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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 5170532, member: 12088"] It’s an interesting thought. I mean, mostly folks talk about the current team in terms of potential, not right now. I think it’s clear that the team that lost to Iowa in the Final Four was a little better than this team is [B]right now[/B]. Nika and Aaliyah have left holes that haven’t been filled, yet. The oddity in this thought experiment is that Sarah and KK and Ash as they are right now are not exactly accounted for on last year’s Final Four team. And there are other questions to ask. Is Sarah a sufficient replacement for Aaliyah? Is Ash right now a more effective player? And KK? Is Kaitlyn enough to balance the loss of Nika? And what on earth do we think Jana and Ice can give us against a team like SC? Most importantly, [B]Paige may or not be playing with quite the same confidence as last season[/B]. One sign of this is the number of free throws attempted — last season she had 163 FTA compared to this season in which she has 43 FTA halfway through, or roughly half. Last season she seemed to risk more on every drive than this season. Is Paige 4.0 simply equivalent to Paige 3.0 or maybe better because wiser? Or worse because slightly more cautious? And the hardest maybe to assess, because we lack any objective measure — [B]what does Azzi bring to this team?[/B] No one on last season’s team adds up to what she might become, and we have no idea what to expect from her. A sign is that she’s either the greatest thing since sliced bread for most of us, or she’s utterly unreliable due to the likelihood of injury. As for me, the eternal optimist, I’d say that [B]we are definitely [U]not yet[/U] as good as last year’s team was by the Final Four.[/B] Aaliyah and Paige were peaking and Nika was bringing the knuckles on defense, and Ash and KK were on an upward trajectory. This season, Sarah may well be better already than Aaliyah ever was at UConn, though this is really hard to judge. Some of Aaliyah’s muscle may need to be supplied by Jana and Ice to cover her absence. [B]However, we could be potentially significantly better than last year’s team by tournament time[/B]. [/QUOTE]

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