

I would not elevate anyone to No.1 as of now...but...this team, unless it finds it's footing, won't be No.1 long. I had high expectations and even though I have not seen those two games...the stat sheet doesn't look good. With 3 core players and a bench with quality minutes from last year...this should not be that hard to figure out. Dawn has always gone deep in the bench for games and she seems to be limiting that in close games this year. I don't understand why but I am sure she does. We shall see as the year goes on.....provided they get the games in.

 

[triaddukefan]

You mad, bro?

Just giving yall a head's up to look what's coming on the horizon