Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 12/8/2022

****************************************************

GO UCONN!!!!!

***********************************************

UCONN 69 Princeton 64

Wow. I'd really like to know why this team is being punished like it has been in regards to injuries. Who did they piss off?

The Huskies were doing what I expected against Princeton without Fudd and Juhasz. Solid lead and looking to expand it. Then Nika took a knee? to the head in the third quarter and you just knew that the game would come down to the wire.

Down to 7 players with the bench consisting of 2 freshman and a sophomore who has seen little time, the Huskies were in trouble. The lead was dwindling and with 46 seconds left in the game Princeton hit two free throws to close to 64-62. But behind a clutch layup by Griffin, and three free throws by freshman Ina Bettencourt, the Huskies pulled out the win 69-64.

The star of the game was Aubrey Griffin. After a terrible game against Notre Dame, It was all about Aubrey in this win. She scored a career high 29 points, going 11-11 from the field and 2-2 on threes. Big threes. She added 10 rebounds and zero turnovers.

Lou was terrific as well, scoring 18 points and going 4-6 on threes. She at times was a little too aggressive on offense but she has ZERO fear.

Nika, ah, Nika. I fear for a concussion. Hopefully not but the way things are going for the Huskies, I don't expect her for Maryland. She had 5 points and 7 assists before the injury. And of course her terrific defense. It was missed.

I loved how DeBerry played. She looked comfortable in the offense and while maybe a little too aggressive on defense and sloppy with the ball at times, she was important to this win.

Edwards had 8 points and 8 rebounds but she had 5 turnovers.

Turnovers was the theme of the night. UConn had a season high 27 turnovers. Awful. Terrible. But understandable with Muhl out of the game. Fourteen in the fourth quarter alone. She is the one player they can't afford to lose.

Gutsy win by a gutsy team. But as Geno said, "we don't know how long we can sustain this".

Next up No. 20 Maryland on Sunday. The Terps were able to come back and beat Purdue 77-74 in a game decided with a three pointer at the buzzer by Shyanne Sellers. This will be a really tough test for this short handed team.

***********************************************

Injury update from Geno:
- Lou Lopez Senechal strained her foot about two weeks ago and tweaked it today.
- Nika hit her head pretty hard, but is in the locker room and says she feels fine. They'll know more tomorrow.
— Megan Gauer (@megangauer) December 9, 2022

Lou Lopez Sénéchal: "My foot is fine. It's just been hurting for a few days, a few weeks. I just tweaked it a little bit so it was just hurting more. I just wanted to be safe, not hurt it more to be able to be in all the games."
— Daniel Connolly (@DanielVConnolly) December 9, 2022

Geno isn't sure if Dorka Juhász (broken thumb) will be available on Sunday.

"She's not there yet (mentally). Maybe she will be on Sunday."
— Daniel Connolly (@DanielVConnolly) December 9, 2022

***********************************************

Post Game Press Conference

Starts at the 20 minute mark

***********************************************

🚨Qadence samuels 6"2 CG 23 MD🚨#alwaysinthegym @CapitaliHoops @QadenceS everything for her always looks so effortless. It's done a really good job cleaning up the boards and knocking down the 3 ball.@SheGotGame7 @InsiderExposure @BatsonBBall @_BlakeDerrick @TeamTakeoverGBB pic.twitter.com/jcgmWtLjPg
— #alwaysinthegym (@coachkent02) December 8, 2022

***********************************************

GAMES

UPSETS IN RED

No. 3 Ohio State 92 New Hampshire 36

No. 4 Indiana 67 Penn State 58

No. 12 Arizona 50 Kansas 77

No. 14 Michigan 68 Toledo 71

No. 20 Maryland 77 Purdue 74

No. 21 Arkansas 63 Lamar 50

**************************************************

Straight from the Dog

I'm just going to wait. What do I mean by that?

The team that they are playing now is not the team we will see later in the season. Hopefully both Nika and Lou (I heard she injured her foot late in the game) have short term injuries. We know that Dorka is close. And it's only weeks before Azzi is back.

So wait. Even if they come back one player at a team over the next few weeks, the patience will pay off. Getting crazy now about how they perform does nothing. It's not who this team is.

So going into Maryland? A win would be amazing. Especially if Nika is out. And maybe Lou. But don't count these players out. They have huge hearts.

Wait.

********************************************************

Really sad news from Tennessee. Their senior center Tamari Key will miss the rest of the season while she deals with blood clots in her lungs. What an awful thing for a young person to be going through and for an athlete, it's devastating.

You could watch her this season and just tell she was struggling with her fitness. Key was not the same player she was last season and now we know the reason why.

She does have her Covid season so she could come back next year. Or will she hit the portal and join her sister for a season at North Carolina?

Hoping for the best for her.

********************************************************

By PHIL

Upsets and bad losses

I am probably letting the loss to Notre Dame bother me more than it should. Losses are never easy, and whether I want to admit it or not, a loss to Notre Dame hurts more than a loss to some other teams.

We know there are some mitigating circumstances. Azzi's injury means this isn't a loss to a full-strength Connecticut team but as George Washington Carver said "99% of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses" so I don't want to over emphasize an excuse. It was not just the loss it was an upset. Those don't happen very often.

As an exercise, I thought it would be interesting to look at what else happened on December 4, 2022. There were 76 games played, so by definition 76 teams had to lick their wounds after a loss. It's one thing to lose, it's a little tougher to lose when you are expected to win. 13 of those 76 games resulted in upsets, which means 17% of the games played ended up as an upset. I'm using the Massey projections and defining an upset as any loss when the probability of losing was less than 50%.

I think we could agree that the lower the probability of a loss the tougher it is. If you go into a game where you have a 48% chance of a loss, that's very close to a pick 'em, and while the loss is still painful, it may be a little easier to take than if you were reasonably confident of a win.

Massey pegged the probability of a loss by UConn at 35%. Eight of the 13 upsets involved a team whose probability of a loss was 35% or lower, so there were seven teams arguably even more surprised than UConn at walking away with a loss

Here are those games:

UConn 35%
Delaware 34%
Creighton 30%
California 29%
Maryland 27%
Louisville 27%
Cincinnati 17%
Vanderbilt 16%

I can almost hear someone muttering, "it's not just the loss, which was bad enough, but the fact that it was a double-digit loss — that hurts". I get it, and I agree that sometimes size matters.

Let's read look at the results. UConn was expected to win by six and lost by 14 so underperformed by 20 points. Interestingly, while the following list includes some of the upsets, the lists aren't the same. Some of the low probability upsets are not in this list, and there are some entries in this list which are not in the low probability upset list.

There are 12 teams who did 20 or more points worse than expected:

UConn 20 points worse than expected (Expected to win by 6, lost by 14)
Wisconsin 20 points worse than expected (Expected to lose by 11, lost by 31)
Xavier 20 points worse than expected (Expected to lose by 2, lost by 22)
California 22 points worse than expected (Expected to win by 8, lost by 14)
Davis & Elkins 23 points worse than expected (Expected to lose by 38, lost by 61)
SF Austin 24 points worse than expected (Expected to win by 53, won by 29)
Vanderbilt 25 points worse than expected (Expected to win by 13, lost by 12)
Missouri St 26 points worse than expected (Expected to win by 2, lost by 28)
Northwestern LA 30 points worse than expected (Expected to win by 35, won by 5)
Maryland 32 points worse than expected (Expected to win by 9, lost by 23)
Richmond 39 points worse than expected (Expected to lose by 12, lost by 51)
Detroit 41 points worse than expected (Expected to lose by 15, lost by 56)

Some of these might be a little easier to take than others. Two teams on the list were expected to win by a lot (SF Austin, Northwestern LA) and they won by a less than expected but still won. That's not a great day but a lot easier to take than a loss.