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Message: [QUOTE="hoophuskee, post: 4989999, member: 3535"] IMO way too much is made of height. It's so unfortunate these last 3 years UCONN has been decimated by injury. Because of those injuries, UCONN hasn't been able to battle with a team like South Carolina in a fair fight. On the General Board a post was made a while back mentioning how South Caolina was so close to winning the last 4 titles- as if "unlucky" "not to win." While true to a degree, but -- South Carolina was also very lucky that their #1 rival (UCONN) was basically torn apart by injury. South Carolina only got a small glimpse of great perimeter play with Iowa while UCONN has basically had their two #1 recruits hurt mostly the last three years / or limited playing along with their #4 recruit (CD) also struggling with injury. S.C. never had to face the full force of this perimeter play. That's why "bigs" / "rebounding" has won titles the last few years so impressively. Look how much South Carolina has struggled with Clark. Note how Paige beat South Carolina practically single-handedly her frosh year. And who would seriously think a healthy Paige and Azzi (and add in Caroline) wouldn't have been much more of a formidable opponent than Iowa when going against South Carolina? Not only have they been hurt-- but - we can’t make it up-- our Bigs get hurt too!! Therefore of course we got crushed on the boards - and our perimeter struggled. And even this year we are so young all over - more so in the frontcourt. IMO the keys for this year are health (they need Azzi to be near the level of the 6-game sophomore Azzi) and they are going to have to overcome lack of experience in the frontcourt. I think experience is so important. Also, if I were to look at a team for comparison it would mostly be the 99-00 team as a comparison. UCONN was led by 3 scorers (Bird, Sveta, Ralph) on the perimeter- and their frontcourt just had to hold on. This year I'm thinking Paige, Azzi, and Sarah as comparable if healthy. I believe Sarah is being vastly underrated (and I understand Sarah is much more inside than the 99-00 3). **Plus I have high expectation for her rebounding because I believe height is overrated vs strength and positioning. And just to sum things up- if UCONN were healthy with Azzi and having signficant team heallth fromJnauary on-- we're probably better than SC. [/QUOTE]

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