Doggydaddy's Den: DoggyDaddy's Dailies 12/17/14

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To those who celebrate Hannukah, enjoy the Festival of Lights

Happy First Night!!!

A Daily look at scores from yesterday, a list of top performers in those games,

and of course a little opinion.

So, I saw that in an interview Tennessee coach had the following exchange after the Rutgers game -

Interviewer: “Talk about the zone, how big it was for you down the stretch, and your thinking behind going to it. I think the last 7 minutes that’s pretty much all you played.”

Holly: “Well we needed it. We needed it – Scaife got off a little bit. We needed to slow them up and try to get somebody else to take shots. And so we used a 2-3 zone, 3-2 zone… Look, I love man-to-man. I’m a man-to-man defensive pressure coach. But I also want to win a basketball game, so if we need to run zone, we’re going to run zone. And that’s what we did. I thought it was… They moved out of it, and had a lot of confidence in it. At the end of the game I was calling man-to-man switching and they called 3, so… They’re on the floor so their opinion prevailed over mine at the very end.

Interviewer: “So they called the zone even when you ______?

Holly: (Laughing) “Yeah. It worked, I’ll take it.”

Let's break that down.

"At the end of the game I was calling man-to-man switching and they called 3"

Who was they? My guess is it was one player. I can't imagine more than one player thought they needed to be in a zone.

"They’re on the floor so their opinion prevailed over mine at the very end"

Wow. Really. Do they really have the green light to change whatever defense Warlick calls from the sideline? At any time? Have they done this in the past? Do they override offensive calls too? I haven't heard of this with any team in my many years of watching WCBB.

Now, I read some theory that it was similar to how Geno reacts, when frustrated with the team. There have been times he walks away from the players on a time out and let them talk it out. I don't see how this is the same thing at all. In this instance, Geno is not telling them to do one thing and they decide to do something else. It's just Geno letting them do what he has taught them. And I guarantee it wasn't in the end of a close game.

I seriously doubt Geno would ever allow the players that freedom to begin with. Maybe Warlick does. But it seems to me that allowing that is a recipe for disaster. How many times can the players do this? Unlimited freedom?

Maybe Warlick is preparing for when Coach Deshields is on the court next year.

Holly: (Laughing) “Yeah. It worked, I’ll take it.”

What else could she say at this point? But what if it didn't work? Does she throw them under the bus?

This is not football, where the play comes in and the QB calls audible. It makes no sense to me. The coach is the one with the experience. He can see everything on the court that the players do. There is always a reason for Geno to call a certain defense. The players respect Geno and trust him explicitly and would never change it in the manner that this happened. Never. I can only imagine Geno's reaction when he would call one defense and his players call another defense. He would immediately call time out and you might see something like this.....

And because of that you see a lot of this.......

I guess it is just a matter of respect and trust. I'm not sure Warlick has that from her players.

As a follow up to Sunday's game, I watched Tennessee play the 6-2 Wichita State Shockers. This is the same team that lost at home to Florida Gulf Coast 56-39. I'm sure that most fans thought this would be a 20+ point win for the Lady Vols. Massey had them a 15 point favorite. Sagarin had them by 24.

What I saw tonight should cause come real concern in the minds of Tennessee fans. Several things come to mind. Tennessee won 54-51 with Wichita State totally messing up the last 23 seconds. They were down 1 and Tennessee was inbounding. They let Tennessee cross midcourt and the Lady Vols called timeout with 15 seconds left. Once time was in, Tennessee inbounded and Wichita State didn't foul until there were 5 seconds left. Why they let all that time run off the clock is beyond my comprehension. That being said Tennessee was awful.

They just don't have an offense other than offensive putbacks. I observed the same issues I saw against Rutgers. Several times players were in the same area just not knowing where they should be. Their outside shooting is spotty at best, and you can see the lack of confidence they have in themselves.

They also have been snakebit for several years with injuries. Just when Harrison comes back, Jones is out with what looked like a concussion in the RU game. Now Carter gets hammered by her own teammate and gets helped off the court. Looked like a head injury.

Lastly, as evident by that interview, Warlick is clueless. C-L-U-E-L-E-S-S. In a tight game with 2:30 left she subs in two Freshman, Nared and Middleton. This leads to 2 quick turnovers, one by each player before she had to call a timeout to replace them. I wonder how many times the players changed her defensive calls tonight? I'm betting none.

The fans are catching on. Attendance tonight was only 9,026. This Lady Vol team will be the first in a long time not to lead the country in attendance.

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And just to show I'm not picking on Tennessee, UNC got slapped around by Oregon State tonight. The Beavers controlled the ball and held UNC to 27% shooting and 1-14 on three pointers. Now, how much was Oregon State defense and how much was UNC bad shooting? I don't know. I didn't watch the game tonight. But the box scores paints a bad picture for North Carolina at HOME. One more undefeated goes down.

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So, without further ado!!!

Ladies and Gents, DD looks at the news........