I don't mean to imply that this particular Michigan loss is on Bell's account. Obviously, and as multiple posters have pointed out, most of the team didn't come to play today (exceptions being T. Bello and Lamke). Plus, give Michigan coaching staff some credit for an excellent strategy = wear us down via a press to take advantage of both our shallow depth plus our (now-proven) tendency to telegraph our passes, resulting in Michigan points off from turnovers plus having to chase after Michigan fast breaks. [That's not to say that Lindsay had a bad strategy - she simply has no control over the fact that we're down two injured players, including the one extra 3-point shooter that could spread out the defense and allow both Pitts and Hubbard to score more 3s.]
The interesting thing to me is that we had a super-human effort by Bello (not seen since the days of AZB) that could have offset the generally bad play by the rest of the team (including the negative effects of the press), resulting in a wash for those two factors. But the factor that remains is Bell's out-of-control play - which as the main remaining factor, is enough for a loss.
You could equally well phrase it this way. Given the super-human effort by Bello, that cancels out the typical out-of-control play by Bell - at least for most games. But the remaining factor is the generally bad play by most of the team, which led to the loss in a more causal manner (so this way of stating it is closer to an accurate description).
Also, there is no intention on Bell's part to play selfishly or be a ball hog, at least I don't think so. I should revise my one statement to "We can't expect the posts to make up for a combination of horrible guard play plus seemingly selfish guard play." By adding the word "seemingly" I want to convey the fact that the statistics by themselves make it look (let's say if you hadn't seen the game) like Bell was perhaps a ball hog. When the reality is more like tripledouble's statement of "... she's out of control sometimes. But she's been like this for quite a while now and ... that's just the way she plays, and the way she will always play." Her style is actually a bit like Lindsay's original style - where she fearlessly drove into the paint and, more often than not, turned what looked like a lemon into lemonaide.
Indeed, Bell's out-of-control-ness is perhaps what makes her great. She's impossible to defend on a drive into the paint, and thus she often collects free throws. But if you don't foul her, she usually drills the shot, often in spite of being very off-balance. So on a good day, you quite literally want Bell to play out-of-control for at least part of the time. But there can be bad days. Perhaps driving into a tall-defended Michigan or Michigan State paint are more likely to be bad days. So perhaps it's just a matter that she needs to modify her approach slightly on days that are starting to look like bad days. Maybe dial-it more towards assists than shots on those days. We know she's capable of incredible highlight-reel assists. There was a great example of that in the Wisconsin game. The net point is that she can play un-self-corrected and out-of-control all pre-season against weak opponents with no consequence, but she may need to occasionally self-correct her approach when playing the Big Ten (at least the better half of the Big Ten). It may be that her natural approach is such that "that's the way she will always play." But I think that she can learn (especially with such a great teacher as Whalen) to slightly modify that approach as needed, based on feedback from how the game is going so far for her. Perhaps dial it more toward assists when her shot is cold but the posts are shooting hot.
Let's hope she can learn from the master and make the adjustments, as needed. If not, then whenever the Gophers play the top-5 B1G teams, us fans will need to pray for incredible post play reminiscent of AZB's (high-in-the-WNBA-draft) former play, or Lamke's two 20-plus-point games, or T. Bello's freakishly awesome play today.
And if we lose some more B1G games partially thanks to the guards' (and I'm deliberately being generic here) taking-but-missing too many shots, then it won't be so much that they caused the loss, but rather that they had available to them the means to win that game (by shooting less and assisting more), but they didn't take advantage of it.
