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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 5258939, member: 12088"] Thinking about Geno's small ball lineup while watching the UCLA game (again), I'm struck by what happened at 1:50 in the 1st quarter. It's really an object lesson in what can go wrong with a big lineup. Cori had one of her big lineups on the floor: Betts Barker Gardiner Jaquez and Rice. Geno had Page Sarah Azzi KK Ash out there. UCLA tries to run a play for Barker to post up Paige, since she has a 4" height advantage. But Paige has pushed Janiah out to the elbow, and once she sets herself KK double teams her and she gets flustered as she has to rip the ball away from Paige and KK before the play even begins. Then she goes into a frantic drive culminating in a turnaround step-back jumper from ~10 feet. [INDENT=2]Just take a second to picture that: Paige has forced a much bigger player into a step-back move. She did something similar to Dugalic in the second half. [/INDENT] Barker's shot misses and Betts gets the rebound but can't put shot up because Sarah KK and Ash have her surrounded and eventually Ash comes away with the ball. And Gardiner and Barker are nowhere near the action because KK Ash and Azzi have boxed them out of the play. It's effectively Betts in a 1-on-4 situation. Could Geno use more bigs in the front court? Absolutely. But does he know how to win without this? Yes, absolutely. He tells Holly in the courtside interview that he is wary of exposing Sarah to too much foul risk in the small lineup, but also observes that Sarah poses a matchup problem on the other end of the floor. We now know that matchup problem proved to be insoluble for UCLA and devastating. If Geno plays Sarah at the 3 next season alongside Jana (or Serah) and Ice -- in other words, in a bigger slower lineup -- he may lose that matchup advantage, though he'll probably discover another one that may be even more devastating to opposing teams. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach