All good comments, and here's the summary from where I stand.
Nice that everybody got to play, and thus view the packed Barn from the playing floor.
Defense looked pretty solid, except for them running backdoor plays by us at will in the first half. But (as Lindsay pointed out in the presser) they fixed that in the second half.
Nice to see Kaposi shooting, although she seemed vexed by some kind of bad luck, with shots popping out of the rim. Last year, I was starting to think that the rest of the team was instructed never to pass to her, as she was often running around open but ignored. Except for the play-of-last-year (i.e., the play BTN chose for our highlight reel) in which she received that slick behind-the-back pass from Kenisha Bell for the layup.
9/17 at the ft line 3/15 from 3, i think we can all say we expected better than that.
Yup - free throws and threes lookin like a shakey first game - but I think they will settle down as the team gets into the groove.
Glad to see Garrido Perez knock down a triple - bumping her career average to 44% and (thank goodness) keeping our first-game 3-point percentage from being an even worse 14%. Nice to see Bell bury one from deep also, as she's not known for the three, but I think she's been working on her shot, so we may see more of that. As many have noted, we're feeling the hurt from Hubbard being down at the moment; and Wagner's graduation stings on the 3-point front as well. Puts a lot of pressure on Pitts to make up those treys - but she'll be fine eventually. With Perez being a primary sub for Pitts, and Staples contributing, at least we can count on having one-to-two three-point shooters in the game at all times. The lower head-count of three-point shooters will be made up by much higher post scoring.
... Iggy pointed out that Pitts spent a lot of time buried in the corner, and I thought the Gophers missed her at least 3 times when she had a wide open three. But she wasn't shooting it well tonight and we know that we won't have to worry about her shooting as we get into the season. ...
... The offense seemed to hide Pitts in the corner but Destiny still got off 6 three point shots although she only made one. Destiny also scored off a couple of three ball fakes and dribbles to the short corner. ...
Whalen's goal seems to be to move Pitts' shots to more of a 70% short jumpers off the dribble plus 30% three-point attempts (from last years 70% three-point attempts). As evidenced in the first game with 40% three-point attempts and 60% short jumpers. This moves us a bit off from last year's "live and die by the three" standard. Of course, Coach Whay can move that dial as needed. If Pitts is hot as a pistol from deep on any given game, they can revert to 70% treys. Missing 3 Pitt open looks might have been more like sticking to the game plan, than ignoring her cuz she was shooting a bit cold.
I would have seriously lost a guess the high scorer contest. Lamke was a real opportunist who brought her bench enthusiasm onto the court tonight. ...
Lamke the leading scorer after 3 quarters with 13.
Looks like #41 is our stud this year. 21 pts so far. Struggled to get off the bench last year. ...
Speaking of not correctly guessing the high-point contest, rewind back to one year ago, and imagine we were about to play our first game of the 2017-18 season. Imagine further that someone had told you that fully half of our points (35 out of 70, in fact) in that game would be scored by only two of our players. That would be entirely believable, you'd figure that would be whichever of our four starting guards happened to be on fire that night. Perhaps Kenisha Bell plus Carlie Wagner; or maybe Wagner plus Pitts; or maybe Hubbard plus Bell. If you rewind the clock even further backwards to the Banham era, it would be easy to imagine Rachel and Carlie scoring 35 points, since they did that on a regular basis, sometimes exceeding half the scored points by a large factor (think Banham's 60 points plus whatever Carlie scored that night).
Now suppose someone had told you then that the two players scoring half of our points would actually be our two post players. Why, you would dismiss that suggestion as being totally crazy! The thoughts of a madman.
Yet here we are, a new season, a new floor on the Barn, a sold-out Barn, a new coach with Whalen-like capabilities (quite literally), new assistant coaches, a new mostly man-to-man defensive scheme, a new offensive approach, and ... wait for it ... half the points being scored by our two starting low posts! Now, anyone who doesn't consider that to be completely amazing and nearly unbelievable, should perhaps check in with their psychiatrist. Well it's true, folks. It's still basketball, but it's going to look similar but different this season.
T. Bello turned in a double-double plus 5 blocks.
Lamke beat herself by 3 points. That is, she beat her cumulative total last-year's scoring by 3 points. She was beaming from ear-to-ear at the presser, and rightfully so. I liked her from-the-gut, smart, immediate response to a press question regarding her "career best game" - namely, something like "I hope that's not my career-best game!"
A.L. got some good playing time during her Freshman year, but probably was still a little rough around the edges at that point. But she's the poster-child for the motto of "hard work pays off." She was probably better than we knew already last year, but with 6 players competing for only 40 minutes of low-post playing time, she didn't get many minutes. This year, Whalen wants to take advantage of her skills as well as her muscle-in-the-paint - with a two-low-post scenario much of the time (except when "go small" is appropriate).
One fringe advantage of this two-low-post approach, which hadn't dawned on me until the game, is that Taiye can throw the ball out of bounds after made baskets (and she's fast enough to easily get back), and meanwhile Annalese sprints down-court ahead of the pack. An example video of what you can do with this scenario is on the Gopher WBB Twitter feed at 8:47 in the 4th quarter. It's a two-on-four fast break for Bell and Lamke. One can imagine what Bell is thinking as she's dribbling into the swarm of four defenders - I envision a very Whalen-like thought - something like "I really like these odds!" Sure enough - there's a lot to like, as Lamke tosses in the easy two-pointer from a masterfully executed Bell look-away pass. The video has infinite repeat enabled, and I confess I had to watch it about 20 times.
... Bell was a little amped up on her drives. A fan behind me kept yelling "Slow Down". It was good advice. Not surprisingly, Bell is still the player that makes this team go. Kenisha had the assist of the night in the second half with a slick pass to Lamke for two.
Assist-of-the-night perhaps, yet only one of 8 total assists by Bell. Now I see Whalen's strategy for getting Bell into the WNBA. She figures Bell will get her points, no problem with that; but lets's add league-leading assists to that mix. Add to Bell's eight, 6 assists by Brunson (and BTW, that's approximately six more assists than she would have gotten last year while mostly sitting on the bench). And to that, add 2 assists by Kaposi. And 4 singleton assists by other players, for a total of 20 team assists. And then, of course, on the defensive end of things, 11 steals and 7 blocks (5 by T. Bello alone - some of which were decidedly Maya-like "come out of nowhere" blocks).
I guess I too was kinda wishing Bell would slow down. But in hindsight, I think that was mostly just selfish of me, wanting to slow the play down so I could see it better and figure out how she actually did that. Let's face it, one of Bell's best features is her blazing speed, and I'm not sure we want to slow her down just for easier viewing by me or the fan sitting behind Iggy. Many of her best plays come off from her speed; it confuses defenders since they can't react fast enough. Plus it confuses refs into thinking that "well somebody must have fouled her" so she gets a lot of free throws. Maybe if she's going so fast that it confuses her team-mates, then I can see slowing down a bit, but as long as her team-mates are coping and completing the plays, speed-on, I say.
Back to Lamke - on the remaining Lamke points via (mostly) Bell feeds, I confess I was too dazzled by Kenisha's dribbling and speed and footwork to really notice how Annalese sprung herself loose to get those passes. Wish I had the game video, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere on YouTube. Whatever it was, she was certainly doing something right. Let's also give Bell (and Brunson) partial credit on most of those spectacular open shots. Think about it - Bell and Brunson (and perhaps Staples, for all we know) can pull off this type of play more-or-less at will with any of Lamke or T. Bello or K. Bello or Kaposi or Tomancova or Byrne (and probably small forwards Pitts and Garrido Perez as well) - as long as we can break them free to get the pass. Granted, the New Hampshire defense was a bit weak, so maybe not "at will" against the better defensive teams we'll face in the B1G, yet at least it's something we can look forward to fairly often.
Luckily, the team seems to no longer have to live and die by the three, as it looks like they finally have a legit post game ...
... Gophers actually have a post presence. Bello with some nice blocks.
Bello with 4 reb, 3 blk in first quarter. ... That seems promising.
... Notably, Taiye Bello (27 minutes, 14 points, 14 rebounds and 5 turnovers) and Jasmine Brunson (33 minutes) stayed out of foul trouble. ...
By back-of-the-envelope calculations, we should have about double the low-post presence of last year, at least when we need it (that is, when we play tall teams). Go-small is always an option for shorter teams. Just having the additional low-post presence means additional offensive production, and better defense down low.
In addition, we have two of the best offensive (as well as defensive) rebounders in the NCAA in T. Bello and K. Bello; plus Kaposi is only a smidgeon behind them in rebounding efficiency; and Lamke is a solid rebounder; and both Pitts and the guards are great defensive rebounders; and that's not even saying anything about the potential rebounding contributions of our rookies (since we don't have much data). Oh OK, you twisted my arm, so I'll mention that Tomancova got 3 rebounds in 9 minutes, and although not a statistically significant sample, that does put her very near Kaposi in terms of rebounding efficiency.
It was good to mention (and worry about) potential foul-trouble issues. I suddenly figured it out tho, like a light bulb went off - Coach Whalen may have already taken the essential steps to reduce fouls by (hopefully) a factor of two or more, especially for post players. My conjecture is that this desired goal will-be a result of the combination of switching to mostly man-to-man defense, plus using double low-posts most of the time. Before, in the mostly zone scheme, a single low-post had to cover anyone beating the zone and driving into the paint. Last-second sprint-up-rotations-to-defend in that situation are rarely successful, and often result in a foul. But with each defender normally assigned to defend only one person, and an extra low-post who's got your back, I believe that one can escape with fewer defensive fouls - at least in principle.
So what we saw on Friday is hopefully an indicator of a good start toward lowering fouls - especially by T. Bello. Do the math. If you can cut her fouling rate in half, then she can play twice the number of minutes before needing to be rested only-on-account-of fouls. Thus twice the number of shots, twice the number of points, twice the number of rebounds, twice the blocked shots. A potential double-double on any given night. She may still need to be careful, since after watching film, defenses are going to try to trick her into foul trouble, in order to put a potential double-double machine on the bench.
Overall, I'd say an optimistic start to the new season.
