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A couple of points to consider on WBB's ending to the season and looking to next year

G

gamecockengineer2011

Freshman
Mar 29, 2012
56
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18
I am proud of the team for their accomplishments this year. I think this may be the best coaching job Dawn has done in recent memory. This is probably the least talented team overall we have had in the last 10 years and they still got within a few bad quarters of winning a title anyway. Before the season started we lost a key starter (Kitts-injury) and two key bench players (Watkins-injury & Fulwiley-transfer) but I think these personnel deficiencies were overcome by Raven's drive to win. She made everyone around her better this year.

With that said, the result of yesterdays game was not surprising to me. There are a couple of key things that I would point to for why yesterday ended up where it did:
  1. UCLA was a team built to mirror our most dominant past teams (2020-2024) and they ran the same game plan on us what we usually do to other teams. The offense was run through their dominant post players, they played stingy defense, and they crashed the boards on both ends of the floor.
  2. Shot selection was absolutely terrible in the first half and of course none of our shots were going in. I think you tip your hat to UCLA for forcing that. They forced us to play how they wanted to play.
  3. UCLA forced us to play half court offense and interrupted everything we were trying to run. There did not seem to be any adjustments made by our coaching staff. It felt like the rest of the team stood around and watched whoever the ball handler was try to play 1v1 against a bigger player.
  4. We should have played zone defense from the get go with low post help anytime Betts got the ball and forced UCLA into more jump shots. It didn't matter who was defending Betts, no one could guard her one on one.
  5. We had poor position and effort when it came to rebounding. Feels like every critical rebound all of our players were on the perimeter on both sides of the ball. UCLA's second leading rebounder was a 5'-11" guard who camped out at the top of the key anytime a shot was taken. Transition scoring is a big part of our gameplan and when you dont get rebounds you cant run the floor for layups.
  6. I think Geno was trying to be a distraction at the end of the game against us partly to deflect criticism from his players, but also partly because he was trying to pull some of Dawns focus from the title game. I think he was successful on both counts.
  7. IMO not winning the Sarah Strong recruiting battle with UConn has now cost us 2 national titles. We need to prioritize bringing in some elite post players from high school or the portal.
I would expect that next year we will return to running offense through our post players. Our bigs for next year (if we dont grab anyone from the portal):
  • Chloe Kitts but she will be coming off an ACL rehab, might be a while before she gets back to where she was.
  • Ashlyn Watkins also coming off an ACL rehab and over a year away from the program. She has had some major issues off the court, who knows if she will actually come back.
  • Okot (if she is granted another year by the NCAA) is a good player, but not an elite player. She would benefit from another year playing college ball. Most of this year she has lacked the physicality we needed her to play with.
  • Tac has been injured most of her college career, but as of right now she is a bench/role player.
  • Tournebize needs a good offseason in the weight room to get stronger and bulk up. She has shown a lot of potential and I think she could be the next generational talent at post for us.
  • Kaeli Winn and Kelsi Andrews are incoming freshman, who knows if they will be early contributors or not
I am cautiously optimistic that we will be in the mix again next year to contend for the title.
 
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18IsTheMan

18IsTheMan

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Oct 1, 2014
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I don't follow it nearly closely enough to have an opinion, but the last time we won the title, we had some mammoth center (from Argentina or something?) who was nearly unstoppable, right? I feel like I heard a lot about an amazon for us who caused everyone problems.
 
18IsTheMan

18IsTheMan

Heisman
Oct 1, 2014
19,006
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gamecockengineer2011 said:
Camilla Cardoso is who you were referring to (from Brazil). She was a beast for us her senior year. We got mauled by similar level (and size) talent yesterday from UCLA in Lauren Betts.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that sounds right. Didn't Dawn get upset with some announcer who made a derogatory remark about Cardosa's size?

If we need a big body, Audi Crooks is in the portal.
 
J

JohnnySolo

Junior
May 6, 2011
348
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Crooks is a defensive liablity. She can't run with this team. I'd be surprised if Dawn is even interested. We have won nattys with sizeable post players that can score. Didn't have it this year. I am still surprised we made it this far, but never had a chance with teams with strong post play and good outside shooting. On to next year. Better find a GOOD big. Not just any random tall person.
 
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A

adcoop

All-Conference
Jan 10, 2004
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18IsTheMan said:
Yeah, that sounds right. Didn't Dawn get upset with some announcer who made a derogatory remark about Cardosa's size?

If we need a big body, Audi Crooks is in the portal.
Click to expand...
As another poster said, Audi Crooks plays no defense whatsoever due to her lack of conditioning. Even a summer with "Body by Molly" can't fix it. Our best bet is to try to get Okot back in school. She is not quite as big as Kamilla. However, she is 6'6", a good athlete, and can shoot the 3 Pointer. Her issue is she is late into the sport. Has only been playing the sport for 4 years and she does not have confidence with her footwork in the post. With those deficiencies, she still averaged a double-double in the SEC. She just got overwhelmed by a much more experienced player yesterday. She sort of reminds me of Kamilla her first year here. Hopefully, the NCAA will go on and make a decision on her eligibility. The WNBA draft is next week and she can't afford to sit around waiting for the NCAA to make a decision right before the season starts.
 
18IsTheMan

18IsTheMan

Heisman
Oct 1, 2014
19,006
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113
adcoop said:
As another poster said, Audi Crooks plays no defense whatsoever due to her lack of conditioning. Even a summer with "Body by Molly" can't fix it. Our best bet is to try to get Okot back in school. She is not quite as big as Kamilla. However, she is 6'6", a good athlete, and can shoot the 3 Pointer. Her issue is she is late into the sport. Has only been playing the sport for 4 years and she does not have confidence with her footwork in the post. With those deficiencies, she still averaged a double-double in the SEC. She just got overwhelmed by a much more experienced player yesterday. She sort of reminds me of Kamilla her first year here. Hopefully, the NCAA will go on and make a decision on her eligibility. The WNBA draft is next week and she can't afford to sit around waiting for the NCAA to make a decision right before the season starts.
Click to expand...

I plead ignorance since I don't follow WBB, so all I know is Crooks is big. It was kind of a jokey comment since she is most notable for being large :)

Now that you mention it, every post I saw of her on X was her scoring. Can't recall seeing a video posted of her making a defensive play.
 
Uscg1984

Uscg1984

All-Conference
Mar 9, 2006
2,395
3,154
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gamecockengineer2011 said:
I am proud of the team for their accomplishments this year. I think this may be the best coaching job Dawn has done in recent memory. This is probably the least talented team overall we have had in the last 10 years and they still got within a few bad quarters of winning a title anyway. Before the season started we lost a key starter (Kitts-injury) and two key bench players (Watkins-injury & Fulwiley-transfer) but I think these personnel deficiencies were overcome by Raven's drive to win. She made everyone around her better this year.

With that said, the result of yesterdays game was not surprising to me. There are a couple of key things that I would point to for why yesterday ended up where it did:
  1. UCLA was a team built to mirror our most dominant past teams (2020-2024) and they ran the same game plan on us what we usually do to other teams. The offense was run through their dominant post players, they played stingy defense, and they crashed the boards on both ends of the floor.
  2. Shot selection was absolutely terrible in the first half and of course none of our shots were going in. I think you tip your hat to UCLA for forcing that. They forced us to play how they wanted to play.
  3. UCLA forced us to play half court offense and interrupted everything we were trying to run. There did not seem to be any adjustments made by our coaching staff. It felt like the rest of the team stood around and watched whoever the ball handler was try to play 1v1 against a bigger player.
  4. We should have played zone defense from the get go with low post help anytime Betts got the ball and forced UCLA into more jump shots. It didn't matter who was defending Betts, no one could guard her one on one.
  5. We had poor position and effort when it came to rebounding. Feels like every critical rebound all of our players were on the perimeter on both sides of the ball. UCLA's second leading rebounder was a 5'-11" guard who camped out at the top of the key anytime a shot was taken. Transition scoring is a big part of our gameplan and when you dont get rebounds you cant run the floor for layups.
  6. I think Geno was trying to be a distraction at the end of the game against us partly to deflect criticism from his players, but also partly because he was trying to pull some of Dawns focus from the title game. I think he was successful on both counts.
  7. IMO not winning the Sarah Strong recruiting battle with UConn has now cost us 2 national titles. We need to prioritize bringing in some elite post players from high school or the portal.
I would expect that next year we will return to running offense through our post players. Our bigs for next year (if we dont grab anyone from the portal):
  • Chloe Kitts but she will be coming off an ACL rehab, might be a while before she gets back to where she was.
  • Ashlyn Watkins also coming off an ACL rehab and over a year away from the program. She has had some major issues off the court, who knows if she will actually come back.
  • Okot (if she is granted another year by the NCAA) is a good player, but not an elite player. She would benefit from another year playing college ball. Most of this year she has lacked the physicality we needed her to play with.
  • Tac has been injured most of her college career, but as of right now she is a bench/role player.
  • Tournebize needs a good offseason in the weight room to get stronger and bulk up. She has shown a lot of potential and I think she could be the next generational talent at post for us.
  • Kaeli Winn and Kelsi Andrews are incoming freshman, who knows if they will be early contributors or not
I am cautiously optimistic that we will be in the mix again next year to contend for the title.
Click to expand...
Excellent analysis. I would only take issue with the part about the results yesterday not being surprising. The loss may not be all the surprising, but the way it happened was surprising and disappointing (much like the loss last year). You spoke to the lack of adjustments in-game and that Geno perhaps succeeding in drawing Dawn's focus from her upcoming opponent. I agree on both counts. Whatever the causes, I hope Dawn takes note and is determined to never let such an embarrassment happen again on such a large stage. There will be times when your team just doesn't match up well against another team's personnel. But that doesn't have to mean you get embarrassed.
 
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G

gamecockengineer2011

Freshman
Mar 29, 2012
56
66
18
Uscg1984 said:
Excellent analysis. I would only take issue with the part about the results yesterday not being surprising. The loss may not be all the surprising, but the way it happened was surprising and disappointing (much like the loss last year). You spoke to the lack of adjustments in-game and that Geno perhaps succeeding in drawing Dawn's focus from her upcoming opponent. I agree on both counts. Whatever the causes, I hope Dawn takes note and is determined to never let such an embarrassment happen again on such a large stage. There will be times when your team just doesn't match up well against another team's personnel. But that doesn't have to mean you get embarrassed.
Click to expand...
the loss yesterday reminds me of the loss to Texas in the SEC title game after beating LSU. We won a physical game against a rival and we immediately stunk it up in the following game. Did the kids let down their focus after beating Conneticut? Maybe. Are we really 25+ points worse than UCLA? I dont think so.

Hopefully Dawn can work on the mental toughness of everyone in the program this offseason.
 
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S

ScWildthing61

Junior
Jan 23, 2022
578
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18IsTheMan said:
Yeah, that sounds right. Didn't Dawn get upset with some announcer who made a derogatory remark about Cardosa's size?

If we need a big body, Audi Crooks is in the portal.
Click to expand...
Don't think Crooks is looking our way anyway, she'd also need to massively upgrade her conditioning to be able to play the way Dawn wants to play.
 
P

Psycock

Joined Jan 20, 2001
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Not sure Betts isn`t a dude. Did you hear her talk and look at her closely? She may not be but I think she has been on testosterone if not. Do they check for any of those things? Not blaming the loss on just her, as we fell farther behind after she went to the bench choking on whatever it was.
 
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Sandstorm

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Feb 6, 2022
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gamecockengineer2011 said:
I would expect that next year we will return to running offense through our post players. Our bigs for next year (if we dont grab anyone from the portal):
  • Chloe Kitts but she will be coming off an ACL rehab, might where she was.
  • Ashlyn Watkins also coming off an ACL rehab and over a year away from the program. She has had some major issues off the court, who knows if she will actually come back.
  • Okot (if she is granted another year by the NCAA) is a good player, but not an elite player. She would benefit from another year playing college ball. Most of this year she has lacked the physicality we needed her to play with.
  • Tac has been injured most of her college career, but as of right now she is a bench/role player.
  • Tournebize needs a good offseason in the weight room to get stronger and bulk up. She has shown a lot of potential and I think she could be the next generational talent at post for us.
  • Kaeli Winn and Kelsi Andrews are incoming freshman, who knows if they will be early contributors or not
Click to expand...
I think you left out Jerzy Robinson, the #5 overall recruit and McDonald's All American.
 
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Cackmandu

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Mar 26, 2006
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Taking nothing away from UCLA, they plain ole outplayed us and had a huge affect on my points. 1) We shot the ball terribly, no way to sugarcoat that, plus they took away our 3 point game! 2) They killed us on the boards, we would get one shot and head to the other end of the court. I can't count how many second, third and fourth chances they got, it was embarassing to see there smaller players getting those rebounds. Rebounding and defense is want to, and they just wanted it more than us!
 
K

kidrobinski

All-Conference
Jul 27, 2004
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gamecockengineer2011 said:
the loss yesterday reminds me of the loss to Texas in the SEC title game after beating LSU. We won a physical game against a rival and we immediately stunk it up in the following game. Did the kids let down their focus after beating Conneticut? Maybe. Are we really 25+ points worse than UCLA? I dont think so.

Hopefully Dawn can work on the mental toughness of everyone in the program this offseason.
Click to expand...
Mental toughness lol. These are young people; they are not guys sitting around judging. The UConn game was in itself a game of the year atmosphere, and was magnified by the post game crap. You don’t just move on or mentally tough your way through that, the thug and street ball comments. There is a huge vacuum for a player after a game like that; Alabama in football then lose to Kentucky the next week for example. It used to be the same way in our ACC basketball days; modern day fans dismiss those teams because they didn’t win a national title without knowing the era, when reality was that after all those ACC wars during the season, what was the postseason then was just kind of anticlimactic.
 
P

Piscis

All-Conference
Nov 30, 2001
24,753
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kidrobinski said:
Mental toughness lol. These are young people; they are not guys sitting around judging. The UConn game was in itself a game of the year atmosphere, and was magnified by the post game crap. You don’t just move on or mentally tough your way through that, the thug and street ball comments. There is a huge vacuum for a player after a game like that; Alabama in football then lose to Kentucky the next week for example. It used to be the same way in our ACC basketball days; modern day fans dismiss those teams because they didn’t win a national title without knowing the era, when reality was that after all those ACC wars during the season, what was the postseason then was just kind of anticlimactic.
Click to expand...
These are professional athletes, not a bunch of wide eyed kids staring in wonder at the awe of their surroundings.
 
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