The team chemistry went south after the start of the Big season, the majority of it was caused with the Pitts situation right in the heart of the big 10 season, it divided some players and we lost our leader. Sure would be nice to go back to that Ohio St and N'western games at home when we had DP.. If we win those close games (and we should of) DP situation doesn't occur and who knows where we end up in the BIG. Probably for sure in big dance, because we don't lose to IL and WI.
But now you have to scrap to get that mojo back that other teams now have by leap frogging us.. that can be a tall task.. look at WI, they just cant get over the hump since Coach Tsip started.
It will be interesting to see what this team looks like next year.
1. Is there any chance Pitts finishes out her career her, I say yes there is a chance.
2. Diva will graduate as a 5th year player, does she stay?
3. Is Kadi good as advertised? She is built like Bello, but with perimeter game, so we will need size in the middle.
4. Can Klarke develop into a solid 5, she is key. She has to get stronger, quicker, she has to be committed to getting better, it doesn't happen by itself.
5. We haven't seen Grace play yet at this level, she has size to play the 5, although she may be more of a stretch 4.
6. We bring in another small point guard, the big10 recipe for success isn't small PG's so we'll see how that works out.
7. Bri T is only a freshman, but even more so then Klarke has to really commit to getting better.
8. We have another Juco that is athletic but slender.
9. We have another freshman big from Wis, but i think she is like Grace, stretch 4, but certainly has the size to play 5.
10. How big of a step up does Scalia and JP make in year 2. Scalia will need to get stronger and JP will need to cut down on the TO's
11. do we get a grad transfer with post size.
12. There is another solid freshman coming in with some length at the 3 spot, but time will tell how much she can contribute in year 1
12. The offense has to evolve, to much dribbling, to much standing and to PG heavy. The last two years 4th qtr collapses can be attributed to lack of ball movement, quick shots without others touching the ball can take the wind out of you.
An interesting, and fairly exhaustive, list of open questions regarding next year’s team (and some wishful thinking regarding this year’s meltdown).
> 1. Is there any chance Pitts finishes out her career here, I say yes there is a chance.
Just about everybody thinks that’s impossible, so one has to highly doubt it. Maybe someday Pitts and Whalen will be good friends and laugh about it, but right now it still stings a bit too much. Look how long it took Whalen to forgive Frese for leaving.
> 4. Can Klarke develop into a solid 5 ...
With this last game she has shown signs of development already. She might be able to play the 4 or the 5. She’s listed as 6’2” but when she’s on the floor, she looks an inch taller than Taiye.
> 7. Bri T is only a freshman, but even more so then Klarke has to really commit to getting better.
By Bri T you mean Barb Tomancova, probably, who will be a red-shirt sophomore? She has some muscle, so can be useful against someone who would otherwise push us around in the paint. But some assistant coach needs to work with her on catching the ball (and maybe work on wrist strength), and perhaps shooting coach Carly should completely scrap her from-the-shoulder shot and teach her proper shooting mechanics from scratch.
> 10. How big of a step up does Scalia and JP make in year 2. Scalia will need to get stronger and JP will need to cut down on the TO's
Scalia was shooting .450 from deep earlier in the season but that dropped off a bit, so now that we know she can do .450, she needs to work over the summer to get back to that. Regarding JP TOs, it’s ironic that in early season when she came off the bench to spell JB, she was an NCAA leader in assist:turnover ratio at about 4:1 (but not known as much of a long distance shooter). Then she worked real hard on her shot, so that by the time she started, she was a good three-point shooter and a great free-throw shooter - but her turnovers occasionally went through the roof. Examples of that were the last Ohio State game (1:9) and Maryland game (1:10). Ordinarily, 9 or 10 turnovers would be enough to blame the entire loss on her, but the whole team was guilty of playing badly in these two games, so she gets to share the blame. It seems like she gets mega-turnovers against tall-guard teams. Besides working on that, we perhaps may need to put her as point only against shorter teams, and put her as short-corner shooter against taller teams.
> 12. The offense has to evolve, too much dribbling, to much standing and to PG heavy. The last two years 4th qtr collapses can be attributed to lack of ball movement ...
Amen. Passing behind the three-point line doesn’t get us many shots, and just standing there or dribbling there gets us even less. Gets us not only 4th quarter collapse, but also 2nd half collapse, or last-three-quarters collapse, or (in the Maryland game) everything-except-the-first-two-minutes collapse. Good teams, especially good tall teams, can easily defend this approach.
Seems like maybe Whalen adopted this approach after Sheryl Reeve, except she doesn’t have a tall/fast WNBA-caliber team executing it, but rather a short/mostly-slow college team. We need more cutting/passing into the paint or dribbling into the paint to get the defense’s attention then either execute in the paint and/or kick it out to get threes that way. With the current offense, no wonder that against Maryland we got so many shot clock violations: 9 seconds to get past the press, 5 seconds to get past the half-court trap (if you can even avoid the jump ball or turnover), leaving 15 seconds wasted by dribbling in the backcourt before we have to take our panic shot. In the Penn State game we showed remarkable improvement in ball motion and cutting and assists, and it showed in the second-half scoring. Some progress also in the OSU game, but we threw away that game in turnovers and OSU stuffing our shots down our throats.
> ... quick shots without others touching the ball can take the wind out of you.
That’s true to a certain extent, especially this year with short bench. But next year with more players, we can substitute more. No sense taking slow deliberate plays just to let the players rest a spell with the ball. Sometimes (not all the time) it’s better to push the pace.
Probably the best decision Marlene Stollings made was to move Rachel Banham, a shooting guard if there ever was one, to point guard. By means of that, Rach got most of her threes off from on-ball screens where she just dribbled up and shot it. We could do the same thing next year, only with the 1, 2, 3, and maybe even the 4 as shooters that can take turns dribbling up for an on-ball screen and a three-point shot (while everyone else except the designated back defender rushes the paint for a rebound). A missed shot is as good as an inlet pass to a set of rules good posts. It would be like four Banham-caliber shooters taking turns popping threes off on-ball screens. Realize that by all our players except the point guard jogging up court and “getting set” on the three-point line, sometimes all we are accomplishing is doing the defense a favor by going to the place where the “defense is set” on us. Anyway, putting more shot-enabling on-ball screens into the mix could be good too. The key is to mix it up on offense. Right now, our offense is too predictable and too mundane.
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