how the huskies could further excel ...

[PacoSwede]

for me, the most obvious and easiest way to perform better as a team: STOP passing up "good shots" in favor of a "better shot."

this is repeated in 'expert commentary' ad nauseum. it's presented as a high virtue. it seems to have been adopted by the players as a sort of talisman for team play, too. hogwwash!
.
in fact it can excuse timid play by intimidated, scared players who are terrified they will 'let down' teammates by failing to sink the good shot staring them in the face. it should be seen as a weakness, not a virtue.

now passing is great and often necessary to get the 'good shot,' but when that shot is ignored for a theoretical 'better' shot there's a good chance the team suffers. more passing is often overpassing, which simply boosts chances of making a bad pass or suffering a shot-clock or 3-second violation.

if you are not a good shooter, if you are left open intentionally, then you are right to make an extra pass, but few huskies have that problem. too many apparently think they do, or put more value on being an 'unselfish team player' than on winning, or believe that it's an iconic uconn trait they want to emulate.

but winning is what matters on the court; being a good guy is a much lower priority there.

 

[DEpup]

I would agree and also keep working on feeding the post. This is just not something that has been a huge part of our offense the last few years due to injuries and recruiting. We now have several bigs.

When I watch the teams that are traditionally "big" focused they have a more intentional and confident feel in how they feed the post. I think continuing to build that offensive tool will open up even more easy jump shots which is our true strength.

 

[uconnfan68]

for me, the most obvious and easiest way to perform better as a team: STOP passing up "good shots" in favor of a "better shot."

this is repeated in 'expert commentary' ad nauseum. it's presented as a high virtue. it seems to have been adopted by the players as a sort of talisman for team play, too. hogwwash!
.
in fact it can excuse timid play by intimidated, scared players who are terrified they will 'let down' teammates by failing to sink the good shot staring them in the face. it should be seen as a weakness, not a virtue.

now passing is great and often necessary to get the 'good shot,' but when that shot is ignored for a theoretical 'better' shot there's a good chance the team suffers. more passing is often overpassing, which simply boosts chances of making a bad pass or suffering a shot-clock or 3-second violation.

if you are not a good shooter, if you are left open intentionally, then you are right to make an extra pass, but few huskies have that problem. too many apparently think they do, or put more value on being an 'unselfish team player' than on winning, or believe that it's an iconic uconn trait they want to emulate.

but winning is what matters on the court; being a good guy is a much lower priority there.

There is a really fine line here. I'm ok with letting the coaches remind the players in film sessions.

 

[Skeets]

I would say it's passing up a good shot to try and make a brilliant assist. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's brilliant. There's a fine line to walk here.

 

[Kat]

They're the number one team in the nation. They are undefeated. They are the defending national champions. You could take their bench players and have a top twenty team. Somehow, they are managing to bungle through.

 

[trisailin]

I'm not sure messing with the DNA of the team is such a brilliant idea to make them better. It might just make them worse.

 

[EricSD]

It never ceases to amaze me that, while this team is very good, bordering on great, some fans seem to think they play 40 minutes of perfect basketball. If that was the case, we'd hear a lot more about it from Geno, and the team would not routinely play 10-15 minutes of uninspired basketball against sorely overmatched opponents.

Geno has said things "like" this before - his goal is to coach the team to play to perfection. Not realistic, but they "practice until they can't get it wrong, NOT until they get it right". He will tweak and coach and push the team all season long asking them to improve in areas that need to get better, both individually AND as a team. If Geno can coach the team to get better, certainly fans should be allowed to pick out the very few areas that they see as needing improvement.

Once the BET starts and all thru the NCAA's, Geno stops telling them what they are doing wrong and only focuses on what they are doing right. Obviously against certain opponents tweaks will need to be made to the game plan.

BTW, how many times have we heard Geno yell from the sidelines "SHOOT THE BALL", especially to Sarah and Azzi? That's not a guy who feels this team has peaked.

This not T-league children's basketball where everyone gets a trophy and everyone is "great". This team wants to strive for perfection, and fans pointing out where they are currently falling short is not worthy of sarcastic criticism. Just my $.02.

 

[Bigboote]

I agree and disagree with Paco at the same time. Or as is my wont to say, I feel strongly both ways. A good amount of time, they pass up a good shot and really do get a better shot. Which is a good thing. OTOH, in the Seton Hall game, they DID have a couple of shot clock violations as a result of passing up shots that most teams would take. BTW, Geno's face told it all when that happened.

I agree with UConnfan68 that it's something for the coaches to address. There's no way that the team didn't see the shot clock violations about 20 times yesterday, and they heard specific things that they didn't do/should've done that led to the problems. Geno is nominally into the time of the season (Go Zombies!) that's devoted to teaching the team new things, but that doesn't mean he's through with breaking them of bad habits.

(ETA composed while Eric was posting; concur with what he said and have said much of it in different words.)

 

[Conndog]

Blanca getting more comfortable with UConn’s offense- she is going to be a weapon that other teams won’t be able to defend. Love her slashing layups where she just extends her arm and banks in the shot

 

[oldude]

One thing that UConn works hard on is passing out of the post to open 3-pt shooters. There is no better way to set up a wide open, catch and shoot 3-pt shot than an inside out pass from the post.

There are times when Serah, in particular, as well as others have passed up wide open layups to kick the ball outside to 3-pt shooters. This is something of a “feel” issue. I’m sure that Geno wants players to make a layup at a 90%+ clip vs taking a 3-pt shot at 40% or so conversion rate.

With that said, UConn leads the nation in FG %, Assists and A/TO. The team is 2nd in scoring and 4th in 3-pt %. So any complaints we might make relative to passing up “good shots” is like complaining that Rembrandt didn’t use enough different colors in his paintings.

 

[Charliebball]

Cut down on the silly turnovers and rebound the ball better........that ought to do the trick.......