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Message: [QUOTE="diggerfoot, post: 2119652, member: 1673"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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