My guess is, Lindsay wanted Masha's defense on the floor. She was really hustling on defense and helped turn the tide in the 4th quarter.
I think it’s correct (not only a correct conclusion, but arguably the correct choice by Whalen) that in the 4th quarter Whalen valued defense over offense.
The 4th started out with the starters until Masha was subbed in (for defense) at 7:23, and they stuck with that lineup for the rest of the game. The only choice was, does she go in for Hubbard, or in for Scalia? With the benefit of hindsight over the whole game, it’s fairly easy to post-dict that it would have been a better choice (and an easier victory) to sub-out Diva than Sara - since Diva shot 1-8 whereas Sara shot 2-6 on twos and 2-5 on threes. (And never mind that Sara had the lower +/- since that means nothing, other than that she was put on the bench during the time that the *team* was gaining back the lead during the 4th quarter.)
You can’t really fault Whalen for leaving Diva in though, since she had just made a good play. At 9:19, Hubbard grabbed a steal, fed it to Powell, who fed it right back 8 seconds later for a Diva field goal in the paint, to bring us within two points. So, in a sense, Diva kicked off the “charge” that (with Masha’s defensive help) led to the W.
Leaving Diva in was a coach’s choice, and an acceptable one. And I think Sara accepted that the emphasis at that time was on defense. Although Sara hardly knew what to do with herself, standing around in the back of the huddle, I believe there was never any fear of “bad body language” on her part (thank goodness).
It turns out that the 9:11 shot by Hubbard was her only made field goal out of 8 total shots. Given that her non-slump shooting is .384 (or 3 expected makes out of her 8 shots taken), then in hindsight 4 of her other 5 shots were all wasted possessions. Later in the 4th Diva had a jumper blocked by Cain but we got the rebound. Who knows whether we would have scored more with Scalia in there instead. It’s a wash, most likely. Hubbard scored a pair of free throws with 2 seconds left to pad our 4-point lead to 6 points.
In any event, we won, so Whalen’s tactic worked, and we’re all happy.
Whalen’s tactic of not playing Pitts in the late 4th quarter of the Northwestern game did not work, and we lost by 2 points. But in either case, it was a coach making her best guess as to what was most likely going to win the game. We can’t fault that. (No matter how much we might lament other fall-out from that NW game.)
