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Message: [QUOTE="Alydar, post: 2407400, member: 730"] UConn failed to dictate the pace for a couple of reasons. Miss St conceded rebounds on most of their shot attempts, opting to drop back on defense. And UConn committed more players to defensive rebounds. A third factor was that UConn was playing on tired legs after a season where they were out-sized in most of their games. I recall a comment from Bill Russell about being guarded by smaller players in which he said that they did good jobs for 3 quarters with their better quickness and leaping abilities but that in the 4th quarter their legs got tired while he was still 6'8". I agree with Geno about not adjusting during the game. But that has been a Geno trait right along. I remember the 2008 FF semi loss to Stanford. Geno kept waiting for his team to execute what they usually do but Montgomery kept missing open 3's and Geno never altered their approach. He rarely comes up with a customized game plan, UConn opponents know exactly what they will face on the court and occasionally a coach comes up with an effective way of attacking it and their team executes it successfully. McGraw, Tara and now Vic are on that list. UConn has not been a good "end of game" team for a while. Go back to some of the losses to N Dame. Dolson threw away a few passes late to lose games. She had a bad habit of passing only to Hartley in stressful situations and Diggins stole several of those passes. In the Stanford loss UConn had a couple of seconds and failed to make a long inbound, instead giving it to KML 90 feet from the basket and without a clue as to what to do. A lot of the problem has to do with UConn rarely finding themselves in a tight game with seconds left. In the 2 close games UConn had earlier in the season Chong nailed 3 pt shots to ice it with a minute or so left but UConn hardly ever faces a "last shot to win or tie" situation. The times they have been successful at it were when players like Bird, Taurasi or Moore just did it on their own. It is nice to see that Geno accepted responsibility and didn't just throw his players under the bus like some coaches. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach