Kate Fagan: Great story about life for Griner in China - "Held Up In Customs"
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Biff
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See Griner in Spell it right, or don't post thread
easttexastrash
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That coach sounds like a real joy to be around. I like how she dangled her whistle in front of them as if to say "see, I am the coach." And she coaches becasue it makes her feel powerful.
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The article quotes her as saying that they'd get someone else to take her place.
I doubt that very much. There's noone else like her. She'd just go to another team.
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Well, she's still young. The interesting thing about Griner is that I don't believe she's yet fully grasped how dominant she can be, even after dominating at Baylor and in China. It will probably come in time.
Griner is one of a small number of players that I play mental "what if" games with - what if she had gone to UConn? Not every player is compatible with a coach like Geno, but my gut tells me that Griner would have been.
What a frightening nightmare . . . for the rest of WCBB.
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I will emphasize that she wouldn't necessarily be outright better at UConn (and certainly not in raw ppg numbers). She was great at Baylor and would be great no matter where she went.
But I do think that Geno wouldn't have been satisfied with having her spend so much time banging about in the low post. He would have tried to incorporate her into his usual motion offenses, with the posting up option being used selectively rather than as the default. A Griner in motion is a Griner that's much harder to stop with the usual "throw three bodies at her" technique. Her passes to the open player at Baylor could be effective, but perhaps not as common as they would be at UConn - I think Geno would emphasize that more aggressively as a counter to the hack-a-Griner strategy.
A side effect of this is that I expect she would have actually had more opportunities to dunk at UConn; with all respect to Mulkey and ETT, I think UConn is better at delivering open lanes to the basket for its players.
easttexastrash
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I will emphasize that she wouldn't necessarily be outright better at UConn (and certainly not in raw ppg numbers). She was great at Baylor and would be great no matter where she went.
But I do think that Geno wouldn't have been satisfied with having her spend so much time banging about in the low post. He would have tried to incorporate her into his usual motion offenses, with the posting up option being used selectively rather than as the default. A Griner in motion is a Griner that's much harder to stop with the usual "throw three bodies at her" technique. Her passes to the open player at Baylor could be effective, but perhaps not as common as they would be at UConn - I think Geno would emphasize that more aggressively as a counter to the hack-a-Griner strategy.
A side effect of this is that I expect she would have actually had more opportunities to dunk at UConn; with all respect to Mulkey and ETT, I think UConn is better at delivering open lanes to the basket for its players.
I agree completely. I think that she was not used as well as she could have been at Baylor and would have been a consistent shooter from 15 feet, and probably farther out to the 3 point line, much like Dolson.
I desperately want to see Geno get his hands on her on the Olympic team, and I am guessing that he would enjoy that immensely. I think that time would be more beneficial to her than any other period of her career. When I heard that he was going to be the coach I was thrilled because I think he may be the only coach in WBB that will know how to use her skills to the fullest.
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