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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 4537692, member: 12088"] I've watched about a dozen full SC games and most of the rest as ~30 minute highlights, and I've seen everyone fail to outplay the backcourt enough to outweigh the scoring of the front court. I don't know what you mean by inverting the issue and saying "junk defenses" couldn't stop Boston and Cardozo. The point of stopping Zia and Raven and Brea, et al on the perimeter, is so it doesn't matter what Boston and Cardoso do, while you imagine it's about crowding the paint to stop them. [Is this where I'm supposed to say "Um, what?"] But, to the point: if you can't beat an opponent where they are strong, you attack them where they are less strong... and then you hope the differential is enough to negate their strength. Stanford is the only team that might be able to compete in the front court. Everyone else is stuck hoping to outclass the backcourt enough to negate the front court advantage. The fact that no one has succeeded at this -- the only strategy open to them -- is that their backcourts have not been sufficiently better. And this is a fact I mentioned in my original comment. Case in point in the UConn game -- Boston and Cardoso scored 43, while Cooke, Beal, Fletcher and Hall scored 16. But Johnson put in 14 -- she had as good a game as you can have while shooting 33% and that was more than enough to win. On UConn's side, Lopez-Senechal, Griffin and Muhl scored 47 and Edwards and Juhasz added 30, but that was not enough to take the win. In other words, UConn's backcourt only outscored SC's backcourt by 17. I don't see any other team being able to do better in this sort of comparison against SC, which is why I expect they'll repeat as NC. If Stanford is going to prevail, their front court has to win it for them, not their backcourt -- and I don't see that happening. [/QUOTE]

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