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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 4310355, member: 12088"] I’m glad to see you agree with me that in the last month or so, we started playing great D. This was my main point, not the absurd claim you seemed to want to attribute to me that they played great D all season. You are right to point out that in my exuberance I credited Paige’s offensive production with this improvement prematurely. It seems to have coincided with the emergence of Azzi’s hitting her stride on offense. But even this supports my broader (though less satisfying) point that in some cases confidence on O supports excellence on D. Finally, my primary interest in any of this was to suggest that in the later rounds of the NCAA tournament we played awesome D. What happened in the Big East is at best tangentially relevant to this thought. I am however glad to see it confirmed by your observation about what began in that Marquette game. Why do I care about this very subjective assessment of our late season D? Because it gives me the confidence to think we might return to D-awesomeness in November and carry it through to the NC. Also, a side note: while stats on steals and blocks are informative, they don’t tell the whole story. Disrupting the opponent’s O can be accomplished even without these. Chasing down loose balls strikes me as more indicative of general defensive awesomeness. [/QUOTE]