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Message: [QUOTE="diggerfoot, post: 4836822, member: 1673"] Before the UCLA game I posted that we would be fine, as long as there were no more injuries. What happened since then played out mostly as I expected, with three exceptions/concerns. 1. Based on her HS career I thought Brady would be like Dolson, the exception to the rule that it takes posts longer to adjust to the college game. Dolson needed “adjusting” due to conditioning, but her understanding of the game and how to use her skills were college ready from the start. I thought Brady might start even before the injuries started. Obviously, I was wrong. Brady is more like a normal post in her development. 2. Muhl’s trajectory as a facilitator has been exemplary. She went from 1.4 to 1.7 to 2.2 as a junior. She started both last season and this season with an A/T ratio 3.5 or above! Her performance as PG was way, way above average ... then the injuries started. Last year she gradually came down to the pack over the course of the season. This year her A/T ratio plummeted to 1.6 after injuries before she started turning it around again. That does not fit what the trajectory should have been and it had me, a Muhl defender from the start, a little confused and concerned. 3. I have been concerned about more injuries occurring. As a UConn fan how can I not be? Lo and behold. I have used concepts like stability and chemistry to express my concern over injuries. Not surprisingly, in a recent interview Bueckers pinpointed a better concept: identity. Just as a player needs to understand her strengths and weaknesses to play effectively, the sum of the parts must also do so. They need to understand the identity as a team that the sum of the parts make. Bueckers claimed things were starting to come together because they were understanding and embracing their identity. Injuries to a team will happen, but will they happen early enough to yet provide stability to the line up and rotation, which in turn provides the ability to have an identity, which then can be practiced enough to create high efficiency/chemistry. Before UCLA I was confident we had enough time to go through this sequence of stability, identity and efficiency. I think there is still time enough, but my concerns are similar. 1. Both Brady and Samuels will have to develop faster. I think they will. It seems that Samuels does not “know better” to doubt herself as a freshman, while Brady shows signs of developing that now will be accelerated. 2. Is it causation or correlation that Muhl proves herself to be elite until injuries start occurring? I believe that given enough time her efficiency as a facilitator will be elite come tournament time, but the fact that injuries initially affected her performance more as a senior than as a junior is a head-scratcher. If playing with freshman is the answer to that conundrum then we will be OK, since our freshmen should be playing like upperclassmen come tournament time. 3. We are getting dangerously late in the season to be searching for a new identity. Let us all appeal to the basketball gods that enough is enough. [/QUOTE]

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