The All Star Addage

[diggerfoot]

Time after time I see prognostications that essentially amount to "everyone needs to play their A game" or, in a similar vein "everything needs to be done well." This contrasts with the old adage (conventional wisdom?) that if you have three players with all-star type games you are bound to win.

There are exceptions to any rule, of course, but I have found that this old adage is a pretty good one. It helps explain why UConn is so successful. Having many all-star caliber players increases the odds of three of them playing like all-stars for any given game. Also, being an unselfish, team-oriented squad maximizes our ability to utilize the three players that are playing like all-stars in any game. The fact is, sometimes we have five players playing like all-stars and we can beat even ranked teams like Mississippi State by 60 points.

Thus we even can go 0-9 for three-pointers in a championship game against a great team, like what happened against Oklahoma in 2002, and still win the game because we have at least three players having all-star performances, even though it's not including the three. You can prognosticate all you want, but one never knows what the other team will take away or give up, or which particular three players on our team will step up and be supported by their teammates.

Indeed, UConn is the one team that challenges this old adage. Having three players play like all-stars was not enough for UCLA, because of how well the whole exceeds the sum of the parts with this terrific passing, team-oriented squad. We may not always have five players playing like all-stars, but we usually have at least three all-star performance plus two pretty darn good ones. Because of this I suspect you need at least four people playing like all-stars to beat UConn. I only see Baylor as possibly having as many as four players do well against us, which gets me to my next point.

Folks are upset about the potential of playing Baylor in the semi-final rather than the final. I say "How perfect!" As in increasing the chances of maintaining our perfect championship record. Frankly from here on out, until we finally lose in a championship game, I really, really, really prefer we face our most dangerous opponents in the semi-final games, every single year.

Things have once again gone our way this year, more than we could possibly have imagined. Unfortunately, also more than some can possibly realize.

 

[Sonny44]

I think we have to rebound our 3-pt attempts. Yesterday Lou missed one and there were three UCLA players under the basket to get the rebound while our defense was half way down court already. I was shocked. Anyone else notice?

 

[UcMiami]

Digger - always enjoy your too infrequent posts!
I would say there are also super star performances which can throw out of whack your three vs. two vs. four AA quality performance calculations. DT was such a player, Maya and Breanna as well, who could frequently compensate for other teammates who just played average and not up to AA quality in games. One player can throw those calculations off. But I agree with your assessment of this particular team and with many of the Uconn teams of the past - the UCLA coach made that point in her post game presser - Uconn almost always presents a unique challenge to their opponents in putting five players on the floor that can each perform at an AA level and so you have to defend the team and not one or two or even three players. And that they are all willing and able passers so they will find and enable one another.

And I think the change from a count of AA quality performances to bringing our A game is also part of the Uconn culture that is spreading through the coaching ranks - no one piece of the puzzle is more important than another. Gabby, Napheesa, and Lou are up for AA honors for the year, but without Kia or Saniya or Natalie, or Crystal, or Kyla, or Molly, or Tierney, or Azura, or Batouly they would be less than they are and less successful as individuals and less successful as a team.

 

[tomcat]

I think we have to rebound our 3-pt attempts. Yesterday Lou missed one and there were three UCLA players under the basket to get the rebound while our defense was half way down court already. I was shocked. Anyone else notice?

Yep, but there were a lot of things that happened yesterday that don't generally happen when UConn is on its game and playing against a less-athletic foe. Those two factors conspired to make the overall UConn effort less than stellar