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UConn - Notre Dame post game

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Sluconn Husky

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It's fine.. as a freshman, you feel less fear and pressure than when you're expected to be the great. Notre Dame has absolutely no expectation from the Hidalgo girl. At not for this year... Hidalgo is the entire offense and next year her average will drop significantly because she is not in a Clark type of situation.


Hidalgo will likely win national FOTY and Geno was very interested in her coming out of high school. She'll likely be the all-time steals leader when she graduates.
 
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It's fine.. as a freshman, you feel less fear and pressure than when you're expected to be the great. Notre Dame has absolutely no expectation from the Hidalgo girl. At not for this year... Hidalgo is the entire offense and next year her average will drop significantly because she is not in a Clark type of situation.

I believe Geno and his staff has to seriously start considering looking outside the top 25 for forwards and centers. I absolutely love aalyah, but it gets me mad that she can take over any game she wants, and yet she just doesn't seem to. Aalyah should be averaging 15 free throws per game but that hunger hasn't come out yet. Like I said, minus Aubrey Griffith, we needed to guard everyone else except for Hidalgo and make the freshman win the game.
Respectfully, I disagree with you on Aaliyah. As a post, you can take over if they get you the ball. Not just throw it to you, but on time and not leading you out of scoring position. I thought she was pretty dominant last night. Then, they forgot she was still available. She got a charge the other night when the issue was the passer. In the end, people just see the stats and not necessarily the why.

It gets easier when there's another low post threat. There isn't. She's solid and has been the most consistent part of the UCONN offense for at least 2 years. And I want to make the distinction that every post player is not a natural center. She had to learn and transition to that. It takes time. Not to get long winded, but I think her contributions are vastly underrated and her mistakes too often exaggerated.

And there are certainly different solutions strategies for the same scenario, but I would have trapped Hidalgo and forced her to pass to someone else. That would have eliminated the nightmare with not defending their pick and roll. She basically won the game for them...freshman or not.

I'm with you a1000% on posts, in particular a natural center. Not a 4 that needs to be converted. Someone who in their training has played offense with their back to the basket on the catch. It's a different animal. They know where the basket is before they turn around. They don't have to find it. Even Jana is a post, but from what I've seen is not a natural center.
 

willie99

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We're missing five of our first seven players. Jafy would have started, as would Azzi. Aubrey was always first off the bench. Caroline had been starting. Shade and Arnold are doing yeoman's work. But they would have been subbing in for others, had the injuries not occurred. Coach Geno is doing some of the absolute finest coaching of his entire career. But even he can't cover up all of the holes in the roster.

We have injuries. Either you use them as a crutch or the next player steps up

I'm dancing with what we have, and I still expect to win

It is what it is, no excuses

Nobody in the country has any sympathy for us
 

HuskyNan

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It's fine.. as a freshman, you feel less fear and pressure than when you're expected to be the great. Notre Dame has absolutely no expectation from the Hidalgo girl. At not for this year... Hidalgo is the entire offense and next year her average will drop significantly because she is not in a Clark type of situation.

I believe Geno and his staff has to seriously start considering looking outside the top 25 for forwards and centers. I absolutely love aalyah, but it gets me mad that she can take over any game she wants, and yet she just doesn't seem to. Aalyah should be averaging 15 free throws per game but that hunger hasn't come out yet. Like I said, minus Aubrey Griffith, we needed to guard everyone else except for Hidalgo and make the freshman win the game.
The staff is recruiting several big girls
Geno also has a commitment from 2025 Gandy Malou-Mamel, who is now listed as 6-6, and there’s 6-5 Jana. Why do people act like the staff isn’t pursuing big girls?
 
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As much as I love Nika you are spot on here. She looked like freshman Nika out there.

Nika simply cannot play like that anymore, the team needs her too much. She let them down.
I don't agree. She was asked to defend a player that was way quicker than she was. KK is suppose to be super quick and she looked slow too but Nika is a lot better at her help defense on the back side. Hidalgo looked like the player of the year against UConn and many of her shots were lay ups after beating the person guarding her.
 

npignatjr

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When your second tallest player on the court is 6'0 you have no chance to compete in the paint. ND would set a high screen with their post and Hidalgo would drive to the basket with now defense to pick her up. ND scored almost 50 points in the paint and UConn just isn't going to beat a quality team with size unless they shoot lights out and they didn't.
All of NDs points were scored by players with no height advantage
 

npignatjr

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Agreed. But I would think a national audience of basketball fans might be interested in a basketball game? What was happening, what were the official calls, showing and commenting on those calls. Who scored, who fouled, who came in or left the game, in a timely fashion. Which team had the ball, even, where the hell WAS the (off camera) ball? Was a national audience clamoring for a 9 minute interview with Diana to 100% pre-empt the game they tuned in for?

BTW complaining about officials and calls is a loser's game; I get that. But even if the lousy calls were exactly 50/50 it never really evens out and it disrupts the game from whatever it would have been, whatever that might have been (we'll never know). Doesn't help when the specific calls have greater impact. Nika had fouls before getting her sneakers tied: she was playing foul-challenged right from the start and even so it was a different defensive game when she was in there. Some comments here "that's just Nika being Nika, stupid fouls all the time" seem not to have been watching recent UConn basketball.

IMO the only reason UConn fans aren't irate over the calls (fouls, non-calls after muggings, the mythical traveling that only UConn seems to do, the OOB calls and no-calls) is because the replays were bizarrely out of sync, sometimes three plays behind, or non-existent at key moments, and the announcers were somewhere else. Traveling kills me because there are always discontinuities, stutters, that technically can always be called traveling but when the ball and the feet are moving they are rightly ignored by the officials, except when they're not.

A team like UConn can have a bad game and lose to a team they are better than, it happens all the time and UConn did not play their A game. But ineptitude in officiating, however random, screws up the thin margin of error this UConn has against good teams and creates a game that is different than what would have been.
Actually at Gampel I have never heard the officials booed as loudly as they were last night leaving the court at the half.
 

npignatjr

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Two things that were obvious in this game. Geno was willing to play his players to the point where they had zero legs and consequently they lost the second and forth quarters badly. Secondly all those blowouts they had where he refused to develop Amari came back to haunt him.

The reality is they will still be very good when they match up which is a lot of the teams out there. One thing that will have to change in the big games is Paige will need to get open shots. They need to work on coming off screens, it seemed like every time they went past a screen they left enough room for the defender to slide through too. One game is not the end of the world.
The 3 ND players that scored 72 of their 82 points played all 40 minutes. And ND played and lost Thursday night.
 

npignatjr

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UCONN men putting on a clinic today. Amazing what a difference a big strong Center has on a game.
Actually when he was out the men were often playing 4 guards with Karaban or Stewart being the lone big
 
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Sonia is an exceptional player. Her game is so quiet and efficient you almost miss it while it’s happening. After the game you look at her stats, and those of the player she’s guarded, and it is clear - she’s a pure gamer.
 

npignatjr

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NO, NO, NO. Let's NOT fall into the PRECONCEIVE understanding or, should I say, the CULTURE of Geno's practice-time philosophy/STRICT RULE or DECIPLINE in deciding the game-time PT ! ! We may get the impression of Ines was not CAPABLE of handling an assignment of guarding a player such as Hidalgo, but , WHO knows? Its a matter of MATCHUP . Hidalgo is 5"6, Nika is 5"11, Ines is 5"9. My point is: Smaller guy Ines maybe Matchup better than bigger Nika against much smaller Hidaldo? If you don't try, how would you know? You recruited Ines from faraway Portugal, you must have seen some useful quality in her for the good of the team. She is a sophomore, and she performed some decent games last season, why not insert some ENERGY of her into our depleted and exhausted player pool ?

The key word here is : just TRY ! . Don't be too stubborn and insistent ? ! ? !
Nika was the only player to make HH work. the smaller and supposedly faster KK was torched repeatedly.
 
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I don't think anyone else even noticed, but the game was tied at 60 with about 14 minutes remaining in the game. From that point on, Edwards had 1 point and 3 rebounds. Near total disappearance at crunch time.
 

npignatjr

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Brady is showing real improvement the last few games. Another step in her development would be the ability to quickly close in front of a charging guard like Hidalgo and take a charge or two.

(Well, perhaps not a guard as quick at Hidalgo but your average guard perhaps.)
Based on what, since her 17 point game her play and scoring have dropped.
 
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Hidalgo will likely win national FOTY and Geno was very interested in her coming out of high school. She'll likely be the all-time steals leader when she graduates.
HH has been great but national media seems enamored of JuJu so she may well get it with HH a clear second.
 

npignatjr

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Sonia is an exceptional player. Her game is so quiet and efficient you almost miss it while it’s happening. After the game you look at her stats, and those of the player she’s guarded, and it is clear - she’s a pure gamer.
Sonia, Maggie Seigrist and Aubrey all were playing the same time and same area in NY. Which team got the best recruit?
 
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What a humbling game. Time for the team to go back to the film room, lick their wounds, and see where they go from here. And how unfortunate to have a performance like that in front of so many UConn "dignitaries"...

Congrats to ND to beating the heck out of us and Hidalgo - wow. Sensational.

BTW this should put to rest the hoopla over "just how good is this UConn team". We ARE a good team. But not an elite one.
True what you say, but as an addendum to the poor play of the team, I feel we must also include Geno being outcoached by Coach Ivie. Once again, Geno seemed incapable of making in-game adjustments. When UConn jumped out to a 12-point lead, Ivie made adjustments quickly and limited our scoring opportunities. We couldn't even make simple adjustments to defend the pick-n-roll, and why couldn't we force Hildago to her left?

Not a good showing by the team, but not a good showing by Geno either...
 
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I agree--Hidalgo was amazing. I can understand maybe the 34 points, but how does UConn give up 10 rebounds to a 5'6' guard?
Hidalgo was following her shot. She knew where the ball was going, mostly to the bottom of the net. And she must have some hops, for a 5'6' guard to get 10 rebounds. We still lose rebounds when two of our player are on the ball at the same time.
 
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True what you say, but as an addendum to the poor play of the team, I feel we must also include Geno being outcoached by Coach Ivie. Once again, Geno seemed incapable of making in-game adjustments. When UConn jumped out to a 12-point lead, Ivie made adjustments quickly and limited our scoring opportunities. We couldn't even make simple adjustments to defend the pick-n-roll, and why couldn't we force Hildago to her left?

Not a good showing by the team, but not a good showing by Geno either...
I actually thought Geno showed pretty good. He wore a suit for the first time in a very long time. I much prefer the suit over the casual coaching look.
 
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HH is very good, but UCONN not stepping into the lane to challenge her drives made her look better.

Much of this was Freshman (and Ice) not having enough experience to automatically back up whoever was guarding HH. When she drove around her opponent, nobody was there or stepped in. Geno will work on this.

Another Freshman problem is KK driving one on two or one on three without a plan.
This is another common Freshman error. They got away with it in high school. She will learn fast.
Dude you can't say off on a player that can pop and hit threes. The fault lies on the guarding player to work over that screen. If ice helps Westbeld gets open threes. SCHEME on defense needed to change.

Maybe a dead hedge would have worked, however Hildago was turning the corning really fast, and being so she would have drawn plenty up top fouls.

Maybe drop the corner defender lower and close the driving lane l, but ND put a shooter in the corner.

Only other asset was to send weak side baseline defender down low. Or go zone.

The problem was Hildago was turning on that pick super fast.
 
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Lol what is so funny in chat I said early in the chat that Hildago is getting wherever she wants. It got zero likes or responses. But guess what happened she did exactly that.
 
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Your right, Uconn is not a zone team because it takes a lot of practice time to optimize a Zone defense, and uconn's commitment is to live or die with Zone. Still, there is plenty of practice time available and it is unfortunate that more time isn't devoted to zone given the variety of circumstances that you may run into in an NCAA tournament where zone could be helpful, [particularly with the limited personnel options now available, e.g. Brady can't play man-to-man at this point in her development. ND could not score against a Syracuse zone, but Syracuse is a zone culture - Uconn just isn't
Zone would have changed Hildago going paint or kick easily. Stay in zone not at all, but you have to change a rhythm of their offense.
 
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