Game Thread: #23/24 TENNESSEE VS. #1/1 STANFORD

[lvocd]

I thought we had the players but just needed a coach. Obviously it was not that simple.

Christ! You do realize that we’re missing a key scorer in Zaay Green, don’t you? Not to mention Evina Westbrook, leading scorer last year. Also Mimi Collins. Meme Jackson. If all of those players were still on this team and healthy I don’t think you’d get to get your kicks taking sucker punches at the team like you seem to enjoy doing.

Give them a break.

 

[madtownvol]

Madtownvol, as always you hit the nail on the head in your analysis. I tried to do this in my post but I failed miserably in comparison to your post.

Thanks Nute.

It will be interesting to see if Coach kellie decides that she will stick with her philosophy of everybody plays 20 ish minutes or if she adapts to the realities of her line-up. On the one hand, I appreciate her willingness to keep showing faith in her players but, at some point, a coach has to say, hey, "you have work to do before you're ready for this kind of situation. "

 

[1reVOLver]

78-51 suggests that we have a poor offense and a middling defense, not awful, but not especially good either. We developed some unjustified confidence while playing all those creampuffs. Now we are entering the 'reality' portion of the schedule, and it's going to be a long trek back to excellence.

We will certainly be improving over the course of the season, but let us not expect that the competition will not do so as well.

 

[OriginalCoach]

Christ! You do realize that we’re missing a key scorer in Zaay Green, don’t you? Not to mention Evina Westbrook, leading scorer last year. Also Mimi Collins. Meme Jackson. If all of those players were still on this team and healthy I don’t think you’d get to get your kicks taking sucker punches at the team like you seem to enjoy doing.

Give them a break.

Those players aren’t on this team. And when Fr and soph players at Stanford give you a 27 point beat down, it’s pretty obvious that it’s more than the coaching

 

[Nute Gunray]

I really think that KJH has to rethink her sub scheme. This is not working like it did at Mo State. She needs to, somehow, find a solid five and go with it most of the time. She is trying far too many variables. As she is doing it now will not work against top competition. Simply put this is not the Missouri Valley Conference.

I agree with you teacherdean. Kellie is following the substitution patterns of her mentor and coach. However, she does not have the talent of the teams that won 3 NCs. I believe Kellie needs to rework her substitution pattern to be more like Auriemma. He seldom uses more than 6 or 7 players in a rotation.

 

[TJVol95]

27 point loss. Eeeek. Not good. I guess this is gonna be one of those years for both basketball teams. Better times ahead I would think.

Like I said we are going to get smoked! Harper is not getting it done early. Only hope for the best.

 

[KellywillwinNC]

this team will have trouble beating even the bottom dweller sec teams..gonna be a long disappointing season im afraid..im sure the uconn fans are loving it tho..

 

[Decker Moss]

Christ! You do realize that we’re missing a key scorer in Zaay Green, don’t you? Not to mention Evina Westbrook, leading scorer last year. Also Mimi Collins. Meme Jackson. If all of those players were still on this team and healthy I don’t think you’d get to get your kicks taking sucker punches at the team like you seem to enjoy doing.

Give them a break.

What in the world are you talking about? Sucker punches to the team? I was expressing my naïveté that replacing the coach would instantly transform us into a national championship team. That was unrealistic and just like most others, I am seeing that the process will take time. I’m confused how you interpreted it as my delighting in our troubles. Maybe my wording was wrong?

 

[FrozenLVFan]

Really? I think it is becoming clearer that the idea that this team would be better without Evina was laughably wrong. Add to her exit, the transfer of Collins and the injury to Zaay and the LVs have taken a massive talent hit.

We have one very good player in Rennia and a talented freshman in Horston but she is wildly inconsistent. When Rennia is not on the court, this team offense threat really drops. The rest of the rotation are not quite ready for prime time. Rae and Key both fall into the "have potential but..." category and how much they progress this season remains an open and very important question.

KK is fine against smaller players but beyond that...

Jazz is a good game manager type point guard but this team needs more than that right now. {I expect Jazz to become a really good PG by her senior season year but her current limitations will take time to resolve]

Honestly, the rest of the line-up is not ready for top tier competition. Rennie, McCoy, Brown are, at best, mid-major caliber players.

When Kellie goes to the bench, the talent gap goes from large but perhaps manageable on a really good night (per our starting line-up, though I would use Rae or even Harris over Brown) to one that is not able to compete against top 20 opponents.

There is no quick fix to this situation. But I think Kellie is going to have to realize that she does not have the players to do all encompassing rotations against tough opponents. She has seven players that (on a really good night) have a chance to at least stay in the game defensively and hope that Davis or Horston go off in a big way:

Rennia, Jordan, Tamari, Jazz, Rae, Kam, and KK.

I agree with most of that, but I don't think our conditioning allows it at this point. Key looked gassed by halfway through the first quarter last night, and while KK and Kam's conditioning is light years ahead of their first year, KK still needs frequent breaks. Foul trouble kills us as well. Besides the devastating losses of Westbrook, Collins, and Green, I think it's unfortunate that McCoy was injured/ill so much at the start of the season. I expect she can contribute significantly but she isn't with the program yet.

Overall, our biggest problem is still shooting. A lot of our misses last night were either layups or barely contested shots. 27% from the floor isn't going to get it done against most ranked teams, especially Stanford. And our FT shooting remains abysmal.

 

[Raebo]

We are not a terrible team and we are not a great team, yet. We are a mid tier SEC team.
I have seen only 3 games so far but are we a poor shooting team because of technique, shot selection or both? The players are all tall so I wonder if they are just use to going to the basket and shooting over shorter opponents. Now when they do that against better teams, there is 1 or 2 players defending that can contest their shot but taking a 15 foot jump shot in game is not natural for them yet.

 

[Chippo]

Those players aren’t on this team. And when Fr and soph players at Stanford give you a 27 point beat down, it’s pretty obvious that it’s more than the coaching

It's a work in progress good and bad. A lot
of you posters know the technical aspects
more than I do but we're just going to have
to trust KJH and her assistant coaches that
over a period of time they will get the job done

 

[Volfan2012]

The evident fact is that of all the players we've recruited very few are or ever will be very good shooters. I think when you have a team like this and play the better teams you let the air out of the ball slow the game down limit possessions. I think that is the only option to play a closer game and have a chance to win. In this game we get 72 shots and score 51 points that is beyond horrible. Stanford got 68 shots and score 78 which is about average for that many attempts. I hope the coaches learned that we can't play an up and down game with these kind of teams were way to limited and way to terrible shooting the ball to play a game like this.
The good news there are a lot or worse teams than we are in the SEC. The bad news is were in a long rebuilding mode as to getting back to the final four. Looks like we'll have to see what kind of team Harper can recruit in the next three years. Right now her Missouri State team is far better in most aspects of the game than this Tennessee team.

 

[Chippo]

As far as Westbrook goes aside from her loss
of points for the team her leaving has no
bearing on what is going on with the team now. JMHO.

 

[PG1]

Successful offense all starts and ends with the PG position! That is the QB of the team and needs to be not only skilled but must be the one player that the team needs to count on to get the offense started! If we had a real good PG and a quality reserve JM would be a backup wing player. But sadly we don’t. It’s not her fault she is just being asked to do something she can’t do vs good teams.

 

[RollerVol]

Stanford is a pretty good team...we're just not right now and yes it's gonna take some time and recruiting...but, as always...

GO LADY VOLS!

 

[creekdipper]

this team will have trouble beating even the bottom dweller sec teams..gonna be a long disappointing season im afraid..im sure the uconn fans are loving it tho..

The last thing we should be worrying about is what those people think.

We have enough of them coming to this forum to mock and gloat...emulating their idol.

 

[volnationnj]

After 10 games we're shooting 43% from the field overall and 28% from 3. That's against a schedule that included 1 very good team, 1 decent team and the rest were below .500 woeful teams. (ND might not be woeful, just not very good)
In SEC play, it will be difficult to improve on those stats. We will have to win, pretty much, every SEC game that we are favored in, and we'll need a couple of signature wins. Otherwise, making the NCAA tournament will be a problem.

 

[Coach Jumper]

The evident fact is that of all the players we've recruited very few are or ever will be very good shooters. I think when you have a team like this and play the better teams you let the air out of the ball slow the game down limit possessions. I think that is the only option to play a closer game and have a chance to win. In this game we get 72 shots and score 51 points that is beyond horrible. Stanford got 68 shots and score 78 which is about average for that many attempts. I hope the coaches learned that we can't play an up and down game with these kind of teams were way to limited and way to terrible shooting the ball to play a game like this.
The good news there are a lot or worse teams than we are in the SEC. The bad news is were in a long rebuilding mode as to getting back to the final four. Looks like we'll have to see what kind of team Harper can recruit in the next three years. Right now her Missouri State team is far better in most aspects of the game than this Tennessee team.

BS
I don't accept this.
I can make a shooter out anyone who wants to be a shooter.

 

[creekdipper]

BS
I don't accept this.
I can make a shooter out anyone who wants to be a shooter.

If you could make a shooter out of me, J, you ought to be running Hogwarts.

 

[FrozenLVFan]

Too bad someone, anyone, can't convince KK not to put the ball on the floor every time she gets it, either by pass or rebound, right in front of the basket. She got swarmed umpteen times by doing that last night.

 

[Amb3096]

As far as Westbrook goes aside from her loss
of points for the team her leaving has no
bearing on what is going on with the team now. JMHO.

That's a huge part of it, though. Evina is a reliable scorer, a pretty good passer, and a good enough defender to impact games. Right now, with Green on the bench, the only player who can create their own shot consistently is Rennia. Jordan will get there, but Tennessee is lost on offense when Rennia is off the court. And God knows she's trying, but Massengill is basically a "Poor Man's Evina", and it's going to become glaringly obvious in games like this one.

 

[lvocd]

As far as Westbrook goes aside from her loss
of points for the team her leaving has no
bearing on what is going on with the team now. JMHO.

My point is that at the end of last season and at the time Kellie took over as coach, we were all justifiably excited about what a new staff might be able to do with the roster of players she’d have returning, along with some terrific incoming freshmen. But the eventual reality was that three of the five players we all thought would be in the top 5 rotation either are totally gone or lost for the season. Three starters. Gone.

Even if the roster had been complete with those three key pieces I think most here agreed that this would be a learning season, and most everyone’s best guesses for what they hoped for this season was a Sweet 16, with (IIRC) a couple of posters with dreams of E8. MOST, though, thought the optimistic prediction was S16.

And THAT was WITH Zaay, Evina and Mimi. I feel like a few people are grossly underestimating how important Zaay Green’s sweet (and accurate) mid-range jumper really is. Add that and her excellent contribution to our running game, and last night, when Rennia had to sit early with 2 fouls, there may actually have been another scoring option on the floor for Kellie.

After the dust had settled on Kellie’s hire and the transfers were complete, when I saw the schedule I mentally pencilled in two losses to this point in the season — even WITH Zaay — and those are the exact two losses I predicted we’d have at this point. Pretty sure I wasn’t alone in that, either.

I’m just going to ride this season out knowing and fully trusting that next season WILL, in fact, be better. And if by this point next season it somehow is not noticeably better, I’ll eat my damn shorts! lol

 

[Volfan2012]

BS
I don't accept this.
I can make a shooter out anyone who wants to be a shooter.

Evidently coach a lot of players on the Tennessee team don't want to be shooters. Most have played basketball since grammar school and you wonder why they are so incompetent at this time in their lives. There are three or four players on this team that have been below forty percent shooters since they got here.

 

[Coach Jumper]

Evidently coach a lot of players on the Tennessee team don't want to be shooters. Most have played basketball since grammar school and you wonder why they are so incompetent at this time in their lives. There are three or four players on this team that have been below forty percent shooters since they got here.

Oh they want to be.
All players want to shoot..

It is the mental-condition and the environment of that shot,, that affects their decision to pull the trigger.
I don't know the condition for them now, as Coach K is in her beginning...But I do know that in prior years players were constantly called out for "bad shots" and that affects the shooter's mentality.
When you shoot you have to have a clear mind, thinks only about how it is going to sound as it swishes through the net.
Miss...and you have to go right back to clear mind again
You have to shoot "knowing" it is going in.

Shooting is about 20% environment and 80% mental state.
And 100% mechanics.

I can shoot and make a foul shot with my eyes closed because I am unguarded and have the muscle memory of doing it thousands of times. . . Also, I know that I have shot with a hand inches from my face because I have successfully done it...fully guarded.

Once I begin the mechanics of the shots, the calculations have already been made.
And it is pure mechanics and mental state from that point on.

 

[creekdipper]

Look, we have to be realistic. Some of us thought this year's Elite Eight predictions were just pipe dreams, but we didn't want to dampen enthusiasm. We need to remember that we've lost a lot of talent for reasons other than graduation, have a new staff, are young, have half our players new to the program, and do not have overall talent equal to the top teams.

What I'd like to see is steady improvement in the all areas and a team that never quits. A team can run an offense even when shots don't fall. We've all seen teams with less talent, siza, and quickness still execute well against better teams. That's on the coaching staff.

Some say that there are no moral victories (I disagree), but all should agree that there are demoralizing losses. We saw that last year with a six-game streak. Kellie needs to do whatever is necessary to help her team when they are struggling. Digging a deeper hole that is too much to overcome runs counter to that goal, so use of strategic time outs is crucial. That's Coaching 101. Even managing what appears to be an inevitable loss can be hugely important, especially to a team and players vulnerable to self-doubt. Turning a definitive loss into a blowout by taking quick shots doesn't help anyone's psyche and doesn't help the team develop an offense that will be needed in the winnable games. Continuing to work will also demonstrate to recruits that the coaching expertise is there just waiting for the talent to implement the plans.

In short, I'd like to see in-game evidence that Kellie and her staff are using every tool at their disposal to get the best out of the team. I love Kellie to death, but I think she can do better game management in terms of substitutions, offensive schemes, controlling momentum swings, and teaching.

As Jim always says, just my opinion.