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WBB: Whew 72-65 - Printable Version

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WBB: Whew 72-65 - M T - 03-26-2011

Too close for comfort.


Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - JeffInCorvallis - 03-26-2011

Nail-biter tonight.  I don\'t particularly like the matchup against Gonzaga Monday in Spokane.  Will be a tough game for us.  We gotta have Jeanette play better although I thought the Ogwumikes, Tinkle, Boothe, and Pedersen overall played well.  Did Melanie Murphy play at all?


Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - meos - 03-26-2011

A win. As I have been saying lately (in post-season), win any way you can.

This was a grind it out game with few of Stanford\'s normal weapons working well. Also didn\'t help that Stanford didn\'t get into the bonus for foul shots until 1:35 left in 2nd half (while NC got there very early).

Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - CompSci87 - 03-26-2011

Quote:Did Melanie Murphy play at all?

No, Mel did not play.


Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - needle - 03-26-2011

Great play by Nneka throughout the last five minutes or so on a night when nothing was falling for Pohlen. Lots of desire and stamina that North Carolina\'s frontcourt couldn\'t match.

Much credit should also go to Joslyn Tinkle for providing a real spark off the bench towards the end of the first half.

I think Stanford\'s D in the last three minutes made the difference, but I\'m not sure this team can count on their next opponents turning the ball over something like four times in the final two minutes.

Here\'s to hoping Toni\'s ankle continues to improve and Jeannette finds her stroke by Monday.



Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - M T - 03-26-2011

No stats yet.  This was NOT the game I expected.  I think UNC realized they didn\'t want to run against Stanford, so they didn\'t.  We won the first half rebounds.  They killed us in the 2nd half.   I felt like Sylvia had given a Pat Summit style half time, uh, encouragement.

Jeanette obviously did not have her shot.  Nobody had a 3pt shot.  But thankfully Jeanette had her 91% FT working at the end.  

Ok, Stanford has shown they can win when our 3ptrs don\'t fall.  Let\'s hope they can get the shots to fall over the next 3 games.

Some questionable calls, but generally ok by tournament standards.  I saw several fouls that should have been called.  The most important was that instead of a foul on UNC for a charge into Nneka, Chiney got called for her fourth on a no-contact play.  I didn\'t see a make-up call for that one.   On the radio, I guess Ros hadn\'t seen Chiney play.  She was surprised at Chiney grabbing like she did.

Silver lining time:  This should give us confidence if we get in another close game.  It should give Tinkle, Ruef, Boothe and Kokenis confidence and help them be ready to play more.  

Some non-game pet peeves: Gametracker quit updating 35 seconds into the second half, so I couldn\'t keep track of the stats, timeouts, fouls, etc.  Ros & Kevin on KZSU helped.

After the game, no more coverage of the women\'s tournament.  Over on ESPN, they claim "10:32 PT Live" but the only women\'s game mentioned was Tennessee.  At 10:57, they do have highlights.


Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - fyao - 03-26-2011

I thought North Carolina overall played a very good game and gave us all we could handle.  Survive and advance.

I also thought Nneka willed us to victory with her marvelous low-post moves late in the game.

The 4th foul on Chiney was pretty marginal.

North Carolina must have gotten very tight at the end to turn the ball over four times.

A close game won is good to internalize how important every possession is from here on out.  North Carolina took some undisciplined shots in the first half that ultimately helped us.

Toni Kokenis is a defacto starter.  Hopefully her ankle isn\'t too sore tomorrow and she can be effective on Monday.  We may not have advanced without her.  She was not as effective in the second half, which I think is why Tara shuttled her and Lindy in and out.

Survive and advance.

Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - M T - 03-27-2011

Stats are out.  I was surprised, and pleased, to see that we had a season low in turnovers of 7 (and unforced turnovers, 3 = 7 TO - 4 Stls).  If you\'d have said we\'d only have 7 turnovers, I would have thought it would have been an easy win.

I was not surprised and not pleased to see UNC had our season high by an opponent of 30 defensive rebounds.  They beat us in both offensive rebounding (42% to 39%) and defensive rebounding (61% to 58%).
We also suffered the most blocks (6) against us (we had 5).  Other than the Washington game, it was our worst 3Pt shooting (19%).

Not only did Jeanette have a poor shooting night, she had 6 turnovers to 5 assists.  But, that may be a good result since they average nearly 11 steals and more than 20 turnovers for their opponents.

43% was near our worst on 2PT attempts, but it was better than UNC\'s 31%.  I\'m not sure why they quit taking 3pt shots(46%)! (last attempt with 12:13 left in the game)



Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - 81alum - 03-27-2011

The stat that jumps out at me is that we only had 7 turnovers for the entire game.  I can\'t remember a game offhand with that few.  I think its safe to say we would have lost if we had had our "normal" 12-13 turnovers.

Nneka had just 3 rebounds, although Chiney and Kayla did much better.   As I expected, NC blocked some shots inside and it seemed to rattle Nneka in the first half.  We were having a hard time getting entrance passes.

I am very fearful about the Gonzaga game.  Jeanette seems to be in an offensive funk the last four games.  Jeanette was 3-7 on three pointers when we played Gonzaga in November, while tonight she was 0-7.  When we played  Gonzaga they had an off day shooting just 35%, while tonight Gonzaga shot 44%.   That game rebounds were even and the score was tied with 5 minutes left.   What iced the game for us and put them away were two consecutive 3 pointers by Jeanette.

We are either going to need much better entrance passing to our O-team--or we are going to have to break out of our 3 point funk.  Hopefully the entrance passes will be easier against Gonzaga than they were against NC.

Who did we use to guard Vandersloot in November?  She had 24 points and 10 assists then, and she seems to have upped her game in the last few months.   Will the job of slowing her down fall to Jeanette?  Gonzaga had 3 guards in double figures against us last time.

Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - washingtonismoney - 03-27-2011

Kokenis was very good in the first half and then everything decayed in the second. Her ankle injury worsening? Perhaps.

Nneka dominated the latter part of the second half. So the combination was enough.

Late add: Turnovers may have been anomalous, but 3pt shooting was too. A lot of open threes missed. Surprising.  


Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - 81alum - 03-27-2011

I noticed that by the end of the Louisville/Gonzaga game, Louisville had found a way to consistently feed the ball inside, and that was when they began to erase their deficit and keep up.  It was often bounce passes along the baseline that did it.   I hope we can find a similar successful strategy to feed the ball to our two 59% scorers.

The good news is that when we beat Gonzaga before, we were 5/16 on 3 pointers, which was not especially great either.   The bad news is that our shooting declined from 53% in the first half to 33% in the second, which I take to mean they figured out some significant adjustments.  

Did anyone see that game?  All I can find online are a few Gonzaga highlights.


I\'m happy we have Tara figuring out this puzzle

Re: WBB: Whew 72-65 - treefan - 03-27-2011

brief report from here in Spokane. First, hats off to UNC, they are very good team and played us tough as I knew they would. One of my reporter friends who is here told me if UNC played like that during the year, they would have easily won the ACC.  

I was actually more worried about UNC than Lville or Zags because of their size, athleticism, and streaky shooting. I\'m pretty sure UNC never went 5-9 from threes in the first half of any game, but of course they dd vs. Cardinal, but our D was very SOFT in the first half. However, the best stat of the game for us is we only had 7 TOs!

The refs were incredibly passive and let a ton go in the paint, no blood no foul. UNC climbed over our backs many times but NO calls. They would get 2nd and 3rd chances with all the fighting under the basket. Brenda Pantoja was lead ref, who also did UConn game at Maples, was pathetic. She was the one who called the ridiculous block on Nneka, and made the call from sideline when baseline ref let it go. It was a total charge because Nneka was set for a day!

Game ball to O sisters! Other good minutes by the bench including Jos and Lindy.  Kayla was steady eddy as usual and came up with some big boards.

Now on to Zags. Their 10,500 fans will be screaming VERY loud (yeah, an 11 seed playing on their own court sucks), but we gotta execute!

I actually like the match-up vs Zags because they have no one who can stop the O sisters or Pedersen in the paint. We beat then in Nov. (in front of 6k fans) with going to Nneka (22 pts). but Chiney only played 11 min. (third game of the yr). We are much more polished now, as Zags are, but we are still better. Card by 10.