Louisville Postgame Thread | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Louisville Postgame Thread

Really proud of KK and Heckel played well. That's about as positive as I can be unfortunately.

Serah looked almost like a freshman. Took some really bad shots.

I was hoping for more from Allie. Seemed to revert to last year's Allie.

They seemed to give up the press in the second half and everything went off the rails. Half court needs work. Part of me wonders if Geno made them run some plays that they have been working on unsuccessfully so he had film he could rant about.
 
Suebird10fan said:
Going in I was way more concerned about offense than defense. But aside from the first quarter, the defense was somewhat disappointing and the offense looked great aside from not hitting open treys. I have to believe the threes will start to land and they’ll figure out how to play suffocating defense for the full forty. And Heckel was a revelation.
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Heckel was very impressive showing great cuts to the hoop and strong finishes. She will get her points.
 
It was interesting that our C's played far less than 40 minutes and our point guards far more. KK and Kayleigh were in together quite a bit when Sarah was the 5. I consider Ash to be the 3 not Azzi because she is by far the better rebounder, but nobody else that I would think of mostly as a 3 played, so that position was way less than 40 minutes also, but of course in the future, Blanca and maybe Morgan should fill that in.

My best guess is against good teams Geno will use a rotation of 9, adding Blanca when healthy and subtracting Allie. When Blanca returns Ash can move over to back up Azzi when Blanca is at the 3. Allie could show enough to make it 10, but at this point I think she was used for limited minutes just because Blanca was not available.

The final margin was a little disappointing, but they were good shots and the odds of being that bad from the 3 in future games is very slim.
 
Good win over a scrappy Louisville team who didn't let up and got to within 10 in the 4th as our offense seemed to be searching for someone to take over late in the game as we have been used to seeing. Some very positive things to take away from the first game especially at PG ++ but also much room for improvement. Maybe from all the things written expected a quicker, stronger presence in the paint but many times our big was out of position plus failure many times of some pretty basic stuff like boxing out. There will be much for the coaches to discuss with the team over the next several practices.

Time to learn and to look ahead and to get ready for Florida State.
 
Kind of what you would expect from a first game against an opponent with a pulse. Louisville will be a problem for teams this year. I only got to watch the fourth quarter in its entirety as I didn't get home from work until six and then it was my turn to make dinner. My wife likes to go to live games. Doesn't like watching on TV so some of my observations are based on the box score and what I saw in the last stanza.

Ball movement was good, but shots weren't dropping. That happens sometimes. They still won by 13. The defense is not there yet. The effort for the most part was good (although I saw some slow closeouts on some of Louisville's three point attempts), but the rotations and help defense isn't there yet. I expect that will be corrected by the time the end of January rolls around. I agree that Heckel looked really good. Geno said Sarah didn't have a great game. Box score doesn't show that.

Geno and staff will have some good film for teaching moments.
 
Lots of good things

I had a feeling that Kaleigh was going to allow us to forget Chen
(or at least for us not to fret at losing what she had delivered).
She may be even better than that…had a fine game…almost wonderful.

Azzi had the quietest 20 points in living memory

Williams seem hesitant (at times) around the basket…At one point, I yelled at the TV, shoot the ball…and Rebecca mirrored my response…lt’s like she wants to make every pass into the post an artistic event worthy of ABT.
Sometimes just forcing it up without the fakes and gyrations is the better choice.
I hope she learns that quickly.

Imagine if the gang had had (even) a 30% 3-point average
It’s beyond my mathematical powers to calculate the margin…But it would have been a lot.
 
  • No Paige to make the team look good when shots aren’t falling
  • Shooting 4-26 from three despite many wide open looks
  • Ranked opponent on a neutral site
  • Still a double digit win
I don’t mean to sound harsh or anything but people that expect postseason form on November 4 should be flogged
 
I think Geno was experimenting in the second half with the different line-ups and slowing the ball down to run offense. If Shade will be a streaky shooter again, I hope Allie will get more playing time. I hope Blanca is not out very long. Another freshman getting injured before getting a chance to prove herself.
 
Good first game, UConn won and the coaching staff has plenty of film to review with the team. I hope Geno doesn’t go with more than a 9 player rotation, IMO 8 is the number you want. The players can get in better sync if the lineup is consistent.
 
HuskyNan said:
  • No Paige to make the team look good when shots aren’t falling
  • Shooting 4-26 from three despite many wide open looks
  • Ranked opponent on a neutral site
  • Still a double digit win
I don’t mean to sound harsh or anything but people that expect postseason form on November 4 should be flogged
Expand ...
I can only speak from a musicians point of view but even after months of rehearsal for a tour you don't get used to playing live and being on the road until like show #5.
Every team needs a few weeks to get into game shape.
 
After the 1st Q it looked like our fondest dreams about this team were coming true. After that is was a grind. We did lots of good things and won the game and would have looked a lot better in the win if a few of those 3s went down. As is the team isn't going to think they are too wonderful to win and know that they need to keep improving. That's a good thing.

The things that stood out to me:

Keyleigh got a ton of PT and Allie almost none. I didn't see either exhibition game but the comments on her play led me to think she'd get more minutes. Given how poorly our 3 point shooting was and that Allie's strong suit is 3 point shooting it would make sense Geno would give her more PT. No so. Keyleigh was really, really solid. I liked her game a lot.

Ash wasn't hitting her shots but as usual played her hard-nosed game. She earns her minutes.

Serah is a big body and has a history of being good. I'll give her a pass for the game - I think first UConn game jitters got to her.

Loved the first half scoring by KK.

All in all a win against a respectable team. Room to improve not withstanding the obvious talent this team has.
 
I realize it's the season opener, but I don't recall many games where UConn had 5 players with double digit shot attempts. Down the road, it should makes things more difficult for teams trying to deny SS from taking over offensively when other players are not hesitant given open looks. Ideally, shots will drop at a higher percentage going forward.
 
KK started the game almost scoring at will, then basically stopped trying to score. The other scorers seemed to have gotten off to a really slow start especially from distance.
I'm guessing that Serah's shooting touch down low is going to pick up really fast.
I thought Jana played well in her limited minutes. Ice did what I think was expected of her.
It looked like the Huskies didn't come out for the second half as we are used to seeing and it continued for the whole half. Geno probably wanted to use a couple other players in the game but then the 7 or 8 player rotation didn't really click as well in the second half.
I hope we will see more consistency for the whole 40 minutes on Sunday.
 
1. I thought it was great was Geno said in postgame about how its important not to make a win feel like a loss because it wasnt by 30 pts.

2. Ok, KK!!

3. I think it speaks volumes that in the 4th when LVille had made it a game that Geno put in Ice!

4. Too bad we didnt get to see more of the bench. But, alas, there's always next game...
 
Fun game to watch early on. The guards will be exciting led by KK and Azzi. Three point shooting will get better as they had some great looks.

I expect Williams to improve and to mesh well with Sarah. One of my favorite plays was the great pass from Sarah to Serah for a layup in first half.
 
It was more or less as I expected. I’d dreamt of better, but this is the sort of rusty play one ought to expect. By turns brilliant, by turns frustrating. If they’d shot better from 3 they’d have won by 30 or more.

The thing that surprised me, though maybe it shouldn’t have, is that Geno essentially played 6 players: Sarah Azzi Serah, Ash KK and Kayleigh. Three others got 8 or fewer minutes. I’d wondered if there would be more experimentation, maybe get 10 players double figures minutes. This is what a lot of us bantered about. But Geno wasn’t prepared to do that so early in the season. I have a feeling it will happen later in the season.

Another surprising thing is that the second half was mainly half court ball. Very little pressure, very little transition. After the exhibition games, Geno hinted that he’d like to do much more of both. I guess he thought the team wasn’t quite ready for that.
 
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