- Joined
- Feb 9, 2015
- Messages
- 14
- Reaction Score
- 50
That is saying the right thing, but implementing it in the game is the tougher part. You can't just say "I'm going to be tougher tonight" and have it work unless you've done a lot of prep work in practices beforehand. So the question is, has she and the coaching staff all pulled together on this and said that they're going to do all the tough banging drills that UConn does and make her seek out the tussles underneath? I'm sure they do a fair amount of it in normal practices, but unless they're all willing to ratchet up the action, she may remain at a sort of "UTenn bigs" type of paint ability, and that won't be good, and it won't be getting her to her great potential. She does have two teammates who she can probably get a lot of advice from on that, especially Welch, who is a worker..
That is true. I don't know what they focus on in practice or how much tough banging drills they do but I do know they understand the deficiency in that area and understand what it takes by the excellent example UConn demonstrated Monday night. It won't be an overnight fix and may be next season before we really see the results from focussing on that area of her game but I do know last night was definitely much improved.
One play she got blocked and LSU was about to run out and she turned around stripped the ball and put it right back up and got fouled. Another possession they got five offensive rebounds in less than 5 seconds finally ending in a foul. Dawn was not happy at the five missed point blank shots but got to applaud the effort under the basket in traffic. I know Dawn teaches toughness and maybe it didn't quite sink in until this week as they were still winning every game.
I am kinda glad we lost in Storrs as I don't think we would have handled winning well or had as much drive to improve and fully take in and understand what Dawn has been trying to preach to these girls all season. I am really glad UConn brought their A game as an example of where we need to get as that loss will make us much better at the end of the year than an unlikely lucky win would have if for some reason you guys didn't play to your full potential. Hopefully we get the chance to see just how much better we have gotten from refocussing and improving the work effort in a rematch that counts.
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