Another well executed defensive game plan. Cleaned up the turnovers and suddenly the offense looks good again. It's funny that when the offense was suffering from execution and poor shooting issues from everybody but Tori and GG, it was a crap offense. Now, that players are executing it better and Braun, Hart and Battle are finishing more efficiently, the offense is fine. If you've been paying attention, Coach P hasn't really changed anything, the players are just doing it better..
A note to the person complaining about not running plays for GG. Other than out of bounds plays, how many set plays for specific players to you believe they actually run during the course of a game?
I'll give you a hint. Very few. This is a motion offense that is designed to make sure you get a post touch, from which we can either shoot or pass back out to a shooter. The other thing about many motion with post option offenses is that they are often penetrate and dish oriented as well. The idea being that if I can't pass to the post, maybe you can penetrate and if you're cut off, dish to the post or back out. GG has recently found her offense by penetrating or by cutting to the lane and getting a pass. Read and React. And of course, if the penetration is being cut off, move the ball from side to side, in and out, draw the defense to an area and look for a cutter away from the action. Very few specific play calls for a specific player in a motion offense. More like specific actions to open an area of the court for whichever player ends up there after all the passes, screens and rotations. It's why you recruit to get players who can do a lot of different things, so that it doesn't matter who starts the action and who ends up finishing the action, as long as it's an open look. It's a read and react offense. The beauty of it is, if a defense is designed to stop your best shooter, know and practiced against most of those plays, and if you can't get that shooter open and are now kinda screwed, well, just keep moving the ball around ideally, one of your other shooters comes open in the same spot.. If you've noticed, teams have made a concentrated effort to run out on GG if she's on the perimeter. With a motion offense, just keep running, penetrating, cutting, passing and one of our other shooters will end up open or in a position to create something for themselves.
When people complain about not running enough plays for a specific player, it just shows that they aren't aware of what the Gophers offensive strategy and philosophy is. Although I'm not smart enough to actually design a motion offense with different actions depending on what you see, I've watched enough college practices and talked to enough coaches to get an idea of what many of them are trying to do and why.
