Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 1/8/2022

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GO UCONN!!!!!

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So, while I'm basking in the sun in Florida, my wonderful grandsons are enjoying the snow in Connecticut.

I miss them, but I don't miss the snow!!!!

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3 weeks, 4 postponements, and a ton of boredom, UConn women's basketball is finally playing again!!

It's been difficult to get motiviated to blog about all the other games when the team I love can't get on the court.

I can't even imagine what the players and coaching staff is going through.

If you watch Geno's interview, you can see the stress on his face. He put it best when he said it's like starting the season over again.

So, like the players, I have to jump back in. And we can start with the next game, Sunday at 1:00 against Creighton.

Let's look at UConn first. When we left off, UConn was playing a 6 player rotation. They started Williams, Westbrook, Ducharme, Juhasz and Nelson-Ododa. And the only player off the bench was Edwards.

Since that game, over the next 21 days, UConn has added back only one player. But she is very important to the team. Nika Muhl is now available for 15 minutes. I'm doubtful on those minutes. It could definately be more if needed.

Geno now has another guard to add to the rotation, and this is huge in regards to minutes. It was clear in the last game that Williams and Westbrook were a little gassed. Not just physically but mentally. Geno now has three (or four with Ducharme) guards to rotate and 3 (or four with Ducharme) forwards to rotate. A much better situation.

The bad news on the injury front is it looks like Aubrey Griffin is out for the season. She has a disc problem and Geno said it will probably be season ending surgery. So sad for her, but get the surgery and come back stronger than ever!!

Azzi Fudd is moving closer to returning. I'm glad to see them taking their time with her. Geno said she will start running next week. That's a big step in her rehabbing that foot. If she can handle the pressure on the healing stress reaction, she could be back by the end of January.

The best news to me was what Geno had to say about Paige Bueckers. “She feels good. She looks good. She obviously is, as you can imagine, disappointed that she has to miss all this time. She’s probably the only one happy those games were all postponed".

Something tells me it could be a little sooner. I'm praying for a 2/6 return against Tennessee. How great would that be?

Creighton, UConn's opponent Sunday, is on a four game winning streak and looking good. They beat a good Arkansas team and hammered Marquette in their last game. The Bluejays are not a big team with only two players over 6' tall, yet they outrebounded Marquette 40-29. But their strength is their pressure defense and really good three point shooting. Similar to the old DePaul teams, it's not just one or two players that can hit the three pointers, it's 6 or 7 that will put em up from long range. It will be a tough match for the Huskies.

Creighton spreads around the minutes and the points pretty evenly between their players. They have 8 players who play double digit minutes and two others that play 9.4 and 8.9 MPG. And it's not just in blowouts. Like their players say, "Depth is our strength". They will throw wave after wave of players at UConn, trying to wear out a team that hasn't played in three weeks. It's a great strategy. Morgan Maley and Lauren Jenson will be taking 3-4 three pointers each in this game.

The Bluejays also do a great job taking care of the ball with an amazing 253/176 assists to turnovers. Wow. Very UConn-like!

Make no mistake, even at home with great fan support, this is going to be a really, really difficult game. UConn will be fortunate to win this game. And I think they will.

UConn by 4+.

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UCONN VIDEOS

SILVER LINING!!!

GENO INTERVIEW

WESTBROOK AND DUCHARME INTERVIEW

Uhhh....Did Geno know Paige was on the court??

Ok, I just watched that video, and I was really shocked to see Paige running on the court. She was limping like crazy and at one point, grabbed at her knee. Really? Is this part of the rehab processs?? Geno said she was moving along great. I'm pretty sure that she wouldn't be out there without doctor's permission. But it was pretty scrary to watch!

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GAMES

MOST SCORES HAVE CLICKABLE LINKS TO A GAME STORY

UPSETS IN RED

No. 12 Iowa State 78 TCU 47

No. 18 BYU 94 Pacific 68

No. 23 Oklahoma 82 Kansas 68

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Straight from the Dog

Well, I'm back. Hopefully for the rest of the season. Life is really good here in Florida, so I'm very laid back and that makes it harder to put together these blogs. But I'm sure UConn playing will keep me motivated. They have a ton of games to play and two against OOC foes Oregon and South Carolina in January. They haven't rescheduled the four postponed games yet, but with 8 games in 21 days this month, UConn will certainly have the opportunity to get the kinks out.

A couple of interesting games on Sunday. Both in the SEC. Here is the low down.

No. 1 South Carolina vs No. 21 Kentucky - The Wildcats are coming off a great win against No. 15 Georgia and will be sky high for this game. Rhyne Howard showed her AA chops with 30 points, and she will need to do even more for Kentucky to beat South Carolina. Gotta go with the Gamecocks, especially at home.

No. 7 Tennessee, the surprise team this season, is visiting 13-1 Ole Miss. They lost their opening game to Belmont but they have since won 13 straight games. Not exactly against murder's row, but they did beat No. 18 South Florida two games ago. Tennessee is due for a loss but I'm not convinced this will be that game.

Speaking of Tennessee, those crazy Orange fans had an intetesting take on UConn having to postpone so many games. The more their team wins, the more arrogant and obsessed with UConn they get.

"I’m betting Bueckers is out for the season. He’s gonna try to make sure they have an excuse not to play in the NCAA tournament because he knows they are dead in the water. You heard it here first. I won’t be shocked AT ALL if he retires after this season. He’s the kid on the playground who gets stuffed, cries and leaves with the ball."

"Uconn will be playing Sunday. Geno said one player will be bk from injury...Sir, was that the reason you've not been playing? 🤔 most teams had been playing without their star players sir. He just don't wana fall out of 25 Rank. Or miss NCAA tournament..That would be Geno new history."

"Does anyone know why UConn has not been playing their games? I guess im open to speculation, but I also would like to know the rules regarding postponement and forfeiture. It seems like lots of teams still play with individuals out due to protocol, and UConn despite their injuries still should have plenty of players to field a team."

There were several more posts saying Geno is not playing these games on purpose to avoid the better teams in the Big East and therefore in conference losses. Let me help them out.

14 player roster to start the season.
2 transfers leaving 12.
5 injuries leaving 7.
3 Covid infections leaving them under the 7 you have to have available to play.
One injured player and 2 Covid players back giving them 7 players so they are playing a game Sunday.

No nefarious ducking of games as some there would like to believe. Morons.

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By Phil

Tempest in a teapot

There's a recent tempest in a teapot. One of the key statements was uttered by Muffet:

"UConn has done great things... But I think it goes over the top with ESPN," McGraw said. "That is Connecticut's network. Notre Dame has NBC. Connecticut has ESPN."

My first observation is that tempests in a teapot often arise when there is too little to talk about. The dozens of Covid induced cancellations are worth talking about, but there's only so much you can say. The dozens of missing games mean you are trying to replace dozens of storylines with one. Nature abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum will be filled. There aren't enough meaningful games to talk about to fill up the space so sportswriters reach out to retired coaches hoping to find something to discuss. There's a delicious bit of irony that sportswriters think a potshot claiming that UConn gets too much media coverage is worthy of media coverage.

I recently expressed my view that Geno should not feed the troll, so shouldn't I take that same advice? No, because Geno's position means he should try to stay above the fray, and I'm a fan so if I wrestle in the mud, I might even like it. More seriously, I'm not going to address Muffett per se, but discuss the view that ESPN is biased in favor of UConn, a view which is espoused by many not just her.

Long before Notre Dame dropped out of the top tier of teams, even before they ascended to the top tier of teams for a brief visit, even before UConn became synonymous with excellence in sport, there were other women's basketball teams who dominated the sport's conversations. Yes, there was a period of time when Tennessee was king of the hill. They didn't win every year; various teams had good years, challenged them and sometimes even beat them, but there was a long period of time when discussions about women's basketball were Tennessee and whomever was challenging them at the time. Then along came UConn, and Tennessee fans felt this was one more upstart who would be a brief flash in the pan and then disappear. Except that didn't happen. The king of the hill pushed, but UConn feinted and the king fell down the hill. The fans don't like it, which makes them just like fans always and everywhere.

Fans don't like admitting that their team is quite as good as they used to be, so they look for excuses. One common excuse is that sportswriters are playing up some other team, even though their team, of course, is still the very best. Some of them come up with color-coded Excel spreadsheets proving that their team, despite barely getting invited to the tournament and leaving early, is still really the best team in the country. I daresay UConn fans will engage in the someday but that day is still in the future.

It's easy for any fan to observe three factual statements:
1. ESPN is headquartered in Connecticut
2. UConn is headquartered in Connecticut
3. ESPN spends a lot of time talking about UConn
Then think there is an obvious syllogism 1 and 2 and 3 -> 4 ESPN is biased in favor of UConn

That inference is not trivial to prove or disprove.
It's absolutely true that ESPN covers UConn more than lots of teams. However that's not the assertion. The assertion is that UConn is covered more than they deserve, which cannot possibly be answered without figuring out how much they deserve to be covered.

I don't know an easy way to design a metric to figure out how much coverage a team deserves to receive.

I will suggest one small metric. If a sports organization is biased in favor of a team, the ranking of that team by the organization will be higher than the rankings put together by others.

Let's look at some of the rankings.
As of today 5 January 2022, UConn is ranked as follows:
# 6 NCAA Power Rankings
# 9 Massey
#11 AP
#11 Coaches Poll
#11 Women's Hoops World
#12 ESPN Power Rankings

Yes, six different ranking systems, and five of them rank UConn higher than ESPN. If anyone honestly thinks that ESPN is biased favor of UConn, one would reasonably expect the ESPN ranking to be maybe not the top but above the middle and not in last place. How can one honestly explain how ESPN can be biased in favor of UConn and rank them lower than any of the other services?

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By David in Naples

Last Sunday, the #1, #2, #3, #6, #7, #8, #10, #12 and #13 teams in the country played games. Since these are the best of the best, their 3 point shooting was probably spectacular, right? Not quite...

Consider:
1. Those 9 teams shot a combined 35-122 or 28.7%.
2. Only 1 of the teams shot better than 35%. South Carolina was 5-14 or 35.7%.
3. #7 Tennessee and #13 Georgia both shot under 17% on their threes. 2-13 combined.
4. Both Tenn. and Georgia won despite bad shooting.
5. Six teams shot worse than 30%.
6. The three teams shooting better than 31% (SC, Stanford & L'Ville) all won.

UConn now sits at 32% on 154 threes tried in 9 games. Opponents are at 31% on 196 threes.

Maybe moving the line back in WBB is impacting accuracy...? Or, maybe it was just a bad weekend for long range shooters.

Go Huskies..!!

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UCONN LINKS

UConn vs Creighton - Where, When, how to Watch Courant

UConn restarts with new Identity The Day

Geno - "You're not doing the same job" CT Insider

Muhl set to kick in Journal Inquirer

Just like starting over Journal Inquirer

Huskies are hurting, healing Journal Inquirer

UConn will have Muhl back ESPN

UConn prepares for Creighton with depleted roster The Day

UConn to have 6 1/2 players for Creighton Game UConn Blog

Griffin likely out for season with disc injury UConn Blog