The record for three point shots made in one game for Stanford is 9, held by Yamasaki and Goodenbour--wish Tara had left Jump in so she could get one more. Jump has hit 8 once before, as did Bonnie Samuelson, Wiggins, and Yamasaki. It was wonderful to see Jump having one of her best games--many fans started to give her standing ovations as the treys mounted up in number.
Cal Poly SLO acquitted itself quite well tonight. I think it was a reasonable goal for us to hit 100 again, and a reasonable goal for us to hold them under 40, and we failed on both counts. SLO was able to slow the game down and we were not able to push the pace the way we have in prior games--get ready for a LOT more of that on Sunday.
But it is our defense that is beginning to concern me. I so appreciated Katy confirming our observation that we are doing a lot more switching on defense. But there were times when Cal Poly SLO made our defense look a bit chaotic--when we would have two players going after one of their defenders and leaving someone else open. As a direct result, SLO got some wide open shots from three point range and hit a whopping 43% of them. That will not do on Sunday.
My concerns about Jones continue. Is it too early to call it a slump? She hit only one basket tonight, and what was worse, when she had open looks she seemed indecisive about taking them, as if she has lost some confidence in her shot. Well, in the past, I have noted that she seems to play up or down to the level of her competition. Let's hope that she plays up to the competition on Sunday.
Lepolo has come back down to earth--three assists and three turnovers today. There was one particularly egregious miss which caused Tara to pull her, when she fired a bullet pass in to an open player in the post but sent it way too high. I almost had concluded that she could not make mistakes. Still, sitting at courtside and watching her I was impressed with how strong she is for her size. She is physically quite mature and should be able to bang away with any other players in her height range.
I got the impression that if we played Betts for 40 minutes and required that every possession she had to touch the ball at least once--we would indeed have scored 100. But there was no point in dominating this scrappy little team by height alone--we knew we could do that--but could we defeat them without completely selling out to the gross physical differences between the teams? Frankly, I am not sure. I suspect that we could not win by scheme alone--that most of our advantage was physical. That worries me a bit since the other team will sometimes be our equal, physically.
Demetre had an uncharacteristic bad shooting day. Brink and Iriafen both looked great during limited minutes. Papadaki got the briefest of playing time but made the most of it with an aggressive basket.
Cal Poly SLO acquitted itself quite well tonight. I think it was a reasonable goal for us to hit 100 again, and a reasonable goal for us to hold them under 40, and we failed on both counts. SLO was able to slow the game down and we were not able to push the pace the way we have in prior games--get ready for a LOT more of that on Sunday.
But it is our defense that is beginning to concern me. I so appreciated Katy confirming our observation that we are doing a lot more switching on defense. But there were times when Cal Poly SLO made our defense look a bit chaotic--when we would have two players going after one of their defenders and leaving someone else open. As a direct result, SLO got some wide open shots from three point range and hit a whopping 43% of them. That will not do on Sunday.
My concerns about Jones continue. Is it too early to call it a slump? She hit only one basket tonight, and what was worse, when she had open looks she seemed indecisive about taking them, as if she has lost some confidence in her shot. Well, in the past, I have noted that she seems to play up or down to the level of her competition. Let's hope that she plays up to the competition on Sunday.
Lepolo has come back down to earth--three assists and three turnovers today. There was one particularly egregious miss which caused Tara to pull her, when she fired a bullet pass in to an open player in the post but sent it way too high. I almost had concluded that she could not make mistakes. Still, sitting at courtside and watching her I was impressed with how strong she is for her size. She is physically quite mature and should be able to bang away with any other players in her height range.
I got the impression that if we played Betts for 40 minutes and required that every possession she had to touch the ball at least once--we would indeed have scored 100. But there was no point in dominating this scrappy little team by height alone--we knew we could do that--but could we defeat them without completely selling out to the gross physical differences between the teams? Frankly, I am not sure. I suspect that we could not win by scheme alone--that most of our advantage was physical. That worries me a bit since the other team will sometimes be our equal, physically.
Demetre had an uncharacteristic bad shooting day. Brink and Iriafen both looked great during limited minutes. Papadaki got the briefest of playing time but made the most of it with an aggressive basket.