You are so right about UConn's tenacity. Even though they went through a reasonably long period of poor or sloppy play, there was always someone (more often KML) that made a shot or ripped off a rebound or stole a ball to help right the ship. That's what great teams do. Tonight, maybe not quite that great.
I have to concede that though the first ten or fifteen minutes disguised it, you're exactly right that it had a lot to do with some of the sloppiness and some of the decisions that they made. To win convincingly despite some very poor moments is pretty nice. I know Geno will have them operating more efficiently very quickly.
The scary thing about this team though is no one has seen what it is fully capable of. This is just the third game of the year that the team had everyone available. Consider how absurd that is based on how the team has looked for the first month and a half without their 6th woman and a former #1 recruit that just happens to be the sharpest shooter in the country. Mosqueda-Lewis playing in her first game in a month needing to knock the rust off comes into a #1 vs. #2 matchup on the road and knocks in a career high number of 3 pointers looking like she hadn't missed a game. Definitely surprised how good she looked and how many minutes she played. This is one of the most well rounded WCBB teams I've ever seen in terms of skill set and interchangeability. You want speed? UConn has Jefferson, Chong, Hartley, and Banks. Need size? There's Stokes, Stewart, and Dolson. Shooters? How about 3/4 of the team being 3-pt threats including two of the three bigs? The hard part of the schedule is over, so get ready for some ugly conference match ups.
I just wanted to say UConn has played some pretty stellar competition early and yet yesterday there were more flagrant open shots than I've seen in forever. I do have to concede coming off of break and working two players back into the rotation might have contributed. I'm only comparing yesterday with UCONN team defenses which doesn't necessarily mean they were awful, just bad by UConn standards.
If I was talking about some other team but I'm only comparing UConn to UConn standards. By their standards, they had moments where they were dreadful although thankfully my comments pertained to the last few minutes of the first half and a ten minute portion of the second half.
This is getting tiresome.....
