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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 4849610, member: 12088"] That's my concern, too, [USER=11583]@TCC Kid[/USER]. I'm not sure ND is a [I]dominant[/I] post team, but they're bigger than the BE teams we'll have faced by then. They'll be the first such test for our new look lineup, and Amari is not the answer. Watson and Marshall are big, but they're not talented scorers. They can certainly pose problems by guarding Aaliyah, but aren't themselves the main scoring threat. That's Westbeld. 'Who guards Maddy' is the question I'd raise. Clearly if it's mainly Aaliyah, then whether they're great scorers or not, Watson and Marshall will score more than usual. If it's Paige, Maddy is just too big and strong for her and is likely to have a big game, clever as Paige is. It would be tempting to play Ice next to Aaliyah, and while this might be effective for short stretches, I fear it would be a mistake to give up the advantage of our 4-guard lineup for long. So maybe Geno just decides to risk Maddy getting 20 and focuses on stopping Hidalgo and Citron. I suspect the key here is to prevent Hidalgo from dominating the game. She averages 24 points 5 assists and 7 rebounds. I think she's too quick for Nika alone, even though she largely contained Unique Drake. But this is a different order of quickness. KK has to be the one to take this challenge on. I suspect she and Hannah know each other from HS games, so it may be a reunion of sorts. It's really hard to press a team with a PG like Hidalgo, so I think Geno will shift to a ball denial defense against her, and press only sometimes. I wonder if this game will be like the Louisville game, since the two rosters have some similarities. Louisville has a big forward -- Olivia Cochrane -- who is playing the best ball of her career, a big talented guard in Kiki Jefferson who resembles Citron's talent, and a speedy playmaker in Jada Curry. They had other big guards, Taylor Rickards Harris and Love to rotate in. But Paige Aaliyah and Aubrey were simply too much for them. Would UConn win that game now, without Aubrey, but with Ice Ash and KK playing so much better? The answer to this question is probably similar to the one about how we'll do against ND. We outrebounded Louisville, but I think ND will outrebound us. But if KK contains Hidalgo, and if Ice can be effective in the post, and if Nika Q and Ash hit their shots, that should be enough to allow Paige and Aaliyah to have the sort of game we need to run away with this one. Paige and Aaliyah are capable of getting 35+ points between them against almost any opponent. Can the other 5 combine for 50? I'm hopeful. [/QUOTE]

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