GO UCONN!!!!!
It seems to happen every game. Time after time. Over and over.
Am I talking about a player getting injured or turnovers. Well, the answer is both.
Let's get the injury out of the way. Not much detail yet, and it looked pretty minor but Edwards appeared to hurt her foot in the first half. She sat the entire second half. I'm hopeful it was just precaution, but still....really? Again? Sigh......
Fingers crossed it's nothing and she will be back Sunday for the DePaul game.
Turnovers? My eyes hurt watching how careless they were with the ball. Only Edwards had zero but everyone else contributed to the 22 total. Nika Muhl led the way with 6 but at least she had 9 assists.
It was ilke they were just learning how to play the game. Thankfully it was against a really bad team in Xavier that didn't turn the ball over that much but just couldn't shoot. The Musketeers shot 21.5% from the field and a couple of late three pointers allowed them to go 5-26 from deep.
UConn does get some credit for Xavier's poor shooting. I love how they defend, their contsant and smooth switching is just beautiful to watch.
I really enjoyed watching Bettencourt play in this game. She really looks comfortable out there. She had 7 points including a buzzer beating three pointer and 3 assists and 2 steals. But it was her ball control, playing within the offense and overall court sense that really impressed me. I believe UConn has a backup point guard.
Dorka was SNY player of the game and you can't argue with that. She had 18 points and 17 rebounds along with 4 blocks and 2 assists. Awesome game by Juhasz.
Aubrey was amazing as well. She ended up with 19 points to lead the Huskies and every game she plays, she shows how much she was missed last season. Her long legged drives to the basket are wonderful to watch. I worry about another injury as she shows no fear in getting to the basket, but that's her game.
The stats don't show it, but I thought DeBerrey played a good game. She posted up stronger than an game I can remember, and her high post passing is excellent. Maybe with more time she can be a valued contributor. It looks like she is getting more and more confident.
Oh yeah, UConn won 73-37. Yeah, 73 points is not great. I predicted closer to 100. But it's really tough to score a lot of points when you turn it over and players like Edwards, Fudd and Ducharme are not in the game. We can only hope that all three are there soon.
Bring on DePaul. Sunday 1:30 in Storrs.
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Update on Fudd Injury
I did not know she wasn't medically cleared when I predicted she would be playing soon. I'm hopeful that happens when she gets back to Connecticut and gets examined.
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GAMES
UPSETS IN RED
No. 7 LSU 74 Texas A&M 34
No. 20 Gonzaga 63 San Francisco 52
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Straight from the Dog
Is there a worse team in the SEC, or any Power-5 conference than Texas A&M? I mentioned them the other day but Thusday night's 74-34 loss against LSU? After this game they are averaging 44.8 PPG in their 8 losses. And they already won an UGGY for their poor performance against Little Rock losing 42-38.
Check out the stats.
34 points
21.2% from the field
2-22 on threes
4-9 from the line
17 turnovers
UGGY!!!! Congrat to the AGGIES! The first two time UGGY winner this year.
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It was a tough day for the North Carolina teams. While No. 19 Duke won against Wake Forest both No. 10 North Carolina State and No. 22 North Carolina lost in upsets.
The Wolf Pack lost to Boston College at home 79-71. A really bad loss for NCST and it will knock them out of the top ten.
The Tarheels thought will be leaving the top 25 in most likelyhood after losing to unranked Miami. It's been a slow but steady decline for North Carolina. This was their fourth consecutive loss after starting the season 9-1. Being 0-3 in the ACC is a problem.
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I was excited to see that No. 3 Ohio State was losing by 6 to unranked Minnesota on the road. I could see the Huskies moving up a spot in the rankings. But a funny thing happened in the first 3 minutes of the fourth quarter. They outscored the Golden Gophers 14-0. Yes, 14 points in 3 minutes. The Buckeyes ran away at that point winning 83-71.
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Toughest conference
There was an article in Sports Illustrated in which Indiana’s Teri Moren argues, “…she believes the Big Ten conference will be the most difficult one in the country. “
There is no established metric for measuring conference, which is quite freeing. When there is no generally accepted metric, you are free to choose your own, or even better, just make assertions without reference to any established metric.
I’m not trying to pick on Teri, virtually everyone, myself included engages in this type of argument. It’s kind of fun and the lack of a generally accepted metric means one can make a case for more than one conference.
One obvious way to rank the conferences is to use the Massey rankings. The top six conferences are in order:
1. Pac 12
2. Atlantic Coast
3. Southeastern
4. Big 12
5. Big 10
6. Big East
That makes Big Ten the weakest of the P5 conferences, harldy supportive of Teri’s contention.
Instead of simply looking at the order of the conferences, one can also look at the Massey ranking of each conference:
1. 8.06 Pac 12
2. 8.00 Atlantic Coast
3. 7.95 Southeastern
4. 7.91 Big 12
5. 7.90 Big 10
6. 7.57 Big East
That doesn’t change the order, but you can see that the Big Ten and B12 are for all practical purposes identical, and that at least gives you an option of arguing they are not the weakest of the P5 conferences at least not alone. You can also see, unfortunately, that the Big East is not just sixth, but substantially below number five. There’s more separation between five and six then there is between one and five.
Instead of using the overall Massey ratings, one could take the ratings for each of the individual team and average them. That produces the following list:
1. Pac 12 39
2. Atlantic Coast 40
3. Southeastern 45
4. Big 12 45
5. Big 10 51
6. Big East 67
Note that the six conferences are in the exact same order, but now the Big 12 and SEC can argue they are essentially tied for third. Proponents of the ACC might like this metric because puts them in an almost tie with the Pac 12.
Let’s dispense with one potential metric. One can look at the toughest team in the conference, but while that obviously would rank the SEC first because of South Carolina, that’s a measure of a team not a conference. It is understandable that other members of the conference might like to point to themselves being in the conference with the toughest overall team, but that means, at the risk of being obvious, that you are in the conference with the toughest overall team, not the toughest conference.
We could also look at the weakest team in the conference. On the surface that sounds silly, but it makes some sense. The strength of the chain is its weakest link.
If we sort the conferences by the Massey ranking of the weakest team, we get the following order:
1. Pac 12 89
2. Southeastern 97
3. Atlantic Coast 103
4. Big 12 122
5. Big 10 138
6. Big East 179
Not much different — the only difference is that the SEC’s weakest team Vanderbilt, is a little stronger than the ACCs weakest team Pittsburgh, so they moved from 3rd to 2nd.
In statistical circles, it is not uncommon to throw out outliers. While in many circumstances this means throwing out the extremes at each end, if one’s talking about conference strength, I don’t think it makes sense to throw out the strongest team, so let’s look at happens if we just dropped the weakest team from each conference. Here are the conferences ranked based on the second weakest team:
1. Atlantic Coast 67
2. Big 12 71
3. Pac 12 82
4. Big 10 88
5. Southeastern 93
6. Big East 168
This produces something interesting. If I may mix sports metaphors, if you give a mulligan for the worst team in the conference, you find the ACC, who second weakest team is Boston College is in first place, and for the first time we have a metric that does not have the Pac 12 at the top. They all the way down to third.
None of these metrics seem to support the Big Ten is the best overall conference. At best, we found a metric in which they are virtually tied for fourth instead of alone in fifth place, and fourth ahead of Southeastern using the second weakest team, but nothing so far supporting the contention they are the toughest overall conference.
The opening paragraph of the Sports Illustrated article included the following sentence:
“With four teams in the AP Poll and two in the top 10, Moren and her Hoosiers have every reason to enter conference season with more toughness than ever.”
It’s not clear to me whether this was a quote from Moran or a measure dream not by the article author but let’s go with it.
We have to start by observing that it’s not even accurate. The Big Ten has five teams in the AP poll, not four. However, correcting to note that the Big Ten has five AP poll we have to note that the Pac 12 also has five in the AP Poll as does the ACC. If you use top 10 as a tiebreaker, the Pac 12 and Big Ten each have two apiece, but the ACC has three. One might use this metric to argue the Big Ten’s in second place tied with the Pac 12 but no way does it support first place.
1. ACC 5 3
2. Pac 12 5 2
3. Big 10 5 2
4. SEC 4 2
5. Big 12 4 0
6. Big East 3 1
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