I wonder about this a lot too.
Could be. Utah with Kneepkens would definitely have been better. But overall team speed at Colorado is too slow to dominate Marquette and Creighton. Yes, Sherrod is very quick. But the rest of the team is not, and especially Miller and Vonleh. And they don't have the size to make up for it. That says to me these would be competitive games.
It’s not about pace! It’s about adjusting the reality of your defense based on pace. If you play 60 possessions a game and the offense scores on 50 of those possessions your defense is terrible. On the other hand if you play 100 posssions a game and the offense scores on 50 of them you aren’t terrible. But without the context of PACE those two defenses looks the same when they are just unadjusted scoring numbers.
The team that lost 3 games and the one that hasn't lost is different, different starters, Geno has had to rework line-up, defense, offense and Paige is back from a 1-1\2 year being out. Not disrespectful just stating facts. .
In theory, slower pace of play would limit possessions for both teams. That per se doesn't make offensive efficiency more important, because regardless it's always relative to defensive efficiency.
This has always been a problem for UCLA. Close is a much better recruiter than she is a coach! She has underachieved over and over with her often very talented roster. Now, she has the aircraft carrier everyone wants and exceptional talent around her. In addition to this, she has yet another monster class coming in next year! Plus, yet another supremely talented big a year later!
I find this comment funny now after the South Carolina men's team beat Kentucky last night in part due to pace of play. Kentucky likes to play fast but we made them defend us for 30 seconds each possession which then made them uncharacteristically tired and sloppy on offense, and prevented them from gaining any sense of offensive rhythm. Conversation about pace were the highlight of the halftime report as well as the post game conversations. South Carolina dictating the pace of play led to a better defensive performance.
I look forward to the NCAA Tournament so we can see the various conference teams compete vs other conference teams. I see I am not the only biased conference homer.
I believe Betts came out of the game around 3min left in 4th quarter, with UCLA still down 5, and without her they made their move to send it to OT (And almost win). Close made the decision to stick with that lineup in OT, which didn't end up working (in part because UCLA kept sending Utah to the FT line), but it wasn't like Betts was dominating at all beforehand.
No opinion on whther she's underachieved, but about 5-10 years ago she had a blockbuster, off-the-charts recruiting class. I thought they'd be final4 contenders from their soph-senior year. I dont recall what happened -- injuries? transfers? -- but dont believe they made a final 8 and not sure how many, if any, sweet 16s.
You're thinking of her 2014 class with 3 McDonald's AAs plus two other top 40 recruits (per HG), headlined by Jordin Canada.
In my mind, I don't think Close particularly over or underpeforms. Mostly I just don't think her teams improve much over the season, so by postseason other teams are just much more locked in. (literally think about how UConn is now vs. November when technically they have less personnel available now!)
I'm not a fan of Close as an X's and O's coach, but I don't see those results as significantly under-performing. They hit that “second weekend” ceiling in the NCAA Tournament due to a combination of factors, including lack of roster depth, injuries to key players, and not the greatest coaching.
I also think players don't develop or grow much year over year either with Close so I struggle to understand why big time players go there. She gets great talent and then they seem to just stay around the same level all 4 years, which is good solid even great college players but it always feels like there is another level they can tap into that they never reach.
I don't know that the PAC-12 defense is as bad as you think. Looking at the NCCA.com website, this is what I found when comparing PAC-12 schools vs other power conference schools (TOP 25) by defensive category:
You may be right. I was just going on eyeball assessments of the games I’ve managed to see replays of. I was unimpressed by Colorado and USC and a few other middle of the pack teams. But this was certainly not a scientific analysis.
I don't think the sophmores made much of a jump on this year's UCLA team. They are just more highly rated so people are talking about them more and some are getting more playing time. Eye test wise and state wise they seem about the same to me to be completely honest. I was really high on UCLA early season (similar to last year) but now that we are at the end of January their shooting seems to have gotten worse and everything else is about the same so they aren't quite as impressive to me. But who knows theyll probably end up national champions after I've talked all this nonsense.
Okay, I very much oversimplified. Let me try again. The idea is to score more points than your opponent. There are different strategies and different philosophies on how to accomplish this. Getting your opponent to play in a manner that is not how they want to play, and frustrating them, isn't certainly one of those ways.
