Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="UcMiami, post: 1897075, member: 199"] Hoophuskee - a nice post. But I would phrase it differently in terms of Kim's philosophy - I think she is living the ideal of KISS - keep it simple stupid. She has had star players, and role players and she has ridden her star players strengths by making the team revolve around what they do best. That isn't a bad strategy and it wins a lot of games and it is what most good coaches do and what most good players do in all sports at every level. For Kim it has led to great success - she has put together a string of conference championships and a few NCs as well. But it has also perhaps cost her a few more NCs, because as you go up in competition and the talent of the players and the quality of the coaches becomes much more equal, you run into coaches who scout your team specifically and figure out ways to take away your strengths. When that happens you need plan B and plan C and the ability to alter what you and your star players do. If you haven't practiced those adjustments, and you haven't demanded that your stars expand their capabilities, you find yourself in trouble. You become an easy team to scout, and it becomes more likely that one of your opponents will figure out a way to derail your season. You mention Griner being anchored in the paint, but she actually wasn't - she often came out and set screens at the arc, or played in the high post. The problem was that she was never a threat to score 15' from the basket, even though she has a pretty and soft touch. And she wasn't a threat, because she was never coached to take those shots even when her team was winning big so she wasn't comfortable when a defender sagged off in a tight game. Compare that to Dolson who kept pushing her range throughout her four years even though she shot a higher percentage in the low post - the coaching was preparing for the days when the defense would make her ineffective in the low post and being able to make those 15-18' jumpers would force the defense to adjust to her being somewhere else. One of the clearest indictions to me of the difference in philosophy between Uconn and most of the rest of WCBB is the yearly and career assist record at Uconn - in the history of great PGs that have played for Uconn, the record for a year belongs to Sue with a measly 231 and the career mark was just set by Moriah with a measly 659 - those are two of the best PGs in WCBB history, and in all the years of great guards, only four PGs have had a single season with more than 200 - Sue, Jen, DT, and Moriah. The NCAA records - 369 and 1307. Niya Johnson had 321 assist last year because that was her 'job' on the team, and if you wanted to slow the Baylor offense you figured out a way to take her out of her game and Baylor struggled - they lost once last year before the NCAAs and it was the one game Niya didn't play. And they lost to Oregon State who held her to 1 assist. Baylor and Kim had no plan B. If you took Moriah out of the game as the point of attack for Uconn, Geno just shifted her role to more of a two guard and the offense would run through Morgan or Stewart or Kia or Lou - the first three had 100+ assist on the year and Lou in fewer minutes had 82, while Moriah would become the spot up shooter or the one cutting back door. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach