Women's Basketball Recap & Elite 8 Open Thread

I love the pure arrogance of “I’m The best Bracket Maker.” And that he can walk the walk, too! Magnifique!

I am thoroughly satisfied with both basketball teams. The men were able to exceed expectations and showed a lot of potential for next year and the women had a historic season only to be the beat by the tourney favorites.

So yeah. Color me very satisfied!

Well, now that Louisville went down, maybe I have a chance of not losing! Go Michigan State! Screw everyone else’s brackets up!

I watched my first womens BB game last year during the Olympics and truly enjoyed watching team USA sweep everyone… it was fun.

This year, I tried to watch as many of our own women’s BB games and it was great… esp the Stanford game. It made me incredibly happy for the entire week.

BUT..

The way our girls played during the 2H of the Uconn game pissed me off somewhat. Hampton couldn’t make a bucket if her life depended on it. She was waaay to slow to make her moves to the basket. She took too long which resulted in a second or third defender coming in to defend her.

Plus when Hampton would get doubled underneath NOBODY would slide in for the quick outlet pass. Where the fuck was everybody? You should never stand around and just WATCH your teammates play.

Nobody was jumping up for rebounds and the pick and rolls were slow, slow, slow.

Finally, the defense was horrible during the 2H. It really did look like they were just tired or something. OK, Coach Boyle made the choice to play her best without much rest, fine… but it backfired (I think).
 
Now I saw how truly good Uconn was. They are a fast team with good size and have incredibly accurate shooters. Plus they don’t foul unless it’s in the paint or during a fast break; they’re very disciplined. However, I felt – based on the 1H – that we could have been shooting for the win during the final minutes had we played more defense around the perimeter… and helped Hampton out in the paint… and maybe taken more of our TOs and rotated in more players. This is all 20/20 hindsight, I know… but it was just frustrating to watch.

But overall: I loved this season and I really have become of fan of Women’s BB… or at least Cal Womens BB. I am in love with Coach Boyle, Sandy and our players and I’m going to have so much fun watching our kick ass recruiting class grow up in our system.

BTW: I had tickets for this game, but didn’t end up going b/c of my laziness and cuz it was raining/hangover/constipation etc this morning. But I’m hating myself cuz I should’ve gone anyway… would’ve been fun.

So for 14 minutes, the best Cal woman’s team ever (I think we can all agree on that, right) played the best they have ever played. They passed and shot well, they got back on defense, they pushed the ball when they could and took what UConn gave them.

Then Natasha Vital picked up her 2nd foul and coach subbed in Adrian, and it all fell apart. After Vital left I think Cal really lost the quickness they needed to play with UConn. Lexi started bringing the ball up the court and did it really slowly, so that there were only 20 seconds on the shot clock when we started our offensive set. Plus, Adrian is significantly weaker passer and ball handler than Vital. We were unable to get the ball to Hampton or Walker and we settled for crummy jump shots. When we missed those UConn was able to get out in transition and without Vital there was nobody fast enough to slow down UConn’s guards.

So in 6 minutes an 8 point lead turned into a two point deficit. That wasn’t necessarily what decided the game, but I would imagine that it really took the momentum out of Cal’s players. And as we’ve seen for much of the last few years, Cal doesn’t play well from behind. Boyle’s strategy of playing the starters is great if we stay in the game, because the adrenalin of staying with the best team in the country should have kept them energized. But if you fall behind you have a very real danger of feeling both tired AND demoralized, which is a great formula for losing effort, and that happened to a certain extent. Having said that, I think coach made the right choice because clearly the only way we win is with our best 5 on the court.

Seeing how Cal played for the first 94 minutes of the NCAA tournament it really makes me wonder what would have happened if they had won a game or two more down the stretch and avoided UConn in the bracket. It’s a shame that when the Big Three finally seemed to be putting everything together and playing like so many Cal fans hoped they’d play in the tournament, they ran into the buzz saw that is perhaps the greatest woman’s team ever assembled (at least according to some talking heads).

It will be interesting to see what we can do in a clear rebuilding year in 2010. Thanks to Ashley and Devanai for reviving the program and representing our university so well.