Sorry I don’t think her defense was strong. I saw her lose her man more than once, not defend a pick and roll well, and make mistakes with the ball. You never know what you are getting from game to game.
We would all agree she played great against Tennessee. But in the next game against Nova she had 4 points, 1 rebound, 3 turnovers and 5 fouls in 30 minutes.
Against DePaul she was strong. The next game against Marquette she played 25 minutes was 1-6 and had 2 points in 25 minutes. There was a reason she was on the bench in the fourth quarter.
People love her play because she is athletic and physical. To me, she can be inconsistent at times and that is a problem. She has to be rested mind and body to play well and I don’t think she improved over the summer as expected because she didn’t play enough games and her training was effected by the Olympics. I am just surmising that. This was not her fault though and she was laudably playing for her country. The only reason I can think of for the extreme fluctuations from game to game is conditioning, energy and just fatigue because of the amount of minutes all our players have had to play. If she plays well on Friday after 4 days rest I think it corroborates the energy theory. I hope that is the explanation because it will be a simple fix soon enough once the cavalry comes back and as we know when she is on her game she is a dominating force.
