Geno's press conference is up....

[pap49cba]

LINK

 

[UConnCat]

Thanks pap. Watching/listening to the last 2-3 minutes (starting around 8:10) is pretty revealing. Geno being very honest.

BTW, I didn't know Tina was at the game last night. Of course, regarding Geno's comment about Tina, I can remember when her play wasn't good enough to push the team over the top. That changed, so it can for this team as well. But it won't likely be this year.

 

[bruinbball]

Apparently the come to Geno meeting hasn't worked. Hopefully, they can get together and have a come to Jesus meeting. I truly believe the long layoff in between the BE Tourney and the NCAA will serve wonders. I really though the Italy trip would be a great benefit, but now I am second guessing that. I really believe they are just worn down and even moreso for Bria and Stef. It was great to see Stef fight back so well yesterday, but I hope it can be sustained.

All teams will get healthier during the break, but I am not sure any team needs it more than we do right now.

 

[Jonathan Husky]

I think the comment that this team has to be perfect to beat the ND's and Baylors is right on the money. ND is strong at every position--we are not. Also, I understand his frustation that this team, like others he has coached, hasn't improved over the year.

Wasn't sure who he was referring to when he said there are 3 or 4 players that just don't listen to the coaches. I am sure Stokes is one because he stopped playing her.

 

[UConnCat]

I think the comment that this team has to be perfect to beat the ND's and Baylors is right on the money. ND is strong at every position--we are not. Also, I understand his frustation that this team, like others he has coached, hasn't improved over the year.

Wasn't sure who he was referring to when he said there are 3 or 4 players that just don't listen to the coaches. I am sure Stokes is one because he stopped playing her.

His comment does make you wonder who else falls in to that category.

BTW, I went and watched the play that led to Geno pulling his starters. The teams came out of a timeout and UConn had the ball. They ran a nice play for KML (curl off a screen) and she had a good look but it just didn't go in. During ND's possession, the players were confused on which defense they were in. Some were playing man and others were playing zone. The result was a wide open 3 for Novasel which she drained. Geno called for a timeout and seemed to be asking a couple players what defense they were supposed to be playing. He didn't like the answer(s) and pulled the starters. His frustration at that point is understandable.

 

[John Fryer]

His comment does make you wonder who else falls in to that category.

BTW, I went and watched the play that led to Geno pulling his starters. The teams came out of a timeout and UConn had the ball. They ran a nice play for KML (curl off a screen) and she had a good look but it just didn't go in. During ND's possession, the players were confused on which defense they were in. Some were playing man and others were playing zone. The result was a wide open 3 for Novasel which she drained. Geno called for a timeout and seemed to be asking a couple players what defense they were supposed to be playing. He didn't like the answer(s) and pulled the starters. His frustration at that point was understandable.

And Kiah was sitting on the bench for most of the game. (Could he have been talking about her? I doubt it.)

This means that he had to have been frustrated with the starting 5, plus KML. (I can't recall who was not in the game at that particular moment.)

Tiff and Stef were very effective in the 1st half. Not so much in the second half.

Bria and KML were more effective in the 2nd half. Not so much in the first half.

Caroline and Kelly were, for the most part, in-effective for most of the game.

Peace,

John Fryer

 

[VAMike23]

Geno made a ton of excellent points (shocker) in this presser, most of them pretty bluntly. And incidentally, a nice tip of the cap to Tina at the end.

This presser dovetails pretty well with his comments not long ago that we "played over our heads" at Baylor and at ND in the first meeting. We're just not as good as we (including me) thought we were. And fans talking about how we've only lost a few games, well that's fine - and completely true - but it's not really germane to the question 'how good are we?'. That question, as Geno pointed out very clearly, is really answered when you play the other top teams. And only when you play the other top teams. If you have a go-to player, or you don't. If you are capable of playing the kind of clean, poised, hard-nosed ball that--lacking a clear AA player--you have to play for 40 mins to beat top teams. Or you aren't.

Most disappointing last night was seeing what Geno mentioned as our lack of fight. Did we have lots of exciting plays? No doubt. Tiff, KML, Stef with a bunch, they fought and scrapped. But what Geno is talking about is the larger scheme of things at the team level, the game flow, especially the game flow at crunch time. Like in tennis when a point is being played and your opponent gains the advantage. You can still 'play hard' without successfully digging down for the extra gear that's necessary to answer back. To nullify that advantage with great execution of your own, pulled off when you really need it. Otherwise they will keep pressing their advantage, and close out the point. When it keeps happening, they build momentum, and the game is over. Then the set. Then the match. Right now Geno sees us as a team that can get rolling when we have a lesser or "OK" team on their heels, but in those rare cases where we play a game against another top team we don't have the resilience to answer back right now. And as he said, that's how you win championships.

And kudos to Geno for owning up to the coaching side of the equation. When someone just has a bad game, they have a bad game. Then you move on, and they can have a good game. But the team has not improved overall over the course of several months, and although it's a young team, some of this is on the coaches. We have experienced players like Kelly not performing as sharply as one might expect. (One can make this statement and still make the follow-up statement that we wouldn't trade Kelly Faris for a-n-y-b-o-d-y.) It's easy to see why near the beginning of the year, having lost Maya, the added pressure on Kelly and other returning players could result in some lousy play, some blank stares, some errant passes thrown into the bleachers on occasion. But by the end of the season, tired or not tired (go ask Maya about "tired") I think Geno expected the team to have developed a stronger identity, with players having figured out where and how they could contribute a little more--not a TON more, just a little more--and to do so even when the chips are down. I'm not sure that his tough love tactics, great as they are for pushing players forward in their development over the long haul, don't sometimes result in players trying to do too much all the time, overwhelmed (which is highly correlated to the "clueless" looks Geno kept harping about) instead of each doing a little more, at the right times, in accordance with their own skill sets. The longer the timeframe you look at, the more fair it is, IMO, to ask if the coaches really have the temperature of the team, the individual players, and what it will take to lift their performance. I think Geno is right in that this year is not his best coaching job, nor the staff's. Nobody's perfect and he has often found himself scratching his head looking for answers this year. Not saying a bad job, just one where he would say he's done better.

Now, ND showed that you can get beat twice and still figure things out at the end, at least enough to beat the team that gave you three in the "L" column during the season and BE tournament. But in ND, Geno clearly sees a team that has the requisite fighter's mentality to pull this off. Do we? We may still - I wouldn't count us out. Geno could well be right that we're not good enough to win at this level without playing relatively mistake-free ball. I would only add that we have people who can shoot the basketball, and that confidence is a two-edged sword. We are capable of beating anybody, including Baylor, ND, whoever, if some shots are falling and we start to feel that swag. It makes our defense better, and our intensity better. That can be our weakness, but it can be our strength. As GA said, it is what it is. Unfortunately, if shots aren't falling or we get hit in the face by a good team, I think he's right in that this year won't be our year.

This game was a statement game, and unfortunately we made several statements that we'd like to take back. I don't think it was anything to be varnished over with platitudes, and to Geno's credit he didn't. At all. Some bright spots to be sure (Stef's energy for one) but overall, not enough poise or toughness when needed. That's really the bottom line.

But let's see what this team is made of now that the prevailing winds have shifted, and a lot fewer people across the country and even in Storrs are expecting them to go really deep (or all the way) in the tourney....... could this end up being the key to our guys feeling less pressure on the court, and result in better performances...? As they said in Revenge of the Nerds, sometimes you just gotta say WTF. With Geno starting to rain on their parade, and the pundits starting to cluck, maybe this is just what they need. Maybe they can benefit from dispensing with the expecatations and just say WTF. We're UCONN. We don't care if you think we can't. We'll show you.

 

[Kibitzer]

VAMike, best post of the day. At least.

 

[ChicagoGG]

VAMike - well thought out and, ditto - best post of the day!

 

[JimGunther]

As they said in Revenge of the Nerds, sometimes you just gotta say WTF. With Geno starting to rain on their parade, and the pundits starting to cluck, maybe this is just what they need. Maybe they can benefit from dispensing with the expecatations and just say WTF. We're UCONN. We don't care if you think we can't. We'll show you.

Hmmm....I always associate that line with Risky Business. That said, it's a darned good one.

 

[VAMike23]

Hmmm....I always associate that line with Risky Business. That said, it's a darned good one.

Hey, you're right - it's the same actor but in two different movies. I thought it was Booger from ROTN but you are correct, the memorable quote was uttered by Curtis Armstrong in his role as Miles in Risky Business:

"Joel, you wanna know something? Every now and then say, 'What the duck*.' ..'What the duck*' gives you freedom... Freedom brings opportunity... Opportunity makes your future."

 

[Icebear]

Great post, Mike.

Geno made a ton of excellent points (shocker) in this presser, most of them pretty bluntly. And incidentally, a nice tip of the cap to Tina at the end.

This presser dovetails pretty well with his comments not long ago that we "played over our heads" at Baylor and at ND in the first meeting. We're just not as good as we (including me) thought we were. And fans talking about how we've only lost a few games, well that's fine - and completely true - but it's not really germane to the question 'how good are we?'. That question, as Geno pointed out very clearly, is really answered when you play the other top teams. And only when you play the other top teams. If you have a go-to player, or you don't. If you are capable of playing the kind of clean, poised, hard-nosed ball that--lacking a clear AA player--you have to play for 40 mins to beat top teams. Or you aren't.

Most disappointing last night was seeing what Geno mentioned as our lack of fight. Did we have lots of exciting plays? No doubt. Tiff, KML, Stef with a bunch, they fought and scrapped. But what Geno is talking about is the larger scheme of things at the team level, the game flow, especially the game flow at crunch time. Like in tennis when a point is being played and your opponent gains the advantage. You can still 'play hard' without successfully digging down for the extra gear that's necessary to answer back. To nullify that advantage with great execution of your own, pulled off when you really need it. Otherwise they will keep pressing their advantage, and close out the point. When it keeps happening, they build momentum, and the game is over. Then the set. Then the match. Right now Geno sees us as a team that can get rolling when we have a lesser or "OK" team on their heels, but in those rare cases where we play a game against another top team we don't have the resilience to answer back right now. And as he said, that's how you win championships.

And kudos to Geno for owning up to the coaching side of the equation. When someone just has a bad game, they have a bad game. Then you move on, and they can have a good game. But the team has not improved overall over the course of several months, and although it's a young team, some of this is on the coaches. We have experienced players like Kelly not performing as sharply as one might expect. (One can make this statement and still make the follow-up statement that we wouldn't trade Kelly Faris for a-n-y-b-o-d-y.) It's easy to see why near the beginning of the year, having lost Maya, the added pressure on Kelly and other returning players could result in some lousy play, some blank stares, some errant passes thrown into the bleachers on occasion. But by the end of the season, tired or not tired (go ask Maya about "tired") I think Geno expected the team to have developed a stronger identity, with players having figured out where and how they could contribute a little more--not a TON more, just a little more--and to do so even when the chips are down. I'm not sure that his tough love tactics, great as they are for pushing players forward in their development over the long haul, don't sometimes result in players trying to do too much all the time, overwhelmed (which is highly correlated to the "clueless" looks Geno kept harping about) instead of each doing a little more, at the right times, in accordance with their own skill sets. The longer the timeframe you look at, the more fair it is, IMO, to ask if the coaches really have the temperature of the team, the individual players, and what it will take to lift their performance. I think Geno is right in that this year is not his best coaching job, nor the staff's. Nobody's perfect and he has often found himself scratching his head looking for answers this year. Not saying a bad job, just one where he would say he's done better.

Now, ND showed that you can get beat twice and still figure things out at the end, at least enough to beat the team that gave you three in the "L" column during the season and BE tournament. But in ND, Geno clearly sees a team that has the requisite fighter's mentality to pull this off. Do we? We may still - I wouldn't count us out. Geno could well be right that we're not good enough to win at this level without playing relatively mistake-free ball. I would only add that we have people who can shoot the basketball, and that confidence is a two-edged sword. We are capable of beating anybody, including Baylor, ND, whoever, if some shots are falling and we start to feel that swag. It makes our defense better, and our intensity better. That can be our weakness, but it can be our strength. As GA said, it is what it is. Unfortunately, if shots aren't falling or we get hit in the face by a good team, I think he's right in that this year won't be our year.

This game was a statement game, and unfortunately we made several statements that we'd like to take back. I don't think it was anything to be varnished over with platitudes, and to Geno's credit he didn't. At all. Some bright spots to be sure (Stef's energy for one) but overall, not enough poise or toughness when needed. That's really the bottom line.

But let's see what this team is made of now that the prevailing winds have shifted, and a lot fewer people across the country and even in Storrs are expecting them to go really deep (or all the way) in the tourney....... could this end up being the key to our guys feeling less pressure on the court, and result in better performances...? As they said in Revenge of the Nerds, sometimes you just gotta say WTF. With Geno starting to rain on their parade, and the pundits starting to cluck, maybe this is just what they need. Maybe they can benefit from dispensing with the expecatations and just say WTF. We're UCONN. We don't care if you think we can't. We'll show you.

 

[ABachelor6CR]

OUCH! Truth hurts......I wouldn't expect anything less than the truth from Geno... ....I guess the Emperor wasn't wearing clothes.....

 

[Kibitzer]

I have three thoughts about Geno's presser.

1. A general comment about these events, especially applicable to very experienced participants like Geno. Seldom can the questions be heard on the video replay, so we are left to figure out the question based on the answer given, and that can lead to misinterpretation. I wish the person taking questions would lead off his/her answer with something like: "The question was [example] "Why did I play a zone defense?" Then answer the question.
2. Geno said "I don't care about the Big East tournament." OK, Geno, if you don't care about it, why should I bother to attend, with all the energy and expense it requires? So I won't.
3. I have more pointed comments about UConn and Geno but I will post them after I have thought a lot about them. I don't want to express myself when frustrated or disappointed, as I am sure Geno did last night after a tough loss. I will put in my two cents' worth by week's end.

 

[justML]

Geno said no one will feel bad for him but I do. As a teacher when your kids don't respond the way you know they are capable of, it is terribly frustrating. And you might get so frustrated that you say you don't care, but you do. That's where his anger is coming from.

I just hope that the rest of the team responds to Geno's disappointment in them they way that Stef did last night. If that ever happened I believe we could go far in both tourneys.

JMHO

 

[Bestiarius]

Geno said no one will feel bad for him but I do.
JMHO

A tough day at the office is even tougher when your office contains spectator seating. ~Nik Posa

 

[MilfordHusky]

Combining this thread and several earlier ones on the lineup for next year:

We know that Geno is reluctant to give frosh too much responsibility or PT. They need to learn the plays, get in better shape, adjust to the speed at the collegiate level, etc.

But I think 1 criterion just got elevated in the priority scale. If they get punched (figuratively), will Breanna, Moriah, and Morgan punch back? Based on Geno's comments and everything I've read, Breanna certainly will. I think Mo and Morgan likely will. The mentally tough get PT next year. There may be some lineup changes.

 

[BRS24]

Geno said "I don't care about the Big East tournament." OK, Geno, if you don't care about it, why should I bother to attend, with all the energy and expense it requires? So I won't.

I'm thinking that Geno said he doesn't care about the BET because he cares about trying to get the max out of this team. Goal #1 is to win the BE league. Over and not done. Goal #2 is to win the BET. Meh. Goal #3 is a NC. If he cannot get players to listen or follow directions, then there's a bigger fish to fry than the BET.

 

[Samanthabrown3]

But let's see what this team is made of now that the prevailing winds have shifted, and a lot fewer people across the country and even in Storrs are expecting them to go really deep (or all the way) in the tourney....... could this end up being the key to our guys feeling less pressure on the court, and result in better performances...? As they said in Revenge of the Nerds, sometimes you just gotta say WTF. With Geno starting to rain on their parade, and the pundits starting to cluck, maybe this is just what they need. Maybe they can benefit from dispensing with the expecatations and just say WTF. We're UCONN. We don't care if you think we can't. We'll show you.

I don't think this is a "We'll show you" team. Diana, yes. Maya, yes. Tina and Renee, yes. I don't see a critical mass of that on this team.

 

[ABachelor6CR]

I don't think this is a "We'll show you" team. Diana, yes. Maya, yes. Tina and Renee, yes. I don't see a critical mass of that on this team.

AMEN.....we need to give Tarleton's Quarter......we need fighters like JJ, Jen, Shea, and Diana.....

in case you never heard of Tarleton's Quarter..... Battle of the Waxsaws