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Message: [QUOTE="JoePgh, post: 2578424, member: 1131"] I agree completely with this post. It occurred to me what the reaction would be in the posters here were Louisville fans posting on some forum called The Bird Feeder, trying to assess what the game said about their chances to win an NC this year. They would say that Hines-Allen couldn’t compete on the boards against a thin 5-11 opponent. They would say that Asia Durr had to take 19 acrobatic shots with defenders draped over her to get 20 points, and most of those points (nearly all) came after the game was decided. They would ask how their defense could keep losing KLS when the whole world knows that she is the best 3-point shooter in the college game. They would say that the basic principle of transition defense is to defend the paint area, and yet UConn managed to pass into the paint in transition with near impunity. And so on and so forth. I do agree that there is some relationship between the fact that Geno only plays 6 or 7 players and the fact that second halves against Central Florida, South Carolina, and Louisville have been less impressive than the corresponding first halves. Speaking just of the Louisville game, which I have re-watched, I think the shots in the second half were as good as those in the first half, but were not being made at the same rate — and that probably is due to fatigue among the starters. The fact that Azura was the best player in the fourth quarter (as she also was against Notre Dame) probably relates to her having played fewer minutes earlier in the game. BUT ... this is a perfectly rational strategy by Geno, as opposed to trying to have two or three more quarters like the first quarter. If he had bench players other than Azura whom he could trust to play 10-15 minutes, he might have tried that, but he doesn’t. Given that, it makes sense to slow the game down, milk the clock, and don’t give up any big runs to the opponent. In fact, Louisville never got any big runs and never got the lead into single digits. UConn was doing an effective job of protecting its lead, and it worked. Has UConn proved that it can play four quarters when it has to? Yes, it proved that against both Notre Dame and Texas. In both games, the team had to come back from a double-digit deficit, and was pulling away against an excellent team at the end of the game. But it makes no sense to wear the starters out by playing that way if the game is won in the first half. [/QUOTE]

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