The only silver linings are that Diva was able to regain her confidence and put the team on her back (although in the end, her back wasn’t big enough to support the foibles of the rest of the team plus the coaching staff). Plus, Kehinde held her own and played physical ball against NW (she got knocked down so many times, I’m surprised more fouls weren’t called against her opponents).
Although the buzzer beater was a good play by the NW guards, the excessive Gopher turnovers were the big story here. This game was an example of Minnesota snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
> Interviewer: What do you think it says about your team that you’ve been able to force 20+ turnovers both against Maryland, and against Minnesota, teams that are really good?
> Joe McKeown: Yeah, I think Sydney Wood and Veronica Burton are just, they’re thieves, you know, and those two do a great job of anticipating, they’re really smart, they get in passing lanes ... we’re hard to play against.
This is not anything we did not already know before the game. To quote myself ...
> We have to worry about Veronica Burton since she averages 3.71 steals per game, which ranks #6 in the NCAA. Protect that ball! No sloppy or telegraphed passes!
Instead, the Gophers did not protect the ball. They threw a ton of sloppy and/or telegraphed passes.
> NW’s Burton and Wood rank #19 and #16, respectively, in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.57 and 2.61. Powell (2.14) ranks #49.
> (pre-game season-to-date stats)
Assist to Turnover Ratio
Sydney Wood (NW) 2.61 - #16 in NCAA
Veronica Burton (NW) 2.57 - #19 in NCAA
Powell 2.14 - #49 in NCAA
Hubbard 2.00 - equivalent to #64 in NCAA
Abi Scheid (NW) 1.9
Brunson 1.68 - #122 in NCAA
For this game, Minnesota has 6 players with more turnovers than assists, with Taiye being neutral (no turnovers or assists), and the only bright light being Diva with 6 assists and 1 turnover. In contrast, NW has 4 players with more assists than turnovers:
Veronica Burton 4:1 = 4.0 ratio
Sydney Wood 3:0 = ratio undefined
Abi Scheid 3:0 = ratio undefined
Jordan Hamilton 2:1 = 2.0 ratio.
Veronica Burton got more than her average 3.71 steals. Or should I say, we handed her 4 steals on a silver platter. Burton and Wood got more than their average assist-to-turnover ratio. In contrast, our best thief, Jasmine Powell, was not a thief but rather a ball donor, and in hindsight arguably should have been benched about three turnovers sooner (which, by itself likely would have been enough to win the game).
But besides Burton and Wood creating steals, there must have been about seven or so unprovoked Gopher turnovers that were unexplainable and simply amounted to carelessness. At times, the Gophers looked more like the Little Chippers.
For shooting problems, Lindsay recommends the Mikan drill. But what kind of drill do you do to teach the team to “not do” something? As some mentioned, it almost seemed at times that the Gophers were not “present” in the moment, or at least not paying attention to detail.
Like Maryland, the (in my opinion) somewhat elite (perhaps even Sweet-Sixteen capable if they could only get to the Dance) Gophers threw away a game to a somewhat mundane team (NW) that simply focuses on two things: not throwing the ball away so as to get a shot off on nearly every possession; and trying to get their opponent to throw the ball away on nearly every possession.
As a result of that NW focus on protecting the ball, plus our own lack of focus, the Gophers had 21 turnovers to 13 turnovers by the ‘Cats. In the 14 games prior to this one, the Gophers had 175 turnovers to opponents’ 255 turnovers, for a 5.71 turnover margin favoring the Gophers, historically. The turnover delta from our history to this game’s 8 turnover margin favoring NW is 13.71 turnovers worse than our usual. (So bad that it knocked a whole turnover off our year-to-date stats - we now have a 4.7 turnover margin over our opponents after 15 games.)
Let’s round that 13.7 down to an integer 13, and say we were 13 turnovers worse than our usual in this game. That’s right in line with what things “felt like” during the game (which makes sense because it’s an approximation to the truth). If we had protected the ball and “not gotten” those 13 “extra” turnovers, then that’s a minimum of 13 extra shots for us (more, after factoring in offensive rebounds that may lead to second-chance points). For simplification, round our field-goal percentage to .500 (since we shoot nearly 50% on both twos and threes, so good enough for government work). If we had allowed ourselves those 13 extra shots (read: not committing these 13 extra turnovers), then the probability of not at least getting to overtime (which requires missing all 13 hypothetical extra shots) is equal to about .5 to the 13th power, which is about 0.00012. The probability of not winning the game in regulation is a tiny amount bigger. But it was virtually impossible to lose that game, if we had only protected the ball as well as a good college team should be capable of doing. That’s a fundamental skill. As I stated, we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
As in the Ohio State game, there’s a whole laundry list of partial reasons that contributed to this loss (and it’s a free country, so the reader is free to pick their favorite subset of reasons):
(a) The aforementioned ridiculous level of turnovers by the Gophers, partially via their own carelessness with the ball, but aided and abetted by skilled NW defense.
(b) By my count (but I could be wrong as I had neither binoculars nor perfect vision) about 3+ egregiously bogus calls by the referees that favored Northwestern. That’s an expected value of an extra 3 points, had those calls not been messed up so badly. And 3 points wins the game. I’ll say it again. Officiating in NCAA Div I Women’s Basketball is so horrible, and enough worse than in (the not quite as bad) Men’s Basketball, that a Title 9 class action lawsuit is warranted. Nevertheless, that’s the state of the art in officiating at this point. You have to aim towards the goal of winning by 6 points, just because the referees are likely to donate 6 points to your opponent (even if you’re the home team). This is a game we should have won, in spite of bad officiating.
(c) Some might want to put part of the blame on the coaching staff for putting a higher priority on disciplining perceived lack of effort by certain star players, than on winning the game. In hindsight, Powell wasn’t benched quite soon enough, and Pitts was benched too long. Between foul trouble and benching, taking 7 minutes off her normal playing time, and arguably 10 minutes off the time Pitts would normally play in a close game. Pitts averages about 0.92 made three-pointers per quarter (not to mention two-pointers and almost perfect free-throw shooting). Does anybody believe that she couldn’t make one triple in an extra quarter of playing time. Then again, the team without her was able to accomplish the come-from-behind tie, so it’s not clear that the tie would have happened with her in the game. Bottom line, it was maybe only a minor factor among all the items listed here that factored into the loss. If anything, perhaps people should be more concerned about Pitts’ 2 turnovers, contributing to the 21 total turnovers, than whether she played the last few minutes. Then again, Masha, who (at the time) I thought played fairly well, contributed 5 turnovers of her own to the NW gift box, while scoring just 2 points. So we could argue this one all day long, but arguably points (a) and (b) were much bigger factors in the loss.
(d) Finally, the 6’2” Abi Scheid from Elk River was a big problem for us, with 12 points (6-11) worth of twos, and 12 points (4-6) worth of threes. Nobody stopped her from shooting, let alone making. I thought that Pitts was doing as good a job as she could, defending her. But the inherent problem was the four-inch height deficit of Pitts versus Scheid. Ideally (if one could have a wish granted), one could put Justice Ross on her (if she were healthy, which apparently not) to cut the height disadvantage down to two inches. Another idea that was tried was Double Bellos with (hopefully) one on Wolf and one on Scheid (nominally). I thought that went OK except that we were simply missing make-able baskets during that double-post time. Plus both twins were racking up fouls (partly courtesy bad calls by the refs) and we could ill afford both of them fouling out, so back to small ball it was. Putting my Whalen hat on, I don’t think I saw any good solution during the game either. But hindsight is 20-20, and upon giving it further (post-game) thought, I see what the solution to Scheid might have been (with a little luck). Consider that we fairly much needed to play the Bellos serially (not both at once) to cover the primary post position, thanks to foul trouble for both. Yet we needed some more height to defend Scheid. In hindsight, a solution might have been to play Sconiers along-side alternating Bellos for much of the rest of the game. That would have given us more rebounds along with better defense against Scheid - perhaps enough to win the game in spite of all our turnovers. A box-and-one zone with Klarke assigned to be on Scheid like glue and always between the ball and Scheid, might have worked rather nifty. Of course, hindsight plus three bucks will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Ok..you must be Pitt's dad..the truth hurts