Good video analysis of the team, nothing people here don't already know | The Boneyard

Good video analysis of the team, nothing people here don't already know

This may seem like a swerve but it isn’t really. The question for this coming season may not be about talent but about drive. Any analysis of UConn (or its competition) ought to account for the will to win. Will we have it or will someone else want it more? Both these videos raise this question indirectly in different ways.

The video below forecasts UCLA’s chances next season from the back2sports guy and it just dropped a day or so ago. It’s not of interest to the UConn board except for one remark he makes toward the end about how much Lauren Betts really wants to win an NC before she graduates. I’m sure we all remember how shattered she appeared on the sideline watching her team get dismantled in the Final Four. They had a lot of talent last season, maybe more than anyone, but as the result showed, they didn’t have the drive to get past UConn. No one did. Paige & Co just wanted it more than everyone else.

I don’t know if UCLA will have the drive to succeed this year. Cori’s record suggests to me that she doesn’t know how to coach those sorts of passions. But it does leave me wondering where the drive to dominate will come from at Storrs. If it’s there, I’m confident Geno and CD will find it. That’s what last season was all about and it may not have been until the Tennessee game that it emerged.

Paige had an indomitable will to win, and she finally had a healthy team of players who really wanted to win it for her. Without Paige, albeit with perhaps even more talent on the roster, that drive seems elusive just now. Can Azzi and/or Sarah supply it? Or Serah, who finally has a shot at something that must have seemed impossible at Wisconsin? Or Jana and Ice, who may be tired and pissed about being discounted all last season? Or maybe the “Terror Triplets,” KK Kayleigh and Ash, will replace the “Havoc Twins” from last season and shove the team over the top. Or perhaps the team will rally around Carol as she makes one last heroic attempt to come back to her best form. Whatever it is, I’m sure Geno and CD will recognize it when it appears and do everything to nurture it.

 
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While SC & UCLA will clearly compete for the championship next season, and perhaps LSU as well, I don’t think any of those teams can match UConn’s depth and athleticism. Last season, as UConn ran the gauntlet to their 12th national championship, their quickness and athleticism stood out as they took apart team after team.

Paige will certainly be missed. But assuming that UConn runs into any of the other top teams in the FF or sooner, I just don’t see those teams being able to stay with UConn’s speed, and this coming season the Huskies will be loaded up front as well, limiting big teams like UCLA & SC from pounding the basketball inside.
 
oldude said:
But assuming that UConn runs into any of the other top teams in the FF or sooner, I just don’t see those teams being able to stay with UConn’s speed, and this coming season the Huskies will be loaded up front as well, limiting big teams like UCLA & SC from pounding the basketball inside.
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I may be preoccupied with this question of team speed. Last season, UConn was clearly the speediest team taken as a whole. Cori even mentioned this in a courtside interview during the game. But there were quicker players out there who could have given us fits. Milaysia is a good example. No one on UConn -- not even KK -- could really keep up with her. But by herself, she wasn't enough to lift up SC. Hannah Hidalgo is another example. She can be a difference maker if she has a solid team around her.

An early test of our ability to deal with such speedsters may come with Villanova and Jasmine Bascoe. She was a handful in last season's games. I'm not expecting Villanova to pull an upset this season, but the way KK Kayleigh and Ash handle Bascoe may be a good indicator of what's to come. Over the last few years, speedy guards have been our undoing as much as super-bigs. Remember Aari MacDonald?

In any event, if the team as a whole is playing crisply and with good ferocity, one speedster is not likely to be our undoing.
 
Further r
oldude said:
The first day of the fall semester is August 29, two weeks away. So we should expect to see Blanca in town sometime before that date I would think.
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Further info on Blanca’s arrival at Storrs. Freshman Orientation for international students starts tomorrow, August 15, so we should post BY’ers at all the major northeastern international airports to track (stalk) the arrival of Blanca, aka the X-Factor.
 
Bone Dog said:
This may seem like a swerve but it isn’t really. The question for this coming season may not be about talent but about drive. Any analysis of UConn (or its competition) ought to account for the will to win. Will we have it or will someone else want it more? Both these videos raise this question indirectly in different ways.

The video below forecasts UCLA’s chances next season from the back2sports guy and it just dropped a day or so ago. It’s not of interest to the UConn board except for one remark he makes toward the end about how much Lauren Betts really wants to win an NC before she graduates. I’m sure we all remember how shattered she appeared on the sideline watching her team get dismantled in the Final Four. They had a lot of talent last season, maybe more than anyone, but as the result showed, they didn’t have the drive to get past UConn. No one did. Paige & Co just wanted it more than everyone else.

I don’t know if UCLA will have the drive to succeed this year. Cori’s record suggests to me that she doesn’t know how to coach those sorts of passions. But it does leave me wondering where the drive to dominate will come from at Storrs. If it’s there, I’m confident Geno and CD will find it. That’s what last season was all about and it may not have been until the Tennessee game that it emerged.

Paige had an indomitable will to win, and she finally had a healthy team of players who really wanted to win it for her. Without Paige, albeit with perhaps even more talent on the roster, that drive seems elusive just now. Can Azzi and/or Sarah supply it? Or Serah, who finally has a shot at something that must have seemed impossible at Wisconsin? Or Jana and Ice, who may be tired and pissed about being discounted all last season? Or maybe the “Terror Triplets,” KK Kayleigh and Ash, will replace the “Havoc Twins” from last season and shove the team over the top. Or perhaps the team will rally around Carol as she makes one last heroic attempt to come back to her best form. Whatever it is, I’m sure Geno and CD will recognize it when it appears and do everything to nurture it.

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Drive to succeed? I just don't get it. It's basically like saying players lack the will to win, or other teams "just wanted it more" (a huge pet peeve of mine).

Every single team in the NCAA's last season wanted to win it all. The further we got into the tourney, the more a reality it became for the teams left standing, and to say that UCLA just wanted it less (to me) seems disrespectful to them.

Elite 8 - UCONN, USC, UCLA, LSU, SC, Duke, Texas, and TCU. At that point, was there a single team who said "Us winning? Nah - we have no shot. Let's not try that hard.". Every single team had 10 toes in and was 100% focused on being the 2025 NC.

This is not to say that when a team is getting dismantled, like UCLA in the final 4 (UConn 85, UCLA 51), or SC in the finals (UConn 82, SC 59 - but it wasn't even that close), that the losing team won't end up with slumped shoulders and become a step slow, but to say they just didn't want to win, lacked the drive to, etc. does a disservice to how hard all these student athletes worked and prepared for the tournament. Just my $.02.
 
EricLA said:
Drive to succeed? I just don't get it. It's basically like saying players lack the will to win, or other teams "just wanted it more" (a huge pet peeve of mine).

Every single team in the NCAA's last season wanted to win it all. The further we got into the tourney, the more a reality it became for the teams left standing, and to say that UCLA just wanted it less (to me) seems disrespectful to them.

Elite 8 - UCONN, USC, UCLA, LSU, SC, Duke, Texas, and TCU. At that point, was there a single team who said "Us winning? Nah - we have no shot. Let's not try that hard.". Every single team had 10 toes in and was 100% focused on being the 2025 NC.

This is not to say that when a team is getting dismantled, like UCLA in the final 4 (UConn 85, UCLA 51), or SC in the finals (UConn 82, SC 59 - but it wasn't even that close), that the losing team won't end up with slumped shoulders and become a step slow, but to say they just didn't want to win, lacked the drive to, etc. does a disservice to how hard all these student athletes worked and prepared for the tournament. Just my $.02.
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Agreed... I would also say UCONN was the most talented from the players to the coaches.
 
cohesion plays a huge part too. ideally, you have a leader(s) to achieve that. but it could come from the team building uconn coaching is so good at. ... the uconn way, you might say.
 
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