UNC vs. Stanford [merged thread]

[rvwsleep]

My thought as well. Hello everyone! I've been a lurker here for a while and finally decided to sign up. If a newcomer may add a couple cents to the topic, the thing that has kept up my optimism regarding the loss to Stanford is the fact that it took an absolute perfect 'A' game from them to beat UConn on a bad night.
I also watched a little bit of UNC's game against Oregon on TV a few days back and was quite impressed with their post players. They were pounding it into the paint and rebounding the ball like crazy. I knew this match-up would be a tough one for Stanford and seems to be holding true.

Welcome aboard. You should know where the lifesavers are. The ones marked "use immediately in case of back to back losses". We could be in for a bumpy ride.

 

[EricLA]

Yes, giving up 88 points is not an effective way to win games. And, IMO, it was a team loss. Even though an individual may have a spectacularly good or spectacularly bad game, if the team plays poorly then the team - not the player - will lose.

I don't think it's a bad loss, though. Upsets tend to happen early in the season for a reason. Both UConn and Stanford are adjusting after the loss of key players and both will be better by tournament time. I'll bet you that there are other teams dreading the thought of either UConn or Stanford in their brackets.

Totally agree, but the point I was trying to make, maybe not very well, has to do with the difference between a loss that looks bad, and a bad loss.

Tenn's loss to Chatty is both - it's a bad loss and a loss that looks bad to the committee when seeding the teams for the NCAA's. That's a much better example because Chatty is not even close to being a ranked team. The loss to Stanford would probably never drop UCONN from a 1 seed, but in theory (if we never played ND or SC), it could keep us from THE #1 seed. That's what I meant by "it looks bad".

But as for it being a bad loss, I'd argue the opposite. Good losses are ones where the team really learns something from it and I think they learned a ton from this game. Like what you said, I read comments from Geno that he didn't have 100% of the teams' attention. I bet he does now!!!

 

[wallman]

Excellent point. Uconn goes on, makes changes, line up etc, Stanford did nothing. Watched the New Mexico game and Texas game, they started the same line up which Tara took out pretty quickly against Uconn as it wasn't successful. No lessons learned there apparently.

 

[Buzzyboy]

Apparently UNC is demonstrating how to play defense.

North Carolina has some really good athletes with good quickness and they've probably been able to stop the penetrations that led to many, many easy baskets based on slow responsiveness by Saniya and a little inexperience by Nurse along with a game where the refs were calling ticky ticky fouls that probably caused some hesitation and fear of another cheap foul call. How many cheap baskets to UConn give up in the game to those two ladies? Many!!!! But give Stanford some credit, they did a nice defensive job on KML and almost completely took her out of the game, thus neutralizing a key element of UConn's offense. UConn's defense was as porous as I've ever seen a UConn defense and hopefully there was a valuable lesson learned that night.

 

[Buzzyboy]

Yes, giving up 88 points is not an effective way to win games. And, IMO, it was a team loss. Even though an individual may have a spectacularly good or spectacularly bad game, if the team plays poorly then the team - not the player - will lose.

I don't think it's a bad loss, though. Upsets tend to happen early in the season for a reason. Both UConn and Stanford are adjusting after the loss of key players and both will be better by tournament time. I'll bet you that there are other teams dreading the thought of either UConn or Stanford in their brackets.

My impression is that Stanford will inevitably be a better team late in the season that they were when Tara let Chiney be the focus of their offense. They were too much a one dimensional team in the past couple of years and that helped contribute to them being less than they could have been. They are still in a learning process and caught UConn on a perfect night while playing a pretty impressive game on both ends of the court. UConn had serious defensive lapses that really hurt them because to a great extent, it's their defense that very often ignites their offense and it surely didn't happen that night.

 

[NSP Hoops]

North Carolina has some really good athletes with good quickness and they've probably been able to stop the penetrations that led to many, many easy baskets based on slow responsiveness by Saniya and a little inexperience by Nurse along with a game where the refs were calling ticky ticky fouls that probably caused some hesitation and fear of another cheap foul call. How many cheap baskets to UConn give up in the game to those two ladies? Many!!!! But give Stanford some credit, they did a nice defensive job on KML and almost completely took her out of the game, thus neutralizing a key element of UConn's offense. UConn's defense was as porous as I've ever seen a UConn defense and hopefully there was a valuable lesson learned that night.

But KML was getting sick, too.

 

[HuskyNan]

But KML was getting sick, too.

KML played all 45 minutes so I'm not sure we can use that excuse. I'll bet she doesn't use it. KML is a competitor and a warrior. She got shut down by a well-executed Stanford defense and no doubt she's P.O.'d about it. I'll bet we won't see that again.