Frankly all of the teams in the top 10 are highly flawed. UConn however showed how glaring SCar's flaws are. Their guards are small and they are shoot first guards. The problem then is they're poor outside shooters and the entire team are average passers at that. They don't see the floor well except for driving lanes.
This goes back to Dawn. She recruited athletes, and although they can play a transition game, when good teams shut down their transition baskets they're just average in the half court. Don't get me wrong, they're a very talented team, and they're better than they showed tonight. But talent alone doesn't win championships. This team has the most dominant post in WCBB and tonight she had 12 shots. Cooke, again, had a whopping 22, and she made 6. Once again this team had a miserable 11 assists on 26 made baskets. Henderson had 6 of them. That's not a formula for championship basketball. Period.
I said this at the beginning of the season, and I'm sure every SCar fan is going to disagree with me, but Cooke is pretty much the same guard I saw at the U 16 America's, the U17 World's and the U19 World's. If she doesn't have her shot, if she isn't coming down on the break, she's not going to contribute much. Dawn's forward crew is very good indeed, and they play hard, tough defense, but they can't dribble the ball over the half court and set themselves up for the shot. Henderson is a fine talent with good speed and she's full of grit. She plays tough defense as well, and is the far better passer than Cooke, but she too is undersized, and taller teams, UConn included take advantage of that.
Now, if people look back they'll see I've always been very complimentary of Dawn and was pleased that she recruits well. I was one of those that wanted a real rivalry with UConn because I see it as good for basketball. But Dawn plays a simple up tempo offense: grab the rebound, pass it to the guards, run to the basket. When that fails dump it inside or drive the lane. When one commentator said UConn has less talent than SCar but executed better in their win, my response was, what offense is there that Dawn has to execute? I think Dawn has failed in two aspects so far. First, she's failed to recognize that she needs to recruit guards that can pass and she needs a selfless team that knows how to move the ball. Second, she needs to surround a dominant post with shooters. She has done neither.
