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Message: [QUOTE="Orangutan, post: 2897937, member: 4946"] Did you really think I'd let this post pass without a long-winded response? ;) Some thoughts: While Turner is clearly a better overall player than Westbeld, Westbeld was very effective as a "glue" player and ND may miss that. On the subject: [MEDIA=twitter]1057661137242726400[/MEDIA] Shepard is a good passer and she and Turner seem to be friends. I'm sure they'll figure out how to work together. Marina/Arike/Jackie already know how to play together, so that should be fine. Marina got accustomed to playing as a facilitator rather than a scorer last year and Jackie is well-practiced in deferring to the other two until the situation calls for her to score. The thing that most worries me is the bench. Patterson played last year but the game was too fast for her. I still laugh thinking about the time Mabrey grabbed her by the shoulders and physically repositioned her on an out of bounds play. She's reportedly much improved but missed last night's exhibition with a leg injury. Vaughn is promising but has very little game experience and the others are true freshmen. Nixon is drawing positive reviews and started last night in Mabrey's absence (also a leg injury). Gilbert, Prohaska, and Cosgrove are bigger question marks. I expect Muffet to revert to her normal 8 or 9 player rotations now that she has the healthy bodies. So these inexperienced players are going to have to play meaningful minutes and exactly how good ND is will depend on how good they are. ND may not be quite as dominant against unranked teams as you might expect out of a #1 team. Muffet was clearly not thrilled with the team's peformance last night and based on the looks on Jackie's and Bri's faces at the post-game presser, my speculation is that the team received a stern talking-to in the locker room. Lewis is a good DII team (and well-coached by Samantha Quigley Smith) but they scored far too much for Muffet's liking. I feel there will almost certainly be games where ND lets an inferior team hang around for far too long and I can already imagine the "what's wrong" message board posts coming. Thankfully, the local press is basically limited to the South Bend Trib and they take a pretty light touch on their articles. Any media scrutiny is likely to pale in comparison to Muffet's scrutiny. So yeah...great starting lineup, ND is deservedly the #1 team but their are definite question marks especially with respect to defense and what exactly the rotation will look like. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach