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Message: [QUOTE="oldude, post: 2814612, member: 7511"] You seem to have a penchant for mischaracterizing my posts. So let's start with SC's championship. UConn may, or may not have beaten SC had they made it to the finals. But there were several elements of "luck" for the Gamecocks that had nothing to do with the Huskies. I repeatedly suggested that SC was a better team after the injury to Coates. It opened up the lane for Gray & Davis to drive to the basket, and it allowed Cuevas-Moore to play the 2-guard, where she was far more effective spotting up from the arc, without having to deal with the responsibilities of running the offense at pg. In addition, despite Dawn's ire at being sent to the West Regional, SC had the easiest bracket to navigate by far. In the Sweet 16 game, the Gamecocks faced Cinderella Quinnipiac, and the clock struck midnight on the team from Hamden, CT. They next face and beat FSU, the #8 seed in the region, after the Seminoles upset #2 seed OSU. In the 1st half of the national semifinal, with Stanford hanging close, Karlie Samuelson, the Cardinal's best shooter and senior leader, goes down with an ankle injury. I would say that sequence of events constitutes an extraordinary run of luck. As for UConn not facing SC in the final, while many BY'ers sought to blame the loss on various Huskies coming up short, I have been consistent in my belief that MSU was a better team and deserved to win. Geno says a lot of things. What he said in 2013 was Geno being gracious in victory. The Huskies owned the Irish on that day beating them by 18 points, and the game wasn't that close. The difference between that game and the 3 close losses to the Irish earlier in the season was Stewie, who, at that point in the season, after some ups and downs as a freshman, was the very best player in the country. Geno was far less gracious after the loss to ND this past year, because he knew he had the talent to win it all and the Huskies came up short against a talented and determined Irish team. Not only was UConn's execution less than stellar, but quite frankly, Geno was outcoached by MM. You can choose to spin my analysis whatever way you want, but I guarantee you that Geno and his coaching staff have looked long and hard at the ND game as well as the entire 2017-18 season in an effort to pinpoint and correct the execution problems that followed the Huskies throughout the season. I believe that two critical keys to UConn making a run at their 12th championship this season will be keeping Lou and Crystal healthy, so they can be at practice, working constantly with their teammates until they "can't get it wrong." [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach