A&M 63, Stanford 62 - Printable Version

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - Hank 91 - 04-03-2011

One other thing. Can someone tell me about Melanie Murphy? I read her year-by-year history and checked her 2011 stats at gostanford.com, but I was stunned to see her out there contributing as much and for as long as she did. I didn\'t watch much of this team this year, but when I went to see them play at USC, Tara didn\'t play Murphy at all until sending her to the scorer\'s table with less than a minute to play. I first assumed she must have been a freshman, but then checked the program to find she was a senior, so I figured she must\'ve been a walk-on or a recruit who didn\'t pan out.

But if you were an A&M fan or someone who was watching Stanford for the first time, you might assume that this was a two-woman team: Nneka and Melanie.

So I\'d love to hear from some of you have watched the team closely all year. How surprised were you by Murphy?

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - Hank 91 - 04-03-2011

One other thing. Can someone tell me about Melanie Murphy? I read her year-by-year history and checked her 2011 stats at gostanford.com, but I was stunned to see her out there contributing as much and for as long as she did. I didn\'t watch much of this team this year, but when I went to see them play at USC, Tara didn\'t play Murphy at all until sending her to the scorer\'s table with less than a minute to play. I first assumed she must have been a freshman, but then checked the program to find she was a senior, so I figured she must\'ve been a walk-on or a recruit who didn\'t pan out.

But if you were an A&M fan or someone who was watching Stanford for the first time, you might assume that this was a two-woman team: Nneka and Melanie.

So I\'d love to hear from some of you have watched the team closely all year. How surprised were you by Murphy?

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - 81alum - 04-03-2011

Quote:One other thing. Can someone tell me about Melanie Murphy?

Mel had surgery in the off season to repair knee damage and was not healthy enough to play until January.  She is a 5th year senior.  Tara has used her situationally but not regularly.  This week, though, Tara dropped hints at press conferences that Mel would play.  I think Tara has known for some time that Toni\'s ankle is not fully healed.  

Texas A&M was exactly the wrong team for us to be playing when we were short handed on quick ball handling guards.  JJ Hones lost her last year of eligibility, Hannah Donaghe was out for the season, and the bright spot of Toni was rendered ineffective by her injury.  Jeanette\'s height and upright posture makes her somewhat vulnerable to shorter quick guards.  Mel was the best option once we saw that Jeanette was not handling the pressure well.

Tara has done a great job getting us through a very successful year with a real shortage of quick guards, but she has known the weakness was there.  That is why she recruited 2 very talented point guards (and another guard capable of ballhandling).  With a healthy Toni we will have a lot of young, very talented ball handlers next year.

I am heartbroken for our seniors, who came close so often, but the season ends on a down note for 342 out of 343 women\'s teams, including as it turns out Tennessee, Connecticut, and Baylor, who are all licking their wounds too.  This loss will fade in my mind and I will choose to remember December 28, Gonzaga, and a whole panoply of balletic plays that made me look at Stanford women\'s basketball as artful choreography.  

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - 81alum - 04-03-2011

Quote:One other thing. Can someone tell me about Melanie Murphy?

Mel had surgery in the off season to repair knee damage and was not healthy enough to play until January.  She is a 5th year senior.  Tara has used her situationally but not regularly.  This week, though, Tara dropped hints at press conferences that Mel would play.  I think Tara has known for some time that Toni\'s ankle is not fully healed.  

Texas A&M was exactly the wrong team for us to be playing when we were short handed on quick ball handling guards.  JJ Hones lost her last year of eligibility, Hannah Donaghe was out for the season, and the bright spot of Toni was rendered ineffective by her injury.  Jeanette\'s height and upright posture makes her somewhat vulnerable to shorter quick guards.  Mel was the best option once we saw that Jeanette was not handling the pressure well.

Tara has done a great job getting us through a very successful year with a real shortage of quick guards, but she has known the weakness was there.  That is why she recruited 2 very talented point guards (and another guard capable of ballhandling).  With a healthy Toni we will have a lot of young, very talented ball handlers next year.

I am heartbroken for our seniors, who came close so often, but the season ends on a down note for 342 out of 343 women\'s teams, including as it turns out Tennessee, Connecticut, and Baylor, who are all licking their wounds too.  This loss will fade in my mind and I will choose to remember December 28, Gonzaga, and a whole panoply of balletic plays that made me look at Stanford women\'s basketball as artful choreography.  

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - CompSci87 - 04-03-2011

A little more about Mel: she has been talented but injury-plagued throughout her career. Started a few games as a freshman after JJ went down, then missed her sophomore year with an ACL. Had nagging knee and wrist problems after she came back. Looked very good early last year before the knee and wrist got bad. Later in the season she played (when she played) wearing compression tights to keep the swelling in her knee(s) down. She had wrist surgery and microfracture knee surgery in the offseason and rehabbed like mad to get back on the court by January.

After coming back she has played irregularly, sometimes getting a lot of minutes and looking good, sometimes very few. Tara didn\'t say much, but I think it was partly situational and partly some ongoing pain in her knee.

I was surprised she played so well against A&M, but not astounded. She has shown the talent, and it was the right kind of game for her.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - CompSci87 - 04-03-2011

A little more about Mel: she has been talented but injury-plagued throughout her career. Started a few games as a freshman after JJ went down, then missed her sophomore year with an ACL. Had nagging knee and wrist problems after she came back. Looked very good early last year before the knee and wrist got bad. Later in the season she played (when she played) wearing compression tights to keep the swelling in her knee(s) down. She had wrist surgery and microfracture knee surgery in the offseason and rehabbed like mad to get back on the court by January.

After coming back she has played irregularly, sometimes getting a lot of minutes and looking good, sometimes very few. Tara didn\'t say much, but I think it was partly situational and partly some ongoing pain in her knee.

I was surprised she played so well against A&M, but not astounded. She has shown the talent, and it was the right kind of game for her.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - Pastor - 04-04-2011

If only Skylar Diggins had been raised in San Jose instead of South Bend.  Pohlen never seemed fully comfortable as point.

This one hurts...this was going to be our exclamatory #100.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - Pastor - 04-04-2011

If only Skylar Diggins had been raised in San Jose instead of South Bend.  Pohlen never seemed fully comfortable as point.

This one hurts...this was going to be our exclamatory #100.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - sheriand - 04-04-2011

The cookie on my laptop thinks I\'m wbbfan, but this is wbbfan2.  The first thing wbbfan said to me this morning was "Everything sucks."  I don\'t know exactly why, but the semi-final loss in St. Louis wasn\'t this painful.  I do know that we\'re stuck in a city we do not want to be in for a few more days.
Garvin is here, and he told us that Toni couldn\'t practice on Saturday.  Last night, during warm ups, she rode the exercise bike instead.  So deja vu feeling re: Jayne last year.
Nneka got mauled repeatedly, Jeanette had scratches on her arm, and Mel beat Sydney to the ball on what was ruled her 5th foul.  Also, how to you call all those charges on Stanford and let Adams just jump straight into someone and call it blocking?

I have to give the Sydneys credit.  They harrassed and hussled the entire game.  There was some good outside shooting and some clutch shooting by A+M.  They are a good team, but a rung below Stanford, and maybe that\'s why it hurts more.  That UConn team in St. Louis was the better team.

Mel played the best game of her injury plagued career.  Even if, those minutes had gone to a healthy Toni, I\'m not sure the outcome changes.
Poor Jeanette came back to the hotel on crutches.  Injury to insult!

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - sheriand - 04-04-2011

The cookie on my laptop thinks I\'m wbbfan, but this is wbbfan2.  The first thing wbbfan said to me this morning was "Everything sucks."  I don\'t know exactly why, but the semi-final loss in St. Louis wasn\'t this painful.  I do know that we\'re stuck in a city we do not want to be in for a few more days.
Garvin is here, and he told us that Toni couldn\'t practice on Saturday.  Last night, during warm ups, she rode the exercise bike instead.  So deja vu feeling re: Jayne last year.
Nneka got mauled repeatedly, Jeanette had scratches on her arm, and Mel beat Sydney to the ball on what was ruled her 5th foul.  Also, how to you call all those charges on Stanford and let Adams just jump straight into someone and call it blocking?

I have to give the Sydneys credit.  They harrassed and hussled the entire game.  There was some good outside shooting and some clutch shooting by A+M.  They are a good team, but a rung below Stanford, and maybe that\'s why it hurts more.  That UConn team in St. Louis was the better team.

Mel played the best game of her injury plagued career.  Even if, those minutes had gone to a healthy Toni, I\'m not sure the outcome changes.
Poor Jeanette came back to the hotel on crutches.  Injury to insult!

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - needle - 04-04-2011

Probably the toughest BB loss from this fan\'s emotional point-of-view since the men lost in 2004 to Bama.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - needle - 04-04-2011

Probably the toughest BB loss from this fan\'s emotional point-of-view since the men lost in 2004 to Bama.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - M T - 04-04-2011

I\'m not one to jump on the "Mel gave Stanford a spark" bandwagon.  She did step up and play more than she was expected to, but Stanford played better without Mel in the game (S 25, A&M 19) than when she was in the game (S 37, A&M 44).

Performance-based effectiveness indicates that Mel and Chiney were the least effective players, in that A&M scored more points than Stanford did while they were in the game.

I never liked simply rating players on a team by their scoring.  This game showed that it is more than just getting the ball into your post who, for a while, was able to score at will.   Some players score big, some get the ball into them, some block shots, some keep a player from ever even getting the ball.  Some sets of players play well as a team, some sets would rarely share the ball with each other.

I also do not like statistics that don\'t take into account playing time.  A statement like "She\'s improved so much this year: she scored only 4 pts/game last year and 12 pts/game this year" is almost without meaning to me unless you tell me how many minutes she was playing last year and this year.

I believe the best way to come up with a single figure that shows how well a player contributes to the team is by computing the scoring delta while that player is on the court, and normalize it by playing time.

This measure is too simple and too obvious for my being the first to use it.  I just am not steeped enough in basketball to know who has used it before.  While it can be used to show what player has the most impact on her team, it probably isn\'t particularly good for comparing players on different teams (at least, not any more than, say, wins, points, blocks, etc. ;-)

This table shows the playing time, the scoring delta (Stanford scoring minus Texas A&M scoring) while each player was in the game, and the delta normalized to playing a full 40 minutes.

Quote:"What? We saw the "spark" that Mel gave to the team?  Why isn\'t that reflected here?"

  The answer is that what you didn\'t see when  Mel was in was Stanford being effective in offense for whatever reason.  Maybe it was her failing to feed Nneka, or traveling, or maybe not being a 3pt threat, or whatever on the offense.  On the defense, maybe it was her going in for a rebound when she should have been guarding her player. (For instance, A&M\'s final 3 was by her player whom she left.)  
If you extrapolate to a full 40 minutes from the time when Mel was in the game (26:21, Stanford 37, A&M 44), the score would have been [highlight]Stanford 56.2, A&M 66.8.[/highlight]  
If you extrapolate from the time when Mel was NOT in the game (13:39, Stanford 25, A&M 19), the score would wind up  [highlight]Stanford 73.3, A&M 55.7[/highlight].

Quote:"Ok, maybe.  But why doesn\'t it distinguish between Nneka, Kayla, and Jeanette?  Nneka had a great 31 points.  Kayla had a somewhat ordinary game for her high standards.  And Jeanette had so many turnovers."

This measure can\'t distinguish performance  amongst players that play virtually the whole game, or amongst players that play very little time.

Quote:"But don\'t players during garbage time show better than they should?"

 This measures a player\'s performance against the other team.  Most times, when a team like Stanford has a big lead and puts in their other players, those players don\'t do well against the the other team.  If at the same time, the other team also puts in their second string, then the Stanford second string probably shows up better than they really should.

[More in next message]

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - M T - 04-04-2011

I\'m not one to jump on the "Mel gave Stanford a spark" bandwagon.  She did step up and play more than she was expected to, but Stanford played better without Mel in the game (S 25, A&M 19) than when she was in the game (S 37, A&M 44).

Performance-based effectiveness indicates that Mel and Chiney were the least effective players, in that A&M scored more points than Stanford did while they were in the game.

I never liked simply rating players on a team by their scoring.  This game showed that it is more than just getting the ball into your post who, for a while, was able to score at will.   Some players score big, some get the ball into them, some block shots, some keep a player from ever even getting the ball.  Some sets of players play well as a team, some sets would rarely share the ball with each other.

I also do not like statistics that don\'t take into account playing time.  A statement like "She\'s improved so much this year: she scored only 4 pts/game last year and 12 pts/game this year" is almost without meaning to me unless you tell me how many minutes she was playing last year and this year.

I believe the best way to come up with a single figure that shows how well a player contributes to the team is by computing the scoring delta while that player is on the court, and normalize it by playing time.

This measure is too simple and too obvious for my being the first to use it.  I just am not steeped enough in basketball to know who has used it before.  While it can be used to show what player has the most impact on her team, it probably isn\'t particularly good for comparing players on different teams (at least, not any more than, say, wins, points, blocks, etc. ;-)

This table shows the playing time, the scoring delta (Stanford scoring minus Texas A&M scoring) while each player was in the game, and the delta normalized to playing a full 40 minutes.

Quote:"What? We saw the "spark" that Mel gave to the team?  Why isn\'t that reflected here?"

  The answer is that what you didn\'t see when  Mel was in was Stanford being effective in offense for whatever reason.  Maybe it was her failing to feed Nneka, or traveling, or maybe not being a 3pt threat, or whatever on the offense.  On the defense, maybe it was her going in for a rebound when she should have been guarding her player. (For instance, A&M\'s final 3 was by her player whom she left.)  
If you extrapolate to a full 40 minutes from the time when Mel was in the game (26:21, Stanford 37, A&M 44), the score would have been [highlight]Stanford 56.2, A&M 66.8.[/highlight]  
If you extrapolate from the time when Mel was NOT in the game (13:39, Stanford 25, A&M 19), the score would wind up  [highlight]Stanford 73.3, A&M 55.7[/highlight].

Quote:"Ok, maybe.  But why doesn\'t it distinguish between Nneka, Kayla, and Jeanette?  Nneka had a great 31 points.  Kayla had a somewhat ordinary game for her high standards.  And Jeanette had so many turnovers."

This measure can\'t distinguish performance  amongst players that play virtually the whole game, or amongst players that play very little time.

Quote:"But don\'t players during garbage time show better than they should?"

 This measures a player\'s performance against the other team.  Most times, when a team like Stanford has a big lead and puts in their other players, those players don\'t do well against the the other team.  If at the same time, the other team also puts in their second string, then the Stanford second string probably shows up better than they really should.

[More in next message]

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - M T - 04-04-2011

Continuing my previous post, here is the players\' cumulative effectiveness throughout the game, at the times someone was substituted in.  Bold indicates that a player was in the game just before the time shown (ie, they were on the floor in the time period ending then).

This doesn\'t show well the effectiveness of a player during a particular time on the floor, except their first time on the floor.

From the figures in the previous post, I wondered why Tara played Chiney and Mel as much as she did in the second half.  This shows that Mel had a positive effectiveness at the half, while (say) Lindy had a negative effectiveness.  So Mel started the second half.  When Stanford skidded a bit, she pulled Mel at 10:14 in the second half and tried Lindy again.  The team improved  a little (scoring 8 to 5) to 06:17, when she put Mel back in for Lindy.

I have to say, I didn\'t notice what contributed to the team\'s ineffectiveness while Chiney was in.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - M T - 04-04-2011

Continuing my previous post, here is the players\' cumulative effectiveness throughout the game, at the times someone was substituted in.  Bold indicates that a player was in the game just before the time shown (ie, they were on the floor in the time period ending then).

This doesn\'t show well the effectiveness of a player during a particular time on the floor, except their first time on the floor.

From the figures in the previous post, I wondered why Tara played Chiney and Mel as much as she did in the second half.  This shows that Mel had a positive effectiveness at the half, while (say) Lindy had a negative effectiveness.  So Mel started the second half.  When Stanford skidded a bit, she pulled Mel at 10:14 in the second half and tried Lindy again.  The team improved  a little (scoring 8 to 5) to 06:17, when she put Mel back in for Lindy.

I have to say, I didn\'t notice what contributed to the team\'s ineffectiveness while Chiney was in.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - JeffInCorvallis - 04-04-2011

This is going to sound like sour grapes but isn\'t intended to be.  Does anyone else think the Pac 10 regular season doesn\'t prepare us well for the tournament?  I\'d have to look up how many regular-season and Pac-10 tournament games we\'ve lost in the last 4 years, but I\'m pretty sure it would be in the single digits.  But we can\'t quite get over the hump in the Final Four.  It\'s hard to see how we could play a much more difficult non-conference schedule.  I\'m going to say that beating Oregon and WSU by 30 doesn\'t do much to prepare us to play elite teams.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - JeffInCorvallis - 04-04-2011

This is going to sound like sour grapes but isn\'t intended to be.  Does anyone else think the Pac 10 regular season doesn\'t prepare us well for the tournament?  I\'d have to look up how many regular-season and Pac-10 tournament games we\'ve lost in the last 4 years, but I\'m pretty sure it would be in the single digits.  But we can\'t quite get over the hump in the Final Four.  It\'s hard to see how we could play a much more difficult non-conference schedule.  I\'m going to say that beating Oregon and WSU by 30 doesn\'t do much to prepare us to play elite teams.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - washingtonismoney - 04-04-2011

MT: while this kind of crack at an analysis is appreciated, it can be tough to talk about this plus/minus stuff definitively. Certainly not for one game. There\'s so much contextual noise, like:

What lineups was Mel playing with? What A&M lineups was Mel playing against? What lineups didn\'t include Mel? What A&M lineups faced the lineups without Mel? With the lineups that included Mel: was the problem Mel, or might it have been something unrelated to Mel (say, unusually hot shooting from A&M)? Can we say the same things about lineups that didn\'t have Mel?

Etc.

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Re: A&M 63, Stanford 62 - washingtonismoney - 04-04-2011

MT: while this kind of crack at an analysis is appreciated, it can be tough to talk about this plus/minus stuff definitively. Certainly not for one game. There\'s so much contextual noise, like:

What lineups was Mel playing with? What A&M lineups was Mel playing against? What lineups didn\'t include Mel? What A&M lineups faced the lineups without Mel? With the lineups that included Mel: was the problem Mel, or might it have been something unrelated to Mel (say, unusually hot shooting from A&M)? Can we say the same things about lineups that didn\'t have Mel?

Etc.

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