[TheFarm07]

All 6 Pac-12 teams are still alive; it's actually possible that all 6 could get to the Elite Eight.  However 3 of them (Cal, ASU, UCLA) play higher seeds next.

Both UCLA and Cal looked pretty good at times today.  UCLA started out great against Tenn, gave back a 17-pt lead, then pulled away at the end.  Cal was down 9 early to UNC, but came back strong and won going away.

Oregon should cruise by Indiana at home

Arizona State will have a tough time playing Miami on the Hurricanes' home court, but ASU's defense can make things interesting

UCLA faces Maryland, but I certainly think the Bruins are talented enough to beat the Terrapins, even in College Park. I feel Maryland has underperformed since their Final Four run in 2015, not having made past the Sweet 16 since then.

Oregon State has not looked good in their last two games, either in their loss to UW in the Pac-12 quarters or needing a furious rally at the end of regulation and eventually OT to beat Boise State. They face a depleted Gonzaga team without Stockton or Townsend (two of the Zags' leading scorers) and you think playing in Corvallis will make them a favorite, but their 3-pt shooting needs to get hot (identical 26.7% shooting percentages against Washington and Boise State)

Cal needs two Kristine Anigwe's I imagine, to go against Baylor's post duo of Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox. The Bears need their 3-pt shooting to be scorching hot to score the upset in Waco.

Lastly, I think we should beat BYU without too much trouble if we are on our game,.

[TheFarm07]

All 6 Pac-12 teams are still alive; it's actually possible that all 6 could get to the Elite Eight.  However 3 of them (Cal, ASU, UCLA) play higher seeds next.

Both UCLA and Cal looked pretty good at times today.  UCLA started out great against Tenn, gave back a 17-pt lead, then pulled away at the end.  Cal was down 9 early to UNC, but came back strong and won going away.

Oregon should cruise by Indiana at home

Arizona State will have a tough time playing Miami on the Hurricanes' home court, but ASU's defense can make things interesting

UCLA faces Maryland, but I certainly think the Bruins are talented enough to beat the Terrapins, even in College Park. I feel Maryland has underperformed since their Final Four run in 2015, not having made past the Sweet 16 since then.

Oregon State has not looked good in their last two games, either in their loss to UW in the Pac-12 quarters or needing a furious rally at the end of regulation and eventually OT to beat Boise State. They face a depleted Gonzaga team without Stockton or Townsend (two of the Zags' leading scorers) and you think playing in Corvallis will make them a favorite, but their 3-pt shooting needs to get hot (identical 26.7% shooting percentages against Washington and Boise State)

Cal needs two Kristine Anigwe's I imagine, to go against Baylor's post duo of Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox. The Bears need their 3-pt shooting to be scorching hot to score the upset in Waco.

Lastly, I think we should beat BYU without too much trouble if we are on our game,.

[qwerty49]

Props to Dodson who played tough and aggressively at key times tonight.  Her minutes still seem to be very limited, which leads me to suspect she might still not be 100%.  Coffee has been stepping up, though I wish she would realize more often that her defenders never expect her to turn around and shoot the layup.

Cal's other post, CJ West, really came alive vs UNC and picked up the slack while Anigwe was being smothered by UNC's big center.  Good move by Gottlieb to go big with her two posts when they fell behind 14-5 right at the start.  Anigwe ended up with another double-double, but for the first half was pretty much stopped offensively.

[qwerty49]

Props to Dodson who played tough and aggressively at key times tonight.  Her minutes still seem to be very limited, which leads me to suspect she might still not be 100%.  Coffee has been stepping up, though I wish she would realize more often that her defenders never expect her to turn around and shoot the layup.

Cal's other post, CJ West, really came alive vs UNC and picked up the slack while Anigwe was being smothered by UNC's big center.  Good move by Gottlieb to go big with her two posts when they fell behind 14-5 right at the start.  Anigwe ended up with another double-double, but for the first half was pretty much stopped offensively.

[M T]

Cal's other post, CJ West, really came alive vs UNC and picked up the slack while Anigwe was being smothered by UNC's big center.  Good move by Gottlieb to go big with her two posts when they fell behind 14-5 right at the start.  Anigwe ended up with another double-double, but for the first half was pretty much stopped offensively.

I hope Tara has shared everything Stanford figured out about Baylor.   I wouldn't mind if Baylor gets eliminated early!

[M T]

Cal's other post, CJ West, really came alive vs UNC and picked up the slack while Anigwe was being smothered by UNC's big center.  Good move by Gottlieb to go big with her two posts when they fell behind 14-5 right at the start.  Anigwe ended up with another double-double, but for the first half was pretty much stopped offensively.

I hope Tara has shared everything Stanford figured out about Baylor.   I wouldn't mind if Baylor gets eliminated early!

[81alum]

Before the BYU/Auburn game, I saw Tara come over and chat amiably with a woman who looked vaguely familiar to me, and I wondered if she was a former player I should have recognized.  I finally figured it out:  It was Ruthie Bolton, who was there to cheer for her college team Auburn.  Ruthie was a long time pro who played for Tara on the 1996 gold medal team.  Ruthie is now a basketball coach at a high school in Vacaville.

From the press conferences Morgan Bertsch noted that she grew up in Palo Alto and teared up talking about ending her career at Maples.   She came to Stanford camp multiple times.  Powerful and emotional.  Anyone know the story?  Her bio says she played for Santa Rosa High School for four years....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...3rI153flKE

In fact, watching Morgan talk is a great reminder that in this tournament, every time we have success we end other people's careers.  And only one team out of 64 gets to end with a different kind of press conference.  In many ways, it really is not my favorite part of the game.

[81alum]

Before the BYU/Auburn game, I saw Tara come over and chat amiably with a woman who looked vaguely familiar to me, and I wondered if she was a former player I should have recognized.  I finally figured it out:  It was Ruthie Bolton, who was there to cheer for her college team Auburn.  Ruthie was a long time pro who played for Tara on the 1996 gold medal team.  Ruthie is now a basketball coach at a high school in Vacaville.

From the press conferences Morgan Bertsch noted that she grew up in Palo Alto and teared up talking about ending her career at Maples.   She came to Stanford camp multiple times.  Powerful and emotional.  Anyone know the story?  Her bio says she played for Santa Rosa High School for four years....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...3rI153flKE

In fact, watching Morgan talk is a great reminder that in this tournament, every time we have success we end other people's careers.  And only one team out of 64 gets to end with a different kind of press conference.  In many ways, it really is not my favorite part of the game.

[2006alum]

Before the BYU/Auburn game, I saw Tara come over and chat amiably with a woman who looked vaguely familiar to me, and I wondered if she was a former player I should have recognized.  I finally figured it out:  It was Ruthie Bolton, who was there to cheer for her college team Auburn.  Ruthie was a long time pro who played for Tara on the 1996 gold medal team.  Ruthie is now a basketball coach at a high school in Vacaville.

From the press conferences Morgan Bertsch noted that she grew up in Palo Alto and teared up talking about ending her career at Maples.   She came to Stanford camp multiple times.  Powerful and emotional.  Anyone know the story?  Her bio says she played for Santa Rosa High School for four years....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...3rI153flKE

In fact, watching Morgan talk is a great reminder that in this tournament, every time we have success we end other people's careers.  And only one team out of 64 gets to end with a different kind of press conference.  In many ways, it really is not my favorite part of the game.

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis above and in this post, 81. On TV, the commentators were saying that Bertsch only had one D1 scholarship offer - Davis - and how much she had bloomed over her four seasons at Davis, such that you'd never know she could barely get a college basketball scholarship. I was really impressed with her play - she reminded me of a taller Hull with smoother movement and a willowy scorer's touch, but less gritty on defense. But some of her back to the basket moves were almost spectral in how deftly she moved around in the paint.

And yes, absolutely right that 63 of the 64 teams will have their seasons end in a loss. Villanova Coach Jay Wright reflected on this very thoughtfully after his team was throttled in the second round by Purdue: 

"The game's humbling, and it's good for us sometimes," Wright said about the record-setting loss for his program, which cut down the nets in two of the past three seasons. "You don't choose to be in this position. When you win, there's a guy on the other side working just as hard as you, and you gotta be respectful of them and understand you could be on the other side of it. And today we are."

One thing I love about him, and about Tara, is the way that good coaches take some responsibility for losses, credit the other team, and view the loss as fuel to make you better. Some of our players like Smith and Carrington might very well have had that view coming into Stanford, but they certainly reflect Tara's healthy attitude about it in how they described the effect of the Oregon loss - as fuel to make them better. Carrington said something really interesting in her PAC-12 Network Podcast interview: that the 44 point loss to Oregon was the worst loss not just in the players' time at Stanford, but for most of them, the worst loss they've ever experienced on a basketball court. How well our team has bounced back from it is a credit to our staff and to our players from making the most of a humbling growth opportunity. I'm so impressed by this team, and hope this is just the beginning of a long tournament run!

[2006alum]

Before the BYU/Auburn game, I saw Tara come over and chat amiably with a woman who looked vaguely familiar to me, and I wondered if she was a former player I should have recognized.  I finally figured it out:  It was Ruthie Bolton, who was there to cheer for her college team Auburn.  Ruthie was a long time pro who played for Tara on the 1996 gold medal team.  Ruthie is now a basketball coach at a high school in Vacaville.

From the press conferences Morgan Bertsch noted that she grew up in Palo Alto and teared up talking about ending her career at Maples.   She came to Stanford camp multiple times.  Powerful and emotional.  Anyone know the story?  Her bio says she played for Santa Rosa High School for four years....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...3rI153flKE

In fact, watching Morgan talk is a great reminder that in this tournament, every time we have success we end other people's careers.  And only one team out of 64 gets to end with a different kind of press conference.  In many ways, it really is not my favorite part of the game.

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis above and in this post, 81. On TV, the commentators were saying that Bertsch only had one D1 scholarship offer - Davis - and how much she had bloomed over her four seasons at Davis, such that you'd never know she could barely get a college basketball scholarship. I was really impressed with her play - she reminded me of a taller Hull with smoother movement and a willowy scorer's touch, but less gritty on defense. But some of her back to the basket moves were almost spectral in how deftly she moved around in the paint.

And yes, absolutely right that 63 of the 64 teams will have their seasons end in a loss. Villanova Coach Jay Wright reflected on this very thoughtfully after his team was throttled in the second round by Purdue: 

"The game's humbling, and it's good for us sometimes," Wright said about the record-setting loss for his program, which cut down the nets in two of the past three seasons. "You don't choose to be in this position. When you win, there's a guy on the other side working just as hard as you, and you gotta be respectful of them and understand you could be on the other side of it. And today we are."

One thing I love about him, and about Tara, is the way that good coaches take some responsibility for losses, credit the other team, and view the loss as fuel to make you better. Some of our players like Smith and Carrington might very well have had that view coming into Stanford, but they certainly reflect Tara's healthy attitude about it in how they described the effect of the Oregon loss - as fuel to make them better. Carrington said something really interesting in her PAC-12 Network Podcast interview: that the 44 point loss to Oregon was the worst loss not just in the players' time at Stanford, but for most of them, the worst loss they've ever experienced on a basketball court. How well our team has bounced back from it is a credit to our staff and to our players from making the most of a humbling growth opportunity. I'm so impressed by this team, and hope this is just the beginning of a long tournament run!

[M T]

Regarding Saturday's game....


Alanna's 3 pointer with 1 minute left in the 3Q added her to the 1600 point, 150 threes, 200 blocks club, along with Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart and Elena Delle Donne.

Referees were ok.  Missed travel on Kiana at 1Q 4:39.  I don't see the foul on UCD 21 at 1Q 6:42.  I think Alanna was set on the charge she tried to take at 2Q 9:24 (compare to 3Q 2:34)  (Alanna may have reinjured that finger at 2Q 9:25;  Two fouls called on her in consecutive seconds so she comes out. She talks to the trainer and then sits down.)  Out of bounds call 2Q 3:45.

I disagree about Maya, at least on defense.  After Alanna went out early in the 2Q, 3 baskets were made over Maya in quick succession, and a fourth would have except DiJonai intercepted the pass.  And then Shannon came in for Maya.

Some highlights:  1Q 1:50:  "Ahead to Williams. 1 on 3. She splits the defense! Wow! She just turned the defender"
2Q 7:11 DiJonai steals a dribble.   DiJonai's pick & roll at 4Q 7:43.  Shannon passes at  1Q 5:44,4Q 3:51

Stats:

I took a photo of the scoreboard when it was 46-22.  Stanford was at 62% FG, 80% FT, 67% 3PT.  At the half, we were 49-26, 56% FG, 83% FT, 55% 3PT.  With the subs in much of the 2nd half (and a lot of the 1st half), we wound up at 49% FG, 56% FT, 44% 3PT.   (If any one says we need to work on our FT, I think I'll scream.  Sure, it would be nice to have a better FT%, but we only missed out on 4 points on FT.  That's not how games are won.)   Our starters played only 56% of the game (Alanna out because of the two quick fouls in the first half.  Maya out presumably to minimize stress on her foot).

12 TO isn't bad.  Probably several of those were tie balls.  16 assists.  11 steals is good.
Rebounding: 31/39 (79.5%) under their basket.  11/35 (31.4%) under our basket.  Good.

[M T]

Regarding Saturday's game....


Alanna's 3 pointer with 1 minute left in the 3Q added her to the 1600 point, 150 threes, 200 blocks club, along with Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart and Elena Delle Donne.

Referees were ok.  Missed travel on Kiana at 1Q 4:39.  I don't see the foul on UCD 21 at 1Q 6:42.  I think Alanna was set on the charge she tried to take at 2Q 9:24 (compare to 3Q 2:34)  (Alanna may have reinjured that finger at 2Q 9:25;  Two fouls called on her in consecutive seconds so she comes out. She talks to the trainer and then sits down.)  Out of bounds call 2Q 3:45.

I disagree about Maya, at least on defense.  After Alanna went out early in the 2Q, 3 baskets were made over Maya in quick succession, and a fourth would have except DiJonai intercepted the pass.  And then Shannon came in for Maya.

Some highlights:  1Q 1:50:  "Ahead to Williams. 1 on 3. She splits the defense! Wow! She just turned the defender"
2Q 7:11 DiJonai steals a dribble.   DiJonai's pick & roll at 4Q 7:43.  Shannon passes at  1Q 5:44,4Q 3:51

Stats:

I took a photo of the scoreboard when it was 46-22.  Stanford was at 62% FG, 80% FT, 67% 3PT.  At the half, we were 49-26, 56% FG, 83% FT, 55% 3PT.  With the subs in much of the 2nd half (and a lot of the 1st half), we wound up at 49% FG, 56% FT, 44% 3PT.   (If any one says we need to work on our FT, I think I'll scream.  Sure, it would be nice to have a better FT%, but we only missed out on 4 points on FT.  That's not how games are won.)   Our starters played only 56% of the game (Alanna out because of the two quick fouls in the first half.  Maya out presumably to minimize stress on her foot).

12 TO isn't bad.  Probably several of those were tie balls.  16 assists.  11 steals is good.
Rebounding: 31/39 (79.5%) under their basket.  11/35 (31.4%) under our basket.  Good.