Where UConn's Starting Lineup is Heading

[Bone Dog]

Of course you are right. The 3 guards are basically interchangable and the 2 posts as well...

...but for discussion purposes, you can still identify a 1-5.

1 - point - brings ball up, initiates offense, regroups late in shot clock.
2 - shooting guard - hunts their shot working thru screens
3 - wing - like 2, but more hanging out on perimeter, or backdoor cuts.
4 - forward - works a zone from low post to corner 3.
5 - center - works a zone from low post to high post.
If the 4 and 5 can shoot the 3, their area can extend even beyond the arc, setting screens for the guards.

You can usually figure out, at least on a possession by possession basis, who is in what role.

You make a good point, and your description of the roles is a good one. But I think @HuskyNan also is right and maybe tells a deeper truth here. 3 guards and 2 posts are often discernible. But even this has gotten murky in the past, like last season or like with the Gabby-led teams. Even Geno’s use of a high post passer like Liv or Aaliyah or Dorka is a bit of a departure from traditional 4-5 roles.

One thing I can’t help observing is that while Geno’s offense is often more or less positionless, the defense is not. On defense, he has to respond to what the opposing team does, and if they are organized 1-5, his players have to deal with that. He sometimes talks about switching 1-5 and this runs counter to the traditional roles on defense. But he also often has them in a traditional positional scheme.

So, I’d look to the defense more than to the offense to identify the usual positions. But to get back to your point, in the first three games, the posts have been playing more post-like than usual. Jana especially has spent a lot of time grappling for position in the low post, and Ice too, to a lesser extent. This is consistent with your analysis. but a tiny doubt creeps in with Sarah. Even though she does her share of crashing the boards and defending the post, she also occupies the perimeter quite a bit on defense and offense. And as for transition passes, Sarah and Ash and Paige have done quite a bit of that, maybe more than Kaitlyn and Paige. This was the hallmark of the Gabby-led teams: anyone could initiate the fast break.

Sarah is an odd figure in any traditional alignment, since she scores and defends in several ways. This is an expression of Geno’s preference for Swiss-army-knife players. They aren’t all like this, but he likes to have a few of them. And this season he may have four of them: Sarah Paige Morgan Aubrey. Maybe Ash too, to some extent.