Minnesota Women's Basketball

EaganGopher · Veteran

Was a decent win, ugly first half. Seems they set up to deny and disrupt Fox in the first half so Knight was able to pick it up. In the second half they focused more on Knight opening Fox up. Reasonable support from the rest of team helped to balance the win. Sure hope McCoy can find the MSU game form again and forget today. Beating Purdue is always a good thing.

hoopsfan · Veteran

Ugly wins, close losses (SDSU last year), they all count at the end of the season and nobody really remembers or cares about the details. A "W" is a "W" and a "L" is a "L".

Yes, the first half was ugly, but what a nice comeback and fantastic way to start the season.

What does OSU losing to MSU mean? Who knows? But what a GREAT way to start the year. You really couldn't ask for much better.

Go Gophers!!!

p_d_swanson · All-Star

Dec. 30 vs. Purdue (W70-63):
Campbell -2 (46-48), Knight +5 (61-56), Ellis-Milan +3 (52-49), Fox +7 (62-55), McCoy +7 (64-57), Sylva 0 (6-6), Harper +6 (27-21), Ohm +9 (32-23)

Season (Minnesota +71):
Campbell +71, Knight +49, Ellis-Milan +47, Fox +76, McCoy +49, Sylva -33, Harper +51, Ohm +54, Smith -9

JellyBean · Team Captain

How about them darn Gophers!!?? We played flat at the start, but got it going when it mattered the most. Boy, I don't know if my young heart can take too many games like this. Glad that we won though.

Great win, Gophers!!!

Now I gotta find the Men's game on the radio or something.

james · All-Star

upstart · Veteran

And how about the crowd today?! Yeah, it was "only" 7000 people, but there was some crazy cheering, especially for the defense.

I'd like to think the 6th player helped a bit with Purdue getting flustered there at the end, not to mention the 3 (or was it 4?) 30 second violations on the Boilermakers.

I can't believe we missed some of those early layups, but the pressure D throughout and coming out calm,cool, and collected in the second half won the day. Love the spark a Katie Ohm three brings!

Now that we've beaten Michigan State and Purdue, who do we worry about? Illinois? (They are 14 points up on Wisconsin right now.) Maybe Penn State? Maybe not? MSU beat Ohio State today...can we work our defensive post magic on Jantel Lavender? Interesting Big Ten times ahead!

Goodyman35 · Veteran

While I love the optimism, lets slow thing down here a bit. 12 wins could win the Big Ten regular season this year. There dosn't seem to be a dominant team in the league this year (yes the Gophers included) and there will be a ton of upsets. The Gopher's have put themselves in position to be a contender, but they are not a deep team and playing Fox, Knight and cast all those minutes may catch up with them. This is where the loss of Barnes and possibly Dockery really hurt this team. Combine the lack of depth with the inconsistent shooting and this team will drop atleast one game it should win. When you only have a seven (Sylva and Ohm count as one player) player rotation, you are limited on your options from a coaching standpoint. My hope is we don't run these ladies into the ground and have a late season slump.

Go Gophers!!!

GoodGuyNy · Veteran

Maybe Tanisha Smith will come up to speed a bit more and Smith, Sylva and Ohm can combine to count as two players......

gandharva · Rookie

IMHO a short bench is not so much about fatigue in the latter stages of the season but in a subconscious drop in defensive intensity while protecting players from foul trouble. Many teams have excelled with 7 or 8 player rotations. With judicious substitution and a little luck teams with short benches have gone deep into the tournament.

These women are in their teens and early twenties. If they are in any kind of good cardiovascular shape they will be able to play over 30 minutes a game easily. Fatigue is also not as much of a factor in basketball as in a sport such as football, where one's body is beaten up on nearly every play.

However, if players don't get a blow at the time they need it, fatigue can be a factor for individual players for a short period of time. I do not know enough about Coach Borton's substitution patterns to tell if she is fatiguing certain players at critical times.

The real problems with a short bench begin to show up when key players start having foul trouble. Players will subconsciously relax some of their defensive intensity in order to avoid foul trouble and that is where I see the greatest potential for problems with the Gophers. Their success is largely predicated on maintaining defensive pressure and if players are holding back on defense we could find ourselves in situations where we get so far behind it doesn't matter whether we are in foul trouble or not.

FYI both of Dockery's knees have been operated on to address "chronic pain". Sounds like she may have had some congenital structural issues, possibly due to rapid growth. Although it hurts us this year from a depth standpoint I think it will help us in the long term to have her pain free. Also, larger people mature slower so her redshirt year may help her grow into her body.

I disagree that Ohm and Sylva make one player. That is a subjective opinion that has no place in an argument about a short bench hurting the Gophers over time. The real issue as I see it is being able to bring consistent effort, defensive and offensive, over an 18 game conference schedule. It is good to see Leslie Knight play well recently. Confidence and understanding of their leadership role have helped many a player have a much better senior year than expected.

To me the key to the season is McCoy's play. If she is tentative on offense it will hurt her defense and put extra pressure on Fox both to run the offense and work harder on defense. Fox needs some freedom to be effective. If Knight continues to be a consistent scoring option then we need not expect as much offense from Campbell as we might. If AEM and Zoe can continue to play good defense and rebound we will be in a position to win most of the games we play in the Big11.

I imagine we will win a couple we shouldn't, i.e. MSU at Lansing, and will lose a couple we should win. The Big 11 is somewhat down this year but will be very competitive. There may only be 2 or 3 bids out of the conference this year. We have a real chance to get one of those bids but my gut tells me a team will have to play well in the conference tournament in order to secure a bid.

All in all this has been a very positive start to the season. I look forward to the next 16 games.

james · All-Star

Despite the kind of strategy that Arizona State and USC use, where the coach sometimes sends in a completely different team of five players, I wonder if short benches are a trend (which, I suppose, is the same as asking if ACLs are a trend, which they clearly are). Tennessee's is eight, too (although, admittedly, they're practically all All-Americans). So is Stanford's. And wasn't the Gopher Final Four team only about eight players deep, too?

james · All-Star

tman333 · Team Captain

I agree with Goodyman's advice cautioning us to temper our enthusiasm. The win over MSU was certainly a nice surprise, but I think the Gophers took a step backwards in almost losing to a young and not very talented Purdue team that should finish in the bottom half of the conference standings.

Knight is really stepping up with consistently good performances. This should take a lot of pressure off Fox. McCoy continues to be up-and-down and needs to contribute consistently for the Gophers to finish near the top of the conference. I understand that she's not a good outside shooter, but there's no excuse for the missed layups.

As Goodyman points out, this is where the loss of Barnes hurts. As for the loss of Dockery, it remains to be seen as to how much she would have contributed to this year's team. I'm not sure how many of Ellis-Milan or Harper's minutes she'd be receiving.

I'm not concerned about our players wearing down at the end of the year. gandarva correctly notes that these players are in their early 20's, and fatigue over the course of the season shouldn't be a factor. Maybe it could be if these were first-year players, but the Gophers don't have any of those in their top 7. The lack of depth on the roster could become a major factor if the Gophers suffer any injuries. This is a team that doesn't have the depth to absorb any injuries.

What I'm most encouraged about is the start of conference play, in which the Gophers were able to get a nice road win...and most of the teams expected to finish near the top of the conference, including OSU, MSU, PSU, and Wisconsin, have already lost. If the conference is going to be the cluster it looks like it's going to be, the Gophers may have a chance, because they been competitive on the road, they're more experienced than some of their conference counterparts, and they can occasionally overcome their poor shooting with good defense.

On another note, is it too early to stick a fork in the Badgers? Probably, but this is a terrible road team. With one of the most talented and experienced guard tandems in the Big 10, you'd think they'd be able to be competitive on the road.

sunnyday · Veteran

I don't think it's so much a question of the length of the bench or of how many minutes they get off the bench, but of the quality of those minutes. In the real world (i.e. as distinguished from UConn, Tennessee and a couple others) your bench players are not gonna be as good as your starters (or they other team's starters). If you can hang tough, great. For a deep team, the real luxury is substituting to the situation. I need speed, I got speed. I need size and/or strength, I got that. I need a shooter, I got a shooter. I need a ball-handler, I got a ball-handler. None of them is as good as my starters, but I can get that one skill I really need against a particular opponent.

The Gophers can't do that and that means that, situationally, you might not get the quality of minutes you need. IOW I need size and strength but what I've got is Kay Sylva. I need quickness but what I've got is Katie Ohm. That's a simplistic example because if I can just swap the two of them in this example, but you get what I mean. When your best players sit down and your overall skill level drops, it's nice to at leat get the specific skill you really really need at that time. The Gophers are going to be like a visiting hockey team some nights. They're not going to be able to get the match-up of skills that would keep the other guy from going on the offensive. Whether this will happen once or twice, or more, who knows?

bbgramps · Veteran

Knight is a nice "story" - from disappointment to major contributer. I'm wondering if an improvement in coaching isn't a part of our success to date. Never been a Borton fan, but she may deserve some credit.

Shades · Conference Champion

Here's a decent 45 sec video recap of the game from the Big Ten Network

http://www.xosn.com.edgestreams.net/video77/NTIBHETTZZUPGFO.20071231060756.wmv