Game Thread: SEC Tournament Second Round. #18/14 Lady Vols (9 seed) vs. Vandy (8 seed). Thurs., March 6, 11 am ET, SECN

[th2421]

Inherited or not, players at the Power 4 level are generally elite athletes with elite coaches. First time you face this defense is more of a shock factor, but notice every team we played the second time beat us by more (LSU & Vandy) and Kenny Brooks saw this defense last year and new what to expect and we all know how that Kentucky game turned out.


What I'm noticing is that CKC is not adjusting. It makes me wonder if she is a one trick pony. D-2 players do not have the strength, conditioning, or basketball IQ that P4 players have or they would probably be P4 players. This system probably makes those players look pretty good, especially if Kim had alot of really good athletes at that level. Even at marshal last year, she had 3 players who had been recruited and played at the P4 level. That makes a difference on a mid major team.

What I have noticed is that we are lacking a lot of fundamentals that good teams have that we do not possess, i.e., boxing out to secure defensive rebounds to close out a defensive stop, time and score to close out quarters and games has been abysmal, and a lack of ball security or whos gonna handle the ball that wont turn it over when we absolutely need a bucket Just to name a few. It's been maddening at times.

Hopefully a little rest, players getting healed up and getting back to the basics gives us some life in the NCAA tournament. These last couple games have been pretty hard to watch.

I think you make some good points, but 1) I don't know that LSU is a great example (we lost by 2 at home and 5 on the road to a top 10 team, seems well within what you would expect). Against Vandy, we actually increased the turnovers forced game over game (12 to 15). Is that a sign the defense wasn't a shock factor the second time? They did improve their FG% (but so did we) over the two matchups, which could be partly due to the easy layups from breaking the press more easily.

2) I agree about fundamentals, but I don't think that makes CKC a one-trick pony. She has been harping on boxing out (and other fundamentals) from day 1 and telling us that it was going to burn them once they got to playing better competition. IMO they have improved on this somewhat compared to previous LV seasons but still not enough - it takes a lot of time to unlearn bad habits, apparently. Closing out quarters has been worse the last couple of weeks but I thought our end-of-quarter execution for most of the season was the best we've seen here in...over a decade? A very, very long time. Spencer, in particular, was making great decisions, and I'm not sure what's happened lately (maybe as has been discussed, teams now have the scout for what we want to do).

 

[Rickster]

I expect they installed only a portion of the offense/defense given the time they had. I believe next year will be similar given the new players coming into the program but Kim and staff may install some new wrinkles we haven’t seen,

 

[volfan102455]

I expect they installed only a portion of the offense/defense given the time they had. I believe next year will be similar given the new players coming into the program but Kim and staff may install some new wrinkles we haven’t seen,

I'm hoping she takes learnings from this year and understands adjustments are going to be needed. Teams will have both seen and played against this offense. They will adjust - CKC will need to adjust as well.

 

[volfan102455]

And being honest, after beating UCONN, everyone expected more, I know I did but down the stretch they lost games they should have won.