Teams arent as bad as their losses and Teams arent as good as their wins.

[BobbyJ]

Eric, there is a lot of truth in your take. I've been thinking a lot about UConn this past weekend. Lots of thought ran through my mind. Here are a few:

About 5-6 years ago, Kara Lawson was doing color for a UConn women's TV broadcast. One thing I remember her saying was: "There's UConn, a BIG gap, then there's everyone else." At THAT time, she was correct. UConn WBB had no peers. We were far and away THE BEST team in WCBB. WE were the elephant in the room. Those days are over, and the gap has completely closed. Whether we want to admit it or not, UConn has fallen back with the other top ranked teams in the country. Teams no longer fear UConn. How can you fear a team that was held to 3 points in a quarter? This summer, we were all excited about the potential fortunes of this team, given the new players coming in. We reveled in the amount of "depth" we now had and would be able to use and enjoy all year.

Then the season started, and surprisingly we saw for ourselves that the things we expected to happen didn't. Very quickly the team proved not to be as deep as we thought. Players we thought were going to perform at a high level CONSISTENTLY didn't. Admittedly I didn't read most of the post game comments after the SC game. I didn't need to. I already knew the tenor and direction most of them took. I also noticed how many other top 10 teams lost last week. Most of those teams lost to teams ranked below them, or not ranked at all. As bad as I hate to admit it, THIS UConn team may not be as good as we hoped it would. I'm NOT throwing in the towel here. It's much too early for that. I'm just going by what I see. Talk is cheap. Games are not won on paper.

I'm concerned about the team, not so much the individual players. We could have and should have won the SC game. We took a 3 point lead in at half time, then completely got out played in the 2nd half. Why, what happened? SC didn't stop playing, why did we? If we were good enough to win the first half, we were good enough to win the second half. Being held to 3 points in the 4th quarter is of grave concern to me. How can the number 2 ranked team in the country be held to 3 points in 10 minutes of play?

THAT is a question Geno, his staff and the players MUST find the answer to BEFORE they take the floor again this Friday at Seton Hall. After the SC game, we were all mad, disillusioned and a little embarrassed. Three points in the 4th quarter. How do you hold one of the most offensively potent teams in the country to 3 points? Of the 6 other games SC has played this season, only Clemson was also held to 3 points in the 2nd quarter of their game. Clemson is unranked and does not have the talent or expectations UConn has.

If UConn has aspirations of winning the national championship this year, they are going to have to be able to defeat the likes of South Carolina and others of their ilk. The only road to the national championship this year goes directly through Columbia South Carolina. There will be no detours. Unless and until we prove we can defeat them, I can't realistically engage in talk (or hope) of winning the national championship. It's similar to the other schools in the BIG East Conference wanting and expecting to win the conference championship this year without having beating UConn. We have to be ready willing and ABLE to do our own dirty work. We can't expect another program to do it for us (knock off SC).

What we do against the Big East Conference mid-majors and lower ranked teams that we'll probably not see in the tournament is of no consequence. UConn could beat Seton Hall by 40 points Friday, it wouldn't mean anything. Seton Hall (3-2) is not ranked, nor are they a true barometer for where UConn is right now. How will we perform against the top 5-6 teams in the county? THEY will provide the final hurdles to the national championship.

Right now, I think (the way we are playing as a team) there may be some other teams we wouldn't fair too well against. I think today there are some top 15 teams UConn would have a tough time beating. I want to see how we perform against Notre Dame, UCLA, Oregon, Louisville and Tennessee. Those games (win or lose) will tell me EXACTLY where we stand. Our next test is against Notre Dame at home in 6 days. Let's see how we do against them and go from there.

I agree with you on the bolded areas. The four problem areas I keep repeating are 1) UConn is unable to handle or respond to constant physicality without fouling. 2) When the opponent plays a Belichick defensive scheme and takes away their biggest offensive threat, Bueckers, UConn goes into scramble mode and has nobody to take control. 3) When the opponent gets up in their face and doesn't back off on defense, UConn struggles to look through the defense and run their sets and their timing is gone. 4) UConn's interior players have little understanding of post positioning and box out fundamentals. And if they do they don't use them against strong competition. Right now they're the same team that got beat by Arizona.

 

[MD#12Fan]

Probably to get the starters some minutes together with S. Carolina on the horizon where he probably figured they would need be playing quite a bit. They had only had 1 real game prior to MN.

UCONN didn't start of with any of the normal cupcake teams. In fact they didn't start off with very many games at all before jumping right in. Due to our poorer conference schedule these past few years, UCONN hasn't had the luxury of scheduling any cupcakes to get all the bugs out/cobwebs off before playing decent teams.

I guess you're referring to when UConn was in the BE before. What was so different then? I am a relatively new avid fan. I love DT but I only watched the big games. How much more competitive was the BE then than it is now, besides ND of course?
I think the scheduling pre-December this year was

I agree with you on the bolded areas. The four problem areas I keep repeating are 1) UConn is unable to handle or respond to constant physicality without fouling. 2) When the opponent plays a Belichick defensive scheme and takes away their biggest offensive threat, Bueckers, UConn goes into scramble mode and has nobody to take control. 3) When the opponent gets up in their face and doesn't back off on defense, UConn struggles to look through the defense and run their sets and their timing is gone. 4) UConn's interior players have little understanding of post positioning and box out fundamentals. And if they do they don't use them against strong competition. Right now they're the same team that got beat by Arizona.

I think the # of really good team in WCBB is still basically the same as it's been for decades. What, 10 teams tops?
But I want to say that the difference is is in the athleticism of the women across the country. UConn or anybody for that manner cannot just run their sets without expecting to be obstructed by good athletes across the board- 25-30 teams maybe.
So, for example, UConn advances and all of a sudden they run into a hot team with a bevy of good athletes with a hot player or two, and boom, it's over. (AZ, ND, Miss St) To me that's the difference. IMO the best "players" are still at UConn. Records speak for themselves. IMO Geno needs a system that can beat the teams of the 2020's, more athletic and stronger. Pretty passing games aren't the answer IMO. O needs to be simplified taking advantage of the team's strengths. A good MS offense- dribble drive pitch. D more diversified- mix in presses and zones, utilizing depth of personnel. Gotta change with the times!

 

[ConwayGmck]

I think after the conclusion of last season, the fanbases for both teams were similar in the thinking that their teams needed some depth in key areas of their rosters, to make their teams truly championship contenders. Perhaps it was how deep Stanford's roster seemed to be last season, and they then went and won the whole thing.

Both teams (SC and CT) added what was thought to be that needed depth and then some, to their respective rosters. They also were returning their entire starting units from last season's Final Four appearances. So, both fanbases were really excited - and even a bit wary - as to how their teams would utilize those deep rosters, and how they would help improve on last season's results.

But there was also another dynamic at play here: Dawn Staley has shown a more openness to letting her full rosters have larger participation during seasons, with only games that started tight, and finished tight being exceptions. She's had games where her teams have had sizable leads at the end of the 3rd quarters, and then she emptied her benches and by the end of the game, those sizable leads were whittled down to just moderate leads. But a win is a win. She's also done this regardless of who the opponent is: top-25 ranked OOC, top-25 SEC opponent, or cupcake opponents. It seems that the score mattered more than the quality of opponent, as to how and when she'd let reserves participate.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that Geno Auriemma has more often through the years played a group of 7-8 players for most of the OOC schedule: the starting 5 plus 1-2 first-responders off the bench. Reserves further down the bench get in for the final 2 minutes or so, and this is regardless of whether they are winning by 15 pts or by 25 pts, and regardless of opponents. They typically get more opportunities during the conference schedule, which CT has never lost a game and have won those games total by an average MOV upwards of 40 ppg since joining the AAC. THEN you can see the ends of the benches, the walk-ons, get upwards of a quarter of play.

So, I don't know if it's due to the difficulty of the type motion offense that Auriemma runs, if it's he just doesn't like sloppy basketball, or combinations of both. I feel Staley is more willing to accept a bit of lack of discipline and sloppiness - turnovers, fouls, shooting %s dropping off a cliff, player miscommunications - because the actual in-game experiences that are gained make up for that in the long term, and it's serves as better teaching tools than just watching from the bench.

But the bottom line here is that at this stage of the season CT hasn't benefited from it's improved depth of roster close to where SC has from its own deeper cast. Mostly it's been Juhasz and Fudd, and that's it. For SC, Cardoso is a regular front rotational player, Hall has developed into a solid regular rotation defender and perimeter scorer, and even Johnson was slated to be the top PG off the bench until she was lost to injury. Other players such as Amihere, Russell, and Littleton have stepped up to become consistent rotational players, and even freshman Feagin - who was expected to get the fewest minutes of the freshmen due to the depth ahead of her - is going to have to get some additional court time figured up, as she isn't missing any shots (she's shot 9-12 thus far and is averaging 4.2 ppg in 5.0 mpg).

USC came into 2021-22 with 16 players - 15 that were immediately active for play, and now only 14 are until Lele Grissett returns from her injury. All 15 active players have played, with Johnson getting 8 minutes in 2 games. They are now down to 14 active players. CT came in with 14 players - now with 13 since Poffenbarger transferred out. Only 11 have played thus far.

SC have 0 players currently with 30+ mpg on the roster. Henderson is right at the door there, with 29.4 mpg, and Cooke is next with 26.1 mpg. No other Gamecock has averaged 25.0+ mpg, and only 4 have averaged 20.0+ mpg. A total of 11 of their 15 current/formerly active players are averaging 10.0+ mpg - they are all still active. Nine (9) of those 14 available Gamecocks have appeared in all 7 games, with Feagin, Russell, and Wesolek appearing in 5 gms thus far.

CT has 3 players averaging 30.0+ mpg, with Bueckers and Williams averaging 35.0+ mpg. Five (5) Huskies are averaging 20.0+ mpg, with Fudd the only reserve. Edwards is averaging 19.9 mpg. Seven (7) of CT's 11 players who have played are averaging 10.0+ mpg, and eight (8) Huskies have appeared in all 4 games, with nine (9) appearing in more than 1 game.

So, the distribution of games and minutes played are different for each team. The question will be, will those differences also realize different rates of development and player maturation, and how will that impact those teams when the very difficult opponents return to their schedules......

 

[Stymie]

It's not. you know what I mean. I said it goes THROUGH Columbia. I didn't say or suggest that Columbia was hosting the tournament. You can get to Minneapolis from anywhere. Any team planning on winning the national championship, should plan on going through Columbia. The years that UConn won the national championship and even the ones it didn't, the road to the NC went THROUGH Storrs.

Carnac- do not waste you time responding to criticisms that are only posted to be cute and lack any meaningful content.
The peanut gallery is alive and, regrettably, thriving on the boneyard.
“ better to remain silent, and be thought a fool; than to post gibberish, and remove all doubt.”

 

[Dillon77]

Our next test is against Notre Dame at home in 6 days. Let's see how we do against them and go from there.

Hey, I'm looking forward to seeing how ND does against UConn and going from there (into the ACC), as well.

Then again, most Benchers were seeing how the Irish did against the likes of Georgia and Oregon State on back to backers and learned we can compete, but have to do a better job of finishing games on both the offensive and defensive ends.
Now, Coach Niele has Michigan State on Thursday evening in East Lansing and then off to Storrs.

Looking forward to it. With some degree of nervousness, for sure, but let's see how this year's model does.

 

[Carnac]

Carnac- do not waste you time responding to criticisms that are only posted to be cute and lack any meaningful content.
The peanut gallery is alive and, regrettably, thriving on the boneyard.
“ better to remain silent, and be thought a fool; than to post gibberish, and remove all doubt.”

You're right, I should know better by now.