Simple question

#6
#6
The difference is they have go to players and we don't. They have players that can beat you in so many different ways like Diamond. Then our post go to player was out so we got a bad draw and we still should have won without our best player. I'm still upset but I am proud of our girls.
 
#7
#7
Who is Maryland's go-to player? They /don't have one./

UT has a team full of players who were ranked top 20 in the country--every one of them. So I don't buy this notion that you have to have a star to be a good, efficient offense. You don't need a star to shoot better than 30 percent or make more than 4 of 22 three-point shots. That much I know. One can argue that we needed a go-to player to save us from our absurdly bad shooting. But one could also argue that maybe some of the highly recruited players we DO have ought to be able to make more than 20 percent of their shots. That was an decidedly winnable game with the players we had.

Having a star certainly helps IF they play within a sound, efficient system as the stars do at ND and UConn. I'm not sure UT knows how to effectively integrate stars into our system. I guess we'll find out next year. PS basically hoped her stars would bail out her bad offense, and they often did. Whenever Parker went to the bench, our offense went in the toilet despite the fact that we still had five highly recruited players on the floor. We lost a national title one year because Holdsclaw--our star--had a horrendous game against duke (as I recall) in the national semifinal. She kept shooting and missing, shooting and missing. PS easily could have spread the ball around, but she hoped Holdsclaw would find the range and she didn't. We lost a game we should have easily won. Holdsclaw did help us win a national title (or two)--but you can rely too much on stars if you are not smart. How about the title game we lost to UConn when Taurasi was a senior. She was the star on a young husky team. We had Kara Lawson, senior, and a good senior forward and a more veteran team. I thought Taurasi would spend the night shooting; instead, she set up a lot of shots by her younger teammates, made a few shots--and of course they beat us. They had a better offense, players who made big shots while we struggled--yea, it goes way back.

Warlick thought Simmons was our star and let her shoot too much. If I know Warlick, she will hope, like her mentor, that DeShields will bail out her sketchy offense. I'm pretty sure we'll see our players standing around next year, watching DeShields do her thing. Maybe DeShields will have to do it all. I hope not--but as of now, we have no reliable outside shooters for next year.
 
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#8
#8
Let me add this: Players are who they are. We didn't have any dependable scorers this year after Izzy went down except Burdick and, sometimes, Graves. Everyone else was completely erratic. I guess my problem is that I expect our players to be better offensively than they are, and I blame coaching and a lack of confidence (which comes in part from coaching) for it. Carter ought to be better offensively than she is. Graves should be shooting jumpers from the foul line WITHOUT hesitation. She's at the end of her junior year! Instead, she hesitates. She always hesitates. She is a good athlete and has a great BB build and she has a pretty nice shooting touch when she does it. So, why, as a junior, does she stand at the foul line with the ball and hesitate to shoot--wondering if she should perhaps drive through heavy traffic and try to score? Our coaches should have gotten that hesitation and slow decision-making out of her by now, IMO. Maryland's guards aren't more talented than Carter--but they contribute more offensively. I can't explain why. This is why we are frustrating. Forget greatness--but we should be better than we are.
 
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#9
#9
Chris89128 said:
I swear you only comment on things to be an ass. My point is she was our best player, so that is why I chose those two.
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Chris you are correct. People generally treat others as they themselves have been treated. I feel badly for Darth that apparently he has been treated as an ass his whole life. Darth - life really is better if you treat people pleasantly. Try it for a while.
 
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#10
#10
The reality is, we could have won last night's game with the players on the floor. We were in it till the end, but couldn't finish. MD is a good team, but their focus and confidence prevailed. We faltered down the stretch, while they had key players step up.
 
#11
#11
LA Vol said:
The reality is, we could have won last night's game with the players on the floor. We were in it till the end, but couldn't finish. MD is a good team, but their focus and confidence prevailed. We faltered down the stretch, while they had key players step up.
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I agree. MD finished on - what - a 14 to 2 run? It was a winnable game, and I say that having gone into the game thinking MD's superior height would get us beat by 25.
 
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#12
#12
I thought we'd win if Burdick, AMass and Graves had a great game. That didn't happen, and Carter played poorly for the second game in a row. It's hard to win championships when pivotal players don't pull their weight.
 
#13
#13
armchair said:
Who is Maryland's go-to player? They /don't have one./

UT has a team full of players who were ranked top 20 in the country--every one of them. So I don't buy this notion that you have to have a star to be a good, efficient offense. You don't need a star to shoot better than 30 percent or make more than 4 of 22 three-point shots. That much I know. One can argue that we needed a go-to player to save us from our absurdly bad shooting. But one could also argue that maybe some of the highly recruited players we DO have ought to be able to make more than 20 percent of their shots. That was an decidedly winnable game with the players we had.

Having a star certainly helps IF they play within a sound, efficient system as the stars do at ND and UConn. I'm not sure UT knows how to effectively integrate stars into our system. I guess we'll find out next year. PS basically hoped her stars would bail out her bad offense, and they often did. Whenever Parker went to the bench, our offense went in the toilet despite the fact that we still had five highly recruited players on the floor. We lost a national title one year because Holdsclaw--our star--had a horrendous game against duke (as I recall) in the national semifinal. She kept shooting and missing, shooting and missing. PS easily could have spread the ball around, but she hoped Holdsclaw would find the range and she didn't. We lost a game we should have easily won. Holdsclaw did help us win a national title (or two)--but you can rely too much on stars if you are not smart. How about the title game we lost to UConn when Taurasi was a senior. She was the star on a young husky team. We had Kara Lawson, senior, and a good senior forward and a more veteran team. I thought Taurasi would spend the night shooting; instead, she set up a lot of shots by her younger teammates, made a few shots--and of course they beat us. They had a better offense, players who made big shots while we struggled--yea, it goes way back.

Warlick thought Simmons was our star and let her shoot too much. If I know Warlick, she will hope, like her mentor, that DeShields will bail out her sketchy offense. I'm pretty sure we'll see our players standing around next year, watching DeShields do her thing. Maybe DeShields will have to do it all. I hope not--but as of now, we have no reliable outside shooters for next year.
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With regards to the Duke win against Tennessee in 1999, it wasn't just Holdsclaw that was misfiring...it was Catchings and Randall as well. Three players that were All-Americans their freshman year. Only Randall was able to score with efficiency. So it wasn't a case of players standing around as much as at it was that the two best players were having bad shooting nights, and the remaining players couldn't put enough points on the board to overcome that. It also didn't help that Geter, who had a big game in the regular season win, was coming off an injury and played limited minutes, and they had a freshman playing C in her place who made a lot of freshman mistakes.

This team didn't need a star. They needed the players on the bench that they lost over the course of the season to injuries. Forget about Russell/Tucker...just Harrison and Jones would have helped offset Maryland's size advantage.

Do you honestly think that this team was as good without Izzy as they were with her? Not having THE ONLY player with size and length on the floor to challenge MDs posts on offense and stop them from getting easy buckets on defense was a huge issue in this game.

Carter and Reynolds can't shoot. Unfortunately, neither could the guard that was recruited to be a shooter (Middleton). The inability to score from the perimeter just caused MD to pack in the middle, and eventually it wore down Burdick and Graves on both ends of the court. It was a winnable game, but not one that Tennessee was favored to win.
 
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#14
#14
armchair said:
Maryland's guards aren't more talented than Carter--but they contribute more offensively. I can't explain why. This is why we are frustrating. Forget greatness--but we should be better than we are.
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Maryland's guards, each and every one of them, are more talented than Carter.

This is why they contribute more offensively: because they know how to do something on the offensive end other than dribble around in circles. They are not afraid to shoot or drive to the basket. They have confidence in their shot. Carter has none of these attributes, and that's why she is about half as good as they are. She may be a better defensive player, but not by so much that it comes close to offsetting how they put her to shame when it comes to offensive skills.

You know what they call a "defensive specialist"? It's a mediocre basketball player.
 
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#18
#18
armchair said:
Let me add this: Players are who they are. We didn't have any dependable scorers this year after Izzy went down except Burdick and, sometimes, Graves. Everyone else was completely erratic. I guess my problem is that I expect our players to be better offensively than they are, and I blame coaching and a lack of confidence (which comes in part from coaching) for it. Carter ought to be better offensively than she is. Graves should be shooting jumpers from the foul line WITHOUT hesitation. She's at the end of her junior year! Instead, she hesitates. She always hesitates. She is a good athlete and has a great BB build and she has a pretty nice shooting touch when she does it. So, why, as a junior, does she stand at the foul line with the ball and hesitate to shoot--wondering if she should perhaps drive through heavy traffic and try to score? Our coaches should have gotten that hesitation and slow decision-making out of her by now, IMO. Maryland's guards aren't more talented than Carter--but they contribute more offensively. I can't explain why. This is why we are frustrating. Forget greatness--but we should be better than we are.
Click to expand...

You are such a great (in your mind) judge of coaching and how the job should be performed, why don't you apply for Holly's job?
 
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#19
#19
I believe the LV were given 53% (or maybe 56%) odds against MD. The announcers and media didn't agree, but statistically, we were predicted to play UConn in the F4, with big odds (83% or so) against us there. Unfortunately, we just don't have an offensive game, and in big games against quality opponents, it comes back to bite us.
 
#20
#20
Amb3096 said:
Maryland's guards, each and every one of them, are more talented than Carter.

This is why they contribute more offensively: because they know how to do something on the offensive end other than dribble around in circles. They are not afraid to shoot or drive to the basket. They have confidence in their shot. Carter has none of these attributes, and that's why she is about half as good as they are. She may be a better defensive player, but not by so much that it comes close to offsetting how they put her to shame when it comes to offensive skills.

You know what they call a "defensive specialist"? It's a mediocre basketball player.
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Amb - I agree with this. I think many are conflating physical athletic talent with basketball skills and treating them as one and the same. Carter can run and jump out of the gym. She's quick, fast, and can move like a gazelle. Yet as you point out she brings very little to the game in the way of actual scoring and impacting the game. And as for her defense - I think it is overrated. She is no lock-down defender and cannot stop dribble penetration. She lacks basketball skills. And that means she is less talented than her Maryland counterparts.
 
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#21
#21
Bellevue vol said:
They might not win it all, but they'd be in the final four.
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(They would not be in the FF. Everything revolves around Stewart).

And, just for the fun of it, take away two more of Ucons big girls, and one of their guards, and like the Da Bears in the 80's, Ucon would still win it all.
 
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#22
#22
Franklin Pierce said:
They would not be in the FF. Everything revolves around Stewart.

And, just for the fun of it, take away two more of Ucons big girls, and one of their guards, and like the Da Bears in the 80's, Ucon would still win it all.
Click to expand...

Tuck, KML, and Jefferson are enough to get UConn to the FF. If they replaced Stewart in the lineup with Stokes, they wouldn't be beating teams by 50 points, but would probably still have beaten any of the teams they faced so far in the tournament.

Take Tuck out of the equation and they are probably about as good as Tennessee is without Izzy/Jasmine...maybe slightly better...and a borderline FF team.
 
#23
#23
LVJeff said:
Amb - I agree with this. I think many are conflating physical athletic talent with basketball skills and treating them as one and the same. Carter can run and jump out of the gym. She's quick, fast, and can move like a gazelle. Yet as you point out she brings very little to the game in the way of actual scoring and impacting the game. And as for her defense - I think it is overrated. She is no lock-down defender and cannot stop dribble penetration. She lacks basketball skills. And that means she is less talented than her Maryland counterparts.
Click to expand...

I said in a previous post that Carter has the athletic gifts to be a solid player on both ends of the court, and it's so frustrating watching her second guess herself every time an open jump shot becomes available. I thought that after making the first three that she came to play, but then she passed up on about 3 open jump shots within the next 5 minutes, and at least 2 of those led to turnovers. She has the summer to overhaul her game. If come November she's still the same player, then Holly should use her like Dawn uses her "defensive" specialist: for about 5-6 minutes per game to try to force turnovers in tight games, or during mop up time during the rest of the schedule.

And I agree that her defense is overrated. In the biggest moment at a critical point with Tennessee having regained the lead and the momentum, what does our defensive specialist do? She trips and falls on her face while trying to guard Lexie Brown, who proceeds to drain a wide open three. Defensive specialist my @ss.
 
#25
#25
Everything that happens in life can be looked at in 'what if' and that is especially true of sports.
What I would say is TN as a team played better basketball after Izzy went down then they were playing before. That is a huge credit to the coaches but especially to the players who truly banded together and each stepped up their game. Do Graves, Burdick, and Massengale step up their games the way they did if Izzy didn't get injured? That is the other side of the OP post's 'What if?'
And it would be the same for each one of the other final four teams. If Lloyd goes down, does Allen step up her scoring like she has in the NCAAs when Jewel has been less effective, Cable, _____? If Mitchell, how does Ceuvas respond, etc.

Be happy with what the team did accomplish and how well they came together - it might be a great bright spot for next year!

And there is another team - TX - that lost their star player (and senior) around the same time - they went into a tail spin, but were able to rebuild at the end of the season with lots of players stepping up and made it to the sweet sixteen. Sure they got blown out, but compared to going 2-8 in the middle of their season - second weekend of the NCAAs was a great accomplishment and is a real bright spot for their future.
 
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