The Supporting Cast

[oldhusky]

Read his second sentence in the second paragraph again, that's exactly what he said. And high level bigs play serious minutes in close games. Walker, Tac, Dauda, and Muse hardly play other than comfortable wins. Barker is a useful piece off the bench. In a competitive game against Baylor today, Dugalic and Gardiner played 13 and 14 min. and combined for 5 pts and 3 reb. None of these are high level bigs.

Let me elaborate a bit. I did mean there are several teams, at least over the last few years, that have had 4-5 high quality bigs, but your definition of high quality might be different from mine. I could see an argument against Walker and Tac, but to me Dauda, Gardiner, and certainly Dugalic would easily meet the high quality big definition.

Regardless let me give a few examples of what I meant. Using this year's SC team you have Edwards, Kitts, Feagan, Watkins (injured), Dauda, Walker and Tac. Dauda was a player some wanted us to pursue in the portal, Walker was a JC All American, and Tac was a pretty high recruit we had some interest in as well. Even if you don't include any of those three that is a very good foursome.

The 22/23 SC team had Boston, Cardosa, Saxton, Feagin, Watkins and Kitts, and I didn't even include Amihere who at 6-4 could play the 4 but often was on the wing. Another might be the 22/23 Stanford team with Brink, Betts, Iriafen, Belbi who can and did dunk in games, and a 6-5 C in Prechtel that could shoots 3's, and of course Haley Jones could also play the 4 if she needed to. Both of those teams had a 6-7 future All American level backup C, behind another even better C.

Our last championship team had 5 high level bigs. Behind Stewie and Tuck we had the best player on the French Silver medalist team in Gabby, who played the 4 for us, the WNBA's second place player in the MVP race in Pheesa, and a player in Natalie Butler who after transferring merely led the nation in rebounding her final season.

It's rare to get that much talent for the two big positions, but when a team can pull it off, they will certainly be among the very top contenders and with our injury history trying to get at least 4 and ideally 5, should be a consistent goal even if it is difficult to achieve IMO.

 

[msf22b]

Returning to the original topic, that of the supporting cast
There is one member of the starting unit who gets less ink than anyone and is frequently forgotten...our grad student via Princeton; Kaitlyn Chen.

There's one part of her game that no ones's seen (at UConn)...her scoring prowess...
I suppose we may never experience it in a game...
or Perhaps Geno's keeping it in wraps for an NCAA's surprise (semi-joke)

But it's always there, lurking...and I've been waiting all season for the right moment for it to emerge.

 

[BobbyJ]

As you point out we did try and got close on Beers, and I think at least tried on Iriafen and Betts the year before. We also believe we wound up second on Somfai and were in the running for a while on some other bigs. What I found surprising was there were quite a few posters here that last summer didn't want to pursue another big in the portal.

At that time we had zero proven Uconn level returning bigs. Several of the top contenders had even 4 or 5 high level bigs. We had two incoming freshmen who had obvious potential, but we needed them to be very good from the very start. Sarah has far exceeded my expectations even though I expected her to start and be very good, and Jana has probably roughly met my expectations.

I also hoped that two sophomores could show a major leap from their freshmen seasons and perform up to Uconn standards, but frankly their first year's were not very encouraging. Ayanna got injured, and Ice improved some, but I don't think she is at the level expected when she arrived. And of course we knew Aubrey (who I would consider a proven big) would miss half the year, so she wouldn't be available from the start.

Aubrey can help a lot, but continued improvement from Jana and Ice are important too, because it is what it is, these are the players that have to help Sarah get it done upfront.

Note the bolded lines above. SC and Stanford stockpiling forwards in a couple of recent seasons and UConn having frontline depth 9 years ago has nothing to do with the timeframe you used here. "Last summer" and "at that time", "several top contenders" did not have 4 or 5 high level bigs and still don't. You are correct, your definition of high level bigs is considerably lower than mine. To me, high level= high impact in competitive games. Not HS ranking hype, potential, or early season stats against cupcake opponents. I don't set high expectations on that stuff and then get disappointed. I wait until they've proven they can compete and succeed against serious college competition. Like Sarah Strong has.

 

[packwrap]

Nice discussion here.

With the players we have, the question will come down to who will we want to play at 4 and 5 from this year's team against an SC, UCLA or TX?

The logical answer seems to be Jana and Ice because THEY ARE TALL.

...but the right answer may be Aubrey, Morgan and Sarah because they are quick on their feet, tough and excellent defenders.

It will probably be a mix, using Jana and Ice to absorb some fouls.

We are actually lucky that 1) Sarah has turned out so good, so fast - and works very hard on improving her defense. 2) Aubrey is back showing speed and athletics already in game #1. 3) Morgan biggest surprise, in that she was billed as a guard, but she is better than competent at 4,5 spots 4) Jana and Ice do keep improving every game with their 18-23 minutes.

I agree that center is indeed our weak spot, but I am thrilled that we now have a rotation of 5 frontcourt players to work around this problem.

 

[Bone Dog]

center is indeed our weak spot, but I am thrilled that we now have a rotation of 5 frontcourt players to work around this problem.

Yup. My thinking too. SC’s frontcourt consists of Feagin Kitts Edwards Dauda Tac Walker, but only the first three get any significant minutes. We have Sarah Jana Ice Morgan Aubrey.

If Dawn sticks to her smaller frontcourt (Feagin Kitts Edwards) I expect Geno will still play his regular rotation but may favor more of Aubrey and Morgan. Their unit has lots of experience and packs some punch on offense and defense. But matchups matter, and they don’t matchup well with Sarah, especially with Jana on the court. For example, will Kitts defend Sarah on the perimeter? If everything happens in the lane, the advantage is definitely theirs. But Sarah and Morgan don’t have to play that way.

The deeper problem SC poses is that though the frontcourt is our weak spot, as you say, their real strength is their backcourt. We tend to overcome our weakness with overwhelming effort in our backcourt. But I don’t think SC’s backcourt can be overwhelmed.

 

[packwrap]

What I like about our backcourt is at least Paige and Azzi are not overwhelmed and intimidated against SC. That's after years of playing with them on team USA and in big NCAA games.

We may still lose to SC, but it won't be a blow out. Sarah and Aubrey are two more who will step up to SC level. I would predict a game within 10 points, and UConn will have a hot shooting night's chance of winning.

TCU, TX and OK all folded in fear, as soon as things started to go bad against SC.

We have a big chance also to see if someone like Jana, Ice, KK, Ash, Chen, or Morgan steps up under pressure.