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What an exciting game! Miami looked to be clearly superior through the first half. The Pack fought hard the entire game, though. In the second half, going to a full court press changed the game. Chelsea Nelson was guarding the in-bounder. Her long wingspan caused havoc. She is credited with 3 steals, but caused more. Our shooting was terrible for most of the game, but then we made everything at the end of the game.
Len’Nique ans Miah were awesome down the stretch. Dominique Wilson had a tough night shooting, but she seemed to be in the middle in everything, getting steals, driving to the basket, getting rebounds, etc. Jennifer Mathurin made the three to tie the game with just under a minute to go and led the team in rebounds.
Carlee made some good moves to score in the first half, but hardly played in the second. It’s amazing to see that she played 22 minutes but did not get credited with a rebound!
Wes only played 7 players in the game, but the Pack seemed much more energetic and determined than Miami during the last 6 minutes or so. It might have been one of those situations where the Miami players thought they would just cruise to an easy victory and let up some. Then when State made their rally, they were stunned.
A few random observations, FWIW. I’m just looking at the 11 conference games.
1. We have outscored our opponents by 18 points, yet we have a losing record.
2. Fouls seem to be significant: we have committed 30 more fouls than our opponents. We have had 9 disqualifications compared to zero by our opponents. Abu, Anya, Washington, and Turner have been foul prone. How much time have we lost from those 4 due to foul difficulties?
3. We are a good 3-point shooting team, with Lacey at 41%, Turner at 39% and Barber at 50%(!) after making 8 of 16.
4. I was thinking that we had lost some games due to making a poor percentage of 3-pointers, but when I looked just now, I couldn’t find an example. Against Clemson, for example, we made 6 of 14 (43%) of threes, but only 12 of 49 (24%) on 2-pointers!
5. The most lopsided loss in the conference was not against Virgina, Duke, UNC or Notre Dame, but Clempson(!) at home by 11.At least we can console ourselves that we are not Georgia Tech fans. They have lost:
at Notre Dame in 2 OT,
to Syracuse by 1,
to Notre Dame by 3,
at Pittsburgh by 5,
to BC by 2,
and NCSU by 1 in OT.
They scored 28 against UVA and beat Miami by 20.My lifetime actually includes being in the Greensboro Coliseum when DT & company defeated Coach Wooden in ’74. My comments regarding Coach K were intended to be somewhat facetious given all the talk we hear about his greatness. My point was just that I read comments criticizing Gott when State players sometimes lose their focus under pressure. K is one of the best of all time, yet his players were rushing and forcing things under the Pack’s newfound relentless pressure. Maybe we should recognize that a coach can’t control everything that happens on the court.
No offense, nimbus2000, but John Wooden wasn’t in the building today.
Good point. No offense taken.
Even though it was clearly a team effort, I thought BeeJay was the player of the game. His defense on Okafor made a huge difference. Notice that Okafor started off scoring easily inside. When BeeJay came in, and Gott started sending the double team at Okafor, it really took him off his game.
On the offensive end, we finally saw BeeJay assert himself. He made a couple of real post moves and the dunk with 2:21 on the clock ended the Duke run and maybe saved the game. I think it was the Pitt game when Brad Daugherty was doing the color commentary. BeeJay caught the ball about five feet from the basket, them immediately had that deer-in-headlights look, and tried to find someone to pass to. Brad started yelling “shoot the ball”. I don’t know if BeeJay heard him, but he turned and made an awkward lunge at the basket and missed. Brad said “The Big Guy should always shoot when he gets the ball that close to the basket. Nobody can stop him”. I think Brad knows a thing or two about scoring in the low post. Maybe BeeJay is getting the message.
Also, I think it’s interesting that we had the greatest coach in the history of college basketball in the building and he couldn’t keep his young players from losing their composure for much of the second half against the “hostile environment”. He got them back together for the mini-run to cut the lead to eight, but it was too late. Plus the Pack kept their composure down the stretch (7 of 8 free throws made in the last two minutes).
