Couple things to add some context to the Stanford-CBU game (while noting that I did not actually watch the game):
1. We are a younger team than we look, in terms of experience, largely due to injuries. If you look at our starting lineup, we have one player who's been a consistent starter in every game since the beginning of last season: Kiana Williams.
-Senior Nadia Fingall missed most of last season with an ACL tear and is on minutes-restriction, which really hurts what we can do inside (note how effective she was in the windows she was on the floor - 18 points in 14 minutes), and also makes it harder for her to develop offensive consistency.
-Senior Dijonai Carrington had knee surgery over the summer and didn't even play last night. She's also been on minute-restriction when she has played. (And she missed a chunk of her sophomore year with an injury, and was also out for a game or two last season after a concussion.)
-Senior Anna Wilson has missed significant chunks of the past few seasons with a variety of injuries. Both she and Carrington were injured in their McD's A-A game and I feel like have often had question marks about their health.
-Junior Maya Dodson has been in a boot since the season began and missed a chunk of last season with a similar stress fracture. Perhaps because of this, she has been a very minimal paint presence for us since her freshman year, despite being a consensus top tier recruit out of HS.
-Sophomore Lexie Hull missed half of last season with a stress reaction/fracture, and while she's coming along quite nicely now, I still think losing that floor experience hurts.
That means that our one steady, reliable starter since the start of last season has been Kiana Williams. Tara has really leaned heavily on her to run our offense, and you can tell because she keeps Williams in essentially all the time in close games.
2. Because of this, and the graduation of Alanna Smith, we don't really have a designated scorer. Williams, in theory, should be that, and she tends to turn things on in close games, but I don't know that she's naturally inclined to take over games. Lexie has shown the propensity for this, and I think will get better with time. But even though we have a really top freshman class, we don't have many players who we've had to rely on to "bail us out," and I think it shows when things get tight. It showed in the Gonzaga game, and it showed last night.
3. We really need to improve on our three point and free throw shooting. Those are two ways to bail out of trouble, and we have been hurting in both departments. CBU exploited us with the former (we shot 4-23 3pt%), and the Zags with the latter (a godawful 58% at the line) - when you don't hit your free throws, and the other team has a massive edge on treys over you, it's really hard to hold and build on a lead late in the game. In this respect, Williams' stroke has been off much of this season so far (she was 1-9 from downtown last night).
All in all, I'm sanguine about things - I always thought we'd be something closer to the 5th-6th best team rather than 3rd, as the polls seem to be ranking us. As is almost always the case with Tara teams, I think we'll improve rapidly as the season progresses, and I view this tournament as a great test to see which players will "step up" when called upon.