Today's Courant Article and 2002

[RockyMTblue2]

Reading Geno's and Kia's remarks in the Courant article in Nan's links brought back a thought I had during the Temple game. This team is starting to have streaks where they look like the 2002 in the beauty and speed of their offense. I don't believe we have had that since 2002 with any team. While there was much discussion how last year's team could be in the discussion, last year's team was more half court/ through the high post. While Geno is talking a lot about the Stewie and Morgan high low chemistry we are starting to see, this is a team that is focused on using all offensive weapons at its disposal. As Kia said in the article : This offense is not just about running [plays] for your best players," Nurse said. "There's always room for improvement on any team, always things we can clean up. But we've come out [during the season] and our offense is working as best as it can right now."

And elsewhere in the article Kia again: " It's hard to scout us. We have so many different weapons on offense and at the same time so many variations [to highlight them]."

Notice how perceptive and quotable this freshman is!

In 2002 in an early NCAA round game we had a couple over to watch the game - we were new to MT at the time and they did not know anything about UConn ball. UConn destroyed the other team like Sherman marching through Georgia, only faster. I remember the hubby's utterly stupefied look as he muttered: The NBA doesn't play like this!

I want that back again!!! Yeah, I am a spoiled UConn fan. Would not have it any other way.

 

[JoePgh]

I agree with you about Kia's perceptive comments in this morning's Courant. She also said that when she was on the Canadian National Team scouting the US team before the Bridgeport game, the Canada coaches described the USA offense which not surprisingly is similar to the UConn offense, so she felt she had some familiarity with it even before she came to Storrs. That may partially explain her comfort level with the offense, but mostly I think it is just that she is an intelligent and very coachable player.

Despite knowing basically what to expect, the Canadian team had trouble defending against the UConn offense, in part (I'm sure) because of the talent gap but probably also because the offense is simply hard to scout, hard to predict, and hard to stop even if you know what's coming. I'm sure Tanya Cardoza didn't see anything from UConn that she couldn't have predicted, but her team still couldn't stop it.

 

[ctfjr]

. . . This team is starting to have streaks where they look like the 2002 in the beauty and speed of their offense. . . .

I'm afraid they have a long way to go to meet that bar.