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Message: [QUOTE="ConwayGmck, post: 3753230, member: 10442"] 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..... [/QUOTE]

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