Amazing games tonight.
It amazes me that Dawn has had such trouble developing guards considering that she was a great guard - her teams have lacked balance and for some reason Mitchell has been out of sorts all year. Scoring was always the question mark for SC and in this game they didn't score badly, just couldn't stop an energetic Syracuse, and in the second half the scoring disappeared.
TN has put together a nice little run - I keep thinking it is some trick of smoke and mirrors. It was never that difficult a path, but they are playing better and more consistently than they have all year. OSU is going to need to discover how to play defense if they ever want to get to a FF, otherwise even with all the recruits in the world they are going to be a nice S16/E8 team. They looked clueless tonight and Mitchell appeared to use up all her points in the previous game. TN has great athletes, if they can actually play smart basketball even if they don't shoot well, they can make noise. They used Pat's fomula - rebound, rebound, rebound and play defense. In the first quarter they had something like 20 rebounds to OSU's 4.
ND - stunning to me as Muffet has been able to hide their deficiencies all year, but they got exposed by Tara. Turner can disappear for long stretches and she did tonight, like she did in the last NC game, for the whole first half - no defense, no offense, just nothing. With no other really effective big with Taya gone, ND was vulnerable inside which makes defending outside a lot harder - a bad situation against Stanford. With few fouls being committed (or called at any rate) and a strangely passive offense they played from behind all game and Stanford did just enough at both ends. I wonder if Stanford can shoot as well Sunday.
Washington is really fun to watch - they play smart with two really good players and an absolutely unique center. She conserves her energy for 90% of her time on the floor, but every once in a while exhibits amazing quickness in the low post and is an immovable object who takes up a lot of space on defense. I am not sure Geno could ever get that piece of paper under her feet as I didn't see her jump at all. KY has yet to show that they are any more than a second weekend team. They are just too careless on both ends of the floor and they seem to rely on a lot of action with not a lot of substance.
Lexington and Indianapolis are no longer home courts for anyone - 4 west coast teams still in it, two TX teams, 3 southern teams, 1 great lakes team, and two northeastern teams
Like the rest of the yard, I did not expect to see Stanford beating Notre Dame. Syracuse and South Carolina that was one was iffy. Washington over Kentucky? Didn't see that one happening. The Huskies from the West came out of nowhere. The Lady Vols? The way they were playing all season, who knew!? Wow.
