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WBB: Stanford 70 WSU 57 - 81alum - 01-12-2018

Preliminary:

With our young team, there are no more "gimme" games, and WSU is a much, much better team than it was a year ago.  It is led by redshirt sophomore Borislava Hristova, a 6' redshirt sophomore who was out last year with a season-ending injury and who has become the Pac 12's leading scorer.  Alexys Swedlund and Louise Brown round out their top three scorers.  Swedlund is a junior guard who led them to their first post season victory last year in the WNIT, and Louise Brown is also back from a season-ending injury.  Brown is a 6'3" redshirt junior from Melbourne who--I would strongly guess--must know Alanna Smith who is one year younger but from the same city.  Louise is hitting 39% of her threes and is 17/17 from the free throw line.  Hristova hits 33% of her threes but shoots from in close 75% of the time, making nearly 50% overall.  Washington State has never beaten Stanford.  We finish the Pac 12 at Pullman.

Overview:

We played our best half of the season and led 45-17 at the half on the strength of terrific rebounding by Johnson, scintillating scoring by Williams, and solid defense by McPhee on Hristova.  We coasted through the second half and allowed a newly frenetic WSU defense to hold us to 25 second half points and make the game much closer than it should have been.

Flow of the Game:

The team, smarting from the ASU loss, came out with energy.  Tara started Kaylee Johnson over Dodson this time, and Kaylee repaid her with a dominant rebounding performance, as well as some points.  We were told before that game that McPhee would be guarding Pac 12 scoring leader Hristova and she did an excellent job, but consumed a lot of energy doing so.  Meanwhile Williams was hitting from everywhere--swishing treys, pull up midrange jumpers, and taking it to the rim, and got off to her usual fast start, but kept it going in the second quarter.  WSU plays a "junk zone" but we decided to play the normal offense against it (the Princeton) and I think we saw the Princeton working effectively for the first time really this year. 

The second half was another story.  Actually, the first part of the third quarter went well, and we built a 30 point 58-28 point lead with 3 minutes left in the the third.  Then WSU decided to press and this seemed to discombobulate us at times.  Unforced turnovers began to proliferate as well (we wracked up 22 turnovers to 9 WSU steals--so that is a lot of bad play on our part.)  Marta did not have one of her better games--forcing passes and giving up 5 turnovers to only 3 assists.  And little Channel Molina torched us for 19 points.  I wish I was watching so I could say who was responsible for guarding her--probably Williams or Sniezek.  Tara kept the starters in during much of the 4th quarter and our 30 point lead shrank to 13 by the end of the game.  Perhaps this is a good thing--our team will not be overconfident when we play WSU in the last regular season game at Pullman.

Performances:

As a team our rebounding was vastly improved over ASU--53 to 31.  Our turnovers were terrible at 22--mostly mental errors on our part.  In the first half we shot 62%, in the second half we shot 30%.  We had a whopping 46 points in the paint, and 14 second chance points, compared with WSU at 26 and 5.

I would give the gameball to McPhee for her defense on Hristova.  McPhee wound up with 12 points and a team leading 5 assists, but holding the Pac 12's leading scorer to 2 points in the first half was the critical piece of this victory.  It was clear, however, that the energy she was expending on defense was wearing her down a little on offense, and she was shorting her shots in the second half.

The second hero is someone who has not gotten enough credit of late--Kaylee Johnson.  Kaylee was aggressive about rebounding but she also showed some offense and generated her first double-double in quite some time--10 points and 15 rebounds.

Smith was our scoring leader.  She got a lot of good looks but she seemed to make some tough layups, and was an efficient 10/18 to go with 9 rebounds.

Williams was absolutely scintillating in the first half.  She extended her superb play out of the first quarter and into the second, and scored some in the third as well.  She showed off her speed and quickness--tops on the team--but also stroked 3/6 perfect treys, a couple of mid range jumpers, and took it to the rim.  She played 36 minutes--an eternity for a freshman--and did seem to wear down by the fourth quarter, where her quickness and accuracy diminished.

Marta did not have her best game--chiefly by trying a little too hard to make things happen, she committed 5 mostly unforced turnovers.  She did have one brilliant drive to the basket for two points, and a superb assist inside on a bounce pass through traffic to Alanna. 

Fingall and Dodson each got around 10 minutes and acquitted themselves reasonably, each with a few points and a few rebounds.

Carrington played 17 minutes and did not score--going 0/7.  She did collect 7 rebounds.

Conclusion:

It was highly encouraging to see our intensity to start the game and the focus on rebounding.  Also, Kiana Williams is showing a bit more each game of her true potential, and that she is going to be a 4 year star who could wind up in the vicinity of Candice Wiggins before she is through.  Our fourth quarter letdown was disappointing, but seems to have been caused in part by McPhee and Williams tiring and losing their edge.  From the time we got our 30 point lead, neither McPhee nor Williams made another basket, although McPhee hit some free throws.  Finally, Kaylee has shown that she can still start for us, be a rebounding monster, and score her fair share of points.  This could take some pressure off the development pace for Fingall and Dodson.  All in all, a very encouraging performance, even if the last 18 minutes was forgettable.

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - crackpot - 01-12-2018

You don't want to be on the first Stanford WBB team to lose to WSU!

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - M T - 01-12-2018

I will be there to cheer the team to play well & hard.  I sure hope Stanford wins.

But should our winning streak end, I wouldn't want to have been the one who said what was in the previous post, especially the word "You"....


Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - CompSci87 - 01-12-2018

Nice start: up 10-0 and Wazzu calls timeout.

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - TheFarm07 - 01-12-2018

Except for the 6 turnovers, we had as great of a start to a game in a while.

Our offense looks pretty good, going 11/17 and it's nice to see that we are distributing the ball well with 6 players already scoring

Perhaps more remarkably and esp. after the ASU rebounding debacle, we are outrebounding WSU 18-3 with Kaylee already grabbing 8 rebounds.

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - CompSci87 - 01-12-2018

45-17 halftime, and WSU looks frustrated, while we're firing on all cylinders at both ends.



Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - TheFarm07 - 01-12-2018

I feel like that was the best opening half of a game this season, as we raced out to a 45-17 lead.

Our offense is flowing, shooting above 60% and it's not just McPhee who has 6 points.

Smith has discovered her inside game with 12 points on 6/9 shooting and Kiana is off to her typical hot start with 12 points of her own.

We are also outrebounding WSU 30-11 with Kaylee already tallying up 11 rebounds.

Defensively, we are holding WSU to 22% shooting as well.

Let's keep up the pressure and finish them off in the second half.

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - CompSci87 - 01-12-2018

Third quarter rather lackluster, but we held most of the lead. 58-32

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - TheFarm07 - 01-12-2018

We slowed down and only scored 13 points in the 3rd quarter, as we lead 58-32 heading into the fourth.

After shooting above 60%, our poor offense in the 3rd dropped us down to 47%, we missed a couple easy layups. Gotta to clean that up, may not matter tonight, but it played a role in the loss to ASU.

WSU's Swedlund took a tumble and unfortunately had to be helped off the court with what looks like an ankle injury. Hope she's okay, hate to see injuries.

Let's finish strong!

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - TheFarm07 - 01-12-2018

Do we lack the killer instinct? Do we expect WSU to just give up because they are down by so much?

Maintain a lead! So many mistakes, again probably doesn't matter tonight, but we must practice good habits

28 point lead, now down to a 20 point lead. We were on pace for 90 points, now based on our bad play, we'll be lucky to break 70

We had SIX straight turnovers in the middle of the fourth quarter.

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - BosCard - 01-12-2018

Why can't we play a whole game?  The entire second half was turnovers (22 for the game) and missed layups.  A not very good Washington St team outscore us 40 to 25 in the second half.  Yes we had a big lead and the first half was beautiful basketball but where did it go?

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - TheFarm07 - 01-12-2018

As much as I loved the first half, I hated the second half.

We win 70-57, which you wouldn't imagine with us being up 45-17 as they outscored us 40-25 in the second half.

As elated as I was about our offense and defense, I was disappointed and frustrated in the second half.

I thought I would feel good about this game going into the second half, but our troubles in the second half erased all my optimism.

I noticed with our turnovers, it's just a lot of ill-advised passes into traffic or brobdingnagian passes that get broken up. Plus it seems like we need to work on ball-handling, I've seen too many opponents poke the ball out of our players' hands.

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - TheFarm07 - 01-12-2018

(01-12-2018, 08:49 PM)BosCard link Wrote:Why can't we play a whole game?  The entire second half was turnovers (22 for the game) and missed layups.  A not very good Washington St team outscore us 40 to 25 in the second half.  Yes we had a big lead and the first half was beautiful basketball but where did it go?

We played a nearly flawless first half on offense and defense and then a miserable second half. We just didn't drop one or two levels, we dropped 3 or 4 levels, which is alarming

Re: WBB: Stanford vs. WSU 6:00 - mbdude - 01-12-2018

A win but sloppy 2nd half as pointed out
15 turnovers between Sniezek, McPhee, Carrington, Johnson.
Williams had 36 minutes but quiet  2nd half , 3pts.  Carrington shooting still off 0 -7

but we outrebound WSU 53 - 31


Re: WBB: Stanford 70 WSU 57 - CompSci87 - 01-12-2018

Some of the second half was WSU regrouping, remembering they are better than they looked in the first half, hitting shots they'd been missing, toughening up on defense, and fighting harder for rebounds.

But I still would have liked to think we could hold most of our lead, not let so much get away.

Re: WBB: Stanford 70 WSU 57 - BobK - 01-12-2018

June wasn’t at the game and I certainly hope she is ok.  Her not feeling well or whatever could have hurt wazzu early on

The turnovers are nerve racking.    Passes to no one.  Losing the ball when not looking for defenders.   

But beats a loss any day. 

Re: WBB: Stanford 70 WSU 57 - 81alum - 01-12-2018

Write up done at the top.

I hope the WSU player who went down and hobbled off is not as seriously injured as it appeared. It looked a lot like an ACL by virtue of the fact that she could put no weight on the leg.  [It appeared to be the left ankle from the TV rebroadcast.]  That poor team has suffered way too many injuries.

Also concerned about June not being at the game. 

Re: WBB: Stanford 70 WSU 57 - mbdude - 01-12-2018

On broadcast they said June had  minor surgery  done earlier in the week. No further info but didn't sound threatening

Re: WBB: Stanford 70 WSU 57 - 81alum - 01-12-2018

Cal is playing Washington now, and Washington is giving them a tough game.  Washington seems to play a very tough zone defense which will be a great challenge for us on Sunday.

....Cal pulled it out.  Washington looks like it is a tough defensive team which is a somewhat offensively challenged.  It will be a test of our offense, for sure.

Re: WBB: Stanford 70 WSU 57 - 2006alum - 01-12-2018

Agree, compsci. Just caught the game on replay and I felt like a lot of the difference between the first and second halves was WSU actually playing smart in the last two quarters. Their shot selection was rushed and terrible in the first half. Our offense definitely petered out by the fourth quarter, and their press was more effective than I would prefer. It definitely made it harder to pass inside, and led to some panicked shotmaking. But I felt like our margin in the first half was largely due to WSU making a lot of terrible choices that they corrected at half time. We had 10 first half turnovers and 12 in the second half, and they had 3 steals at the half and 6 in the second half, so despite that rough stretch late in the game, it was more that our shooting fell off and their press got better than that our ball handling was worse.

Maybe it’s because I was focused on this after the ASU loss, but I noticed McPhee taking a lot of pull up jumpers in the first half. None of them went in, and at least one airballed, but I was encouraged to see that, because it keeps defenses honest, and she later did a pump fake to a pass that led to a score, so definitely encouraging to see her trying to build her offensive repertoire. And yes, her defense on Hristova was really solid.

Did anyone else notice Wilson in a black tee? Do we know why she was out this game? She looked energetic rooting on the team, so I couldn’t tell if it was an injury or what?