Stanford/UConn/Arizona

[Papa33]

Many Boneyard posts after our loss ot Arizona on Friday found many villains and scapegoats for our failure to run Arizona off the court: Geno's poor prep for Arizona's unique challenges, and his offensive and defensive plans; our players failure to match the energy and determination of Arizona; etc. And many of those same couch wizards predicted that Stanford would make quick and easy work of Arizona.

Well, I did watch much of tonights game for the Championship and then compared the stats.

Stanford won, but with a more seasoned and taller squad scored 5 fewer points against Arizona than UConn did. Did that surprise anyone? But Stanford did lead decisively in turnovers: 21. Uconn had only 12. We outshot Stanford from the arc, 41% to 28.6%.

So how to fathom Stanford's "success" and our failure to win? I decided to watch the full replay of our Friday night game. This is what I saw: most obvious was our failure to cash in on our height superiority in the paint, to deliver points when our guards found them open in the lane. Many of the misfires were bunnies, non-pressured misses:
AE– 3 for 7: one blocked, another nullified by travel
Ono– 0 for 7, including two air balls
Other point blank misses or failure to get shot off or draw a foul when open at the basket:
CW– travel call negates basket; 1' jumper miss; lay-up miss; lay-up miss; wide-open lay-up miss
PB- missed 3' floater
EW– missed bunny
NM– dribbled too far under hoop
Total= at least 18 misses of gimmies or near gimmies.
If we made good of only 50% of those obvious scoring opportunities, we score 18 points and beat Arizona 77-69.
Our offense, so maligned by new posters after the Arizona loss, gave us ample opportunities to outscore Arizona.

As many of you have noted (including Geno) we need to become more efficient scorers in the lane; perhaps hire Napheesa Collier to teach control, footwork, shooting touch, etc. (That's half joking.)

 

[BobbyJ]

Many Boneyard posts after our loss ot Arizona on Friday found many villains and scapegoats for our failure to run Arizona off the court: Geno's poor prep for Arizona's unique challenges, and his offensive and defensive plans; our players failure to match the energy and determination of Arizona; etc. And many of those same couch wizards predicted that Stanford would make quick and easy work of Arizona.

Well, I did watch much of tonights game for the Championship and then compared the stats.

Stanford won, but with a more seasoned and taller squad scored 5 fewer points against Arizona than UConn did. Did that surprise anyone? But Stanford did lead decisively in turnovers: 21. Uconn had only 12. We outshot Stanford from the arc, 41% to 28.6%.

So how to fathom Stanford's "success" and our failure to win? I decided to watch the full replay of our Friday night game. This is what I saw: most obvious was our failure to cash in on our height superiority in the paint, to deliver points when our guards found them open in the lane. Many of the misfires were bunnies, non-pressured misses:
AE– 3 for 7: one blocked, another nullified by travel
Ono– 0 for 7, including two air balls
Other point blank misses or failure to get shot off or draw a foul when open at the basket:
CW– travel call negates basket; 1' jumper miss; lay-up miss; lay-up miss; wide-open lay-up miss
PB- missed 3' floater
EW– missed bunny
NM– dribbled too far under hoop
Total= at least 18 misses of gimmies or near gimmies.
If we made good of only 50% of those obvious scoring opportunities, we score 18 points and beat Arizona 77-69.
Our offense, so maligned by new posters after the Arizona loss, gave us ample opportunities to outscore Arizona.

As many of you have noted (including Geno) we need to become more efficient scorers in the lane; perhaps hire Napheesa Collier to teach control, footwork, shooting touch, etc. (That's half joking.)

Nice observations and collection of mistakes. I saw two major problems they couldn't overcome. A) UConn's inability to play through contact and anticipated contact(mental). They were hearing footsteps and distracted by the chaos. B) Arizona kept the ball in their best player's hands most of the night while UConn's offense didn't by forcing their best player (PB) to start most possessions by going to the far corner away from the ball and have to run about 5 miles all night around screens trying to get it. With no adjustment even in the last 5-6 minutes playing catch up from 10 down. PB's legs were dead for about the last 12-14 minutes of the game.

 

[Zinethar]

Iowan here. I’m used to this with Idaho & Ohio but Utah??

Many Boneyard posts after our loss ot Arizona on Friday found many villains and scapegoats for our failure to run Arizona off the court: Geno's poor prep for Arizona's unique challenges, and his offensive and defensive plans; our players failure to match the energy and determination of Arizona; etc. And many of those same couch wizards predicted that Stanford would make quick and easy work of Arizona.

Well, I did watch much of tonights game for the Championship and then compared the stats.

Stanford won, but with a more seasoned and taller squad scored 5 fewer points against Arizona than UConn did. Did that surprise anyone? But Stanford did lead decisively in turnovers: 21. Uconn had only 12. We outshot Stanford from the arc, 41% to 28.6%.

So how to fathom Stanford's "success" and our failure to win? I decided to watch the full replay of our Friday night game. This is what I saw: most obvious was our failure to cash in on our height superiority in the paint, to deliver points when our guards found them open in the lane. Many of the misfires were bunnies, non-pressured misses:
AE– 3 for 7: one blocked, another nullified by travel
Ono– 0 for 7, including two air balls
Other point blank misses or failure to get shot off or draw a foul when open at the basket:
CW– travel call negates basket; 1' jumper miss; lay-up miss; lay-up miss; wide-open lay-up miss
PB- missed 3' floater
EW– missed bunny
NM– dribbled too far under hoop
Total= at least 18 misses of gimmies or near gimmies.
If we made good of only 50% of those obvious scoring opportunities, we score 18 points and beat Arizona 77-69.
Our offense, so maligned by new posters after the Arizona loss, gave us ample opportunities to outscore Arizona.

As many of you have noted (including Geno) we need to become more efficient scorers in the lane; perhaps hire Napheesa Collier to teach control, footwork, shooting touch, etc. (That's half joking.)

Good observations. Also good by not trying to assign blame - just stated the facts. I think you did miss another important thing - free throw misses. In big games you can't miss those things. One constant in all close games is if you have the lead you will shoot tons of them in the closing seconds. Also noted above was that when Paige doesn't have the ball if often never seems to find her even though she is in constant motion. Nika finds her. But by then she was gassed.

Why did Stanford win and UConn lose? That one is easy. At one point Arizona's stud was 3-18. Hmmm - notice any difference? Makes me wonder if that slight in the video did fire them up even more.