Doggydaddy's Den: DoggyDaddy's Dailies 4/1/17

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Sad for UConn. Happy for Mississippi State. I'm not up to much more than that. I wrote the South Carolina/Stanford game write up before this game ended.

Exhausting!

Congrats to a wonderful Coach in Vic Schaefer and to his classy players. They deserved it.

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Quite the unimpressive first quarter for both teams offensively. They were fortunate to get to a 14-12 score with South Carolina ahead. Stanford shot only 35.8% from the field going 5-14 and 0-3 on threes. The SC defense was all over Samuelson and her two missed threes were from 5 feet beyond the arc. Not her comfort level.

South Carolina was 6-17 from the field and 2-8 on threes. A'ja Wilson forced several shots, looking to win this game single handed although she did have a nice dump down pass to Gray for a layup.

As ugly as the first quarter was the second quarter was even worse. Stanford was a little better offensively scoring 17 points and going 8-15 from the field and 1-3 on threes. But it was their defense that totally messed up the South Carolina offense. The Gamecocks only managed 6 points in the quarter. They were only 2-14 from the field and 0-2 on threes. Stanford sagged in the paint to defend the post and Wilson and the guards refused to take the open shots.

29-20 at the half with Stanford in front. Wow. Talk about making WCBB look bad.

The big news was the ankle turn for Karlie Samuelson. I'm sure that the Stanford fans were crossing their fingers that she could return. Tara said she had no idea about her in her halftime interview but hoped they could tape her up and she could return.

I was not surprised that South Carolina turned up the defensive pressure in the third quarter. They were all over Stanford. Samuelson played but she was pretty hobbled. The Cardinal struggled to score like the Gamecocks did in the 2nd quarter. SC took the lead and extended it to six points, 39-33 when Wilson went out with a poke to the eye in a skirmish for the ball. Stanford scored a quick two points to close to two when SC used an offensive rebound and put back for the 41-37 lead after three quarters after outscoring Stanford 21-9 for the quarter.

Wilson took over in the fourth quarter as she should being the only AA in the game. Her size just wore out the Stanford players. Stanford was game and tried to keep it close. They closed to three 53-50 before South Carolina put it away. It was clear that the Gamecocks were going to pull away at the end. And they did. Wilson had 12 points and 19 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 blocks in a terrific game. And Gray led them in scoring with 18 points and had 9 rebounds. The Gamecocks didn't get much from anyone else. Davis and Harris combined for a 5-25 night. Overall they missed 40 shots, 10 three pointers and 8 foul shots. Not good. But good enough.

McCall led Stanford with 14 points and 14 rebounds. And Smith came off the bench with a double-double of her own with 14 points and 12 rebounds. The rest of the team really struggled. The Stanford starters were 13-40 from the field and only 2-10 on threes. Can't win many games shooting that poorly.

I found myself torn between wanting Stanford to win because I wanted to see the two sisters play each other and wanting South Carolina to win because I know UConn will beat them. South Carolina shot only 36% from the field and had only 10 assists on their 23 baskets. I was amazed at the amount of really bad plays they had.

South Carolina and Stanford played a really really ugly game. But South Carolina was able to out-ugly the Cardinal.

Poor Karlie ended up scoreless going 0-2 from the field, both three pointers. She just couldn't move well enough to get free and was a real issue on defense.

The final? 62-53. Congrats to Dawn and her players for getting to the final game!

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By David in Naples!!!!!

Milestones for individual players and the team that might be reached tonight. Watch and see...

1. With 2 steals Gabby goes over 100 for the season.
2. Saniya has 49 threes and could pass 50 for the year with her 1st three.
3. UConn has 1,190 baskets so far, the next 10 puts them over 1,200.
4. If Crystal scores 13 points, she will go over 200 for the season.
5. Katie Lou needs 5 threes to tie Kaleena for most in a single season.
6. The Huskies' 852 assists is already a record. Look for it to increase.
7. As a team, UConn has 295 three point baskets. The next 5 puts them over 300.
8. Natalie needs 5 points to get to 200 & 21 rebounds to reach 200.
9. Molly and Kyla have 99 combined points. One more to reach 100.
10. UConn has won a Final Four semi final game 11 times. In each case they won the NC.

Go Huskies..!!

* This was written before the game.

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