On the eve of the big games, it's always wonderful to read the marvelous insights along with the entertaining fantasies of the BY pundits so that we can get the real poop on what's happening on the court. Two pennies in:
On Meghan. She does feel it's her job as a an ex-Husky and ex-UConn coach to help mold each generation of UConn talent in her own small way. She is definitely not going to say "Great pass from Chong" as Doris does over on ESPN, and she will pick on the nits for every UConn player. She certainly has a lot of knowledge about the inner workings of the team and what is expected of the players. My own chief gripe about her is that she also feels she needs to officiate the games and start making all the "missed calls" on UConn players. It's not her job, half the time she's just wrong, and she should just zip it.
It's also interesting to get another round from the Chong Choppers that just keeps getting funnier. Now we learn that she got "benched" after the Stanford game, even though she played 27 minutes in the next contest, then 23, then 20, and she's been averaging more than 20 minutes a game on the year. Those bench splinters are really slowing her down, and they're likely the reason for all the problems.
That of course leads to the next funny one continuously pushed by these learned Chong Choppers that her defense was so bad for most of the year until she suddenly learned how to get her hands up and move a bit in the last few games. Hilarious! Anyone who has had any experience with Geno over the past few decades has gotta be howling over the claim that he would keep the confused defenseless soph out there for 20 minutes a game. You can ask Stewie and Morgan (and Sadie) what happens when you don't give the effort and don't play D. But no, we're told 7 times 7 times 7 times a thread that she was constantly being blown by and playing stinky D. You can of course point to all of the those first halves in tight games when Saniya came in and the opponents got shut down and the Husky lead ballooned. But that of course is just pure luck, just as the fact that a team that is on its way to historic defensive marks has been doing it despite having had defenseless Saniya playing more than half the game for them. Priceless!
Then there's that tendency to utter no peeps if Moriah is roaming a little too much and her player is wide open for a 3. Or if Kia makes a dumb foul as the shot clock is running down or gets confused about who she's covering, not a peep. Saniya herds her player the correct way for the post players to hopefully squash (as they've been doing all year), suddenly it's more proof she can't play D. Obviously from the stats, the guards have all been doing a sterling job, but only one still gets put through the Chopper.
Finally, although we have all learned that Chong forgot to shoot after HS and that always flat shot of hers (flat in November, flat in February) is just bad, she somehow has managed to shoot 52% since the UCLA game back before Christmas. That's 52% for both FG% and 3-pt FG%. And more than half those shots have been from behind the arc. Lordy, Saniya, what do the Choppers want from you? 60%? 70%? Do you need to be perfect before they put down their grinding axes?
And yeah, I'm one of those local Chong fans that can't properly back the UConn team because we can't see all those fantastically imagined f-ups that other BYers see her make every 7 seconds. Had the same feeling about the Conlon carpers way back when, and yes, like the Choppers they always said that we couldn't see things properly or didn't get what UConn needed, even when you showed them the stats. They always love their gut feelings more.
Maybe tonight we'll get lucky again with the Chongsta on the floor. Go Saniya! Go UConn! Pluck the Gamecocks!
