Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 12/14/2023

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Even my daughter (mother to Logan and Barrett)

is looking for my Blog!!!

GO UCONN!!!!!

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UConn legend Tiffany Hayes announced her retirement today on a podcast. She won two national titles with the Huskies and landed on the wall in Werth by being named an All-American in 2012

— Daniel Connolly (@DanielVConnolly) December 13, 2023

I'm partial to lefties and Tiff was one of the best in UConn history. She expanded her game in the WNBA and she will be missed. She is only retiring from the WNBA and will play in the overseas leagues. She hasn't announced which one but she is playing currently in China.

She wasn't the best No. 3 in UConn history. That goes to Diana Taurasi. But she was damn good.

Tiff scored a career high 28 points against Four Seed California

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** Designates Upset

Wednesday, 12/13

Scores and Links

No. 5 Texas 88 Arizona 75

No. 18 Lousiville 74 Morehead State 48

No. 19 Marquette 76 No. 20 Creighton 70

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Allie Ziebell - 28 points (9-16 FG, 4-9 3-PT, 6-6 FT), 10 reb, 3 assists, 2 steals

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Straight from the Dog

The Courant had a great article on how Geno is using his four guard line up. In that article there was this -

"Shade is the reigning Big East Freshman of the Week and Arnold has won the award twice. With Samuels as the Week 1 winner, it's the first time the Huskies have had three players named conference Freshman of the Week since 1998-99 when Swin Cash, Asjha Jones, and Tamika Williams were honored with Williams winning Freshman of the Year at the end of the regular season."

That is some great company UConn's freshmen are keeping.

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This is a real head scratcher!!

My good friend Jane and former editor of my blog pointed out something that made her scratch her head. No, this isn't a picture of her although she is almost as cute!!

The Coaches poll came out on Tuesday and UConn dropped to No. 18. Now, they won their only 2 games and both by double digits. So you would think that another team must have had a pretty good week to move ahead. Of course I had to do some research and see who moved ahead and understand why it happened.

Well, I looked and now I'm scratching my head. It makes no sense to me.

Last week UConn was No. 17 after dropping to 4-3 on the season. They had 290 points.

Last week Louisville was No. 18 was 8-1 and had 276 points.

Over the next week UConn beat Ball State by 27 points and No. 24 North Carolina by 12 points. Louisville had one game and beat in-state rival Kentucky by 12 points.

Now, I follow WCBB pretty darn closely. Kentucky is NOT a good team. That win was ok, but certainly not better than the UNC win for UConn and add in UConn's win over Ball State and the Huskies had a better week. It's just the way it is.

So, what happened in the Coaches poll?

UConn is now 6-3. They have 272 points.

Louisville is now 9-1. They have 273 points.

Both teams went down in points, but UConn went down more. Huh??? The two teams in front of UConn and Louisville stayed in the same spot at 15 and 16. But they both had more points. Indiana went up 11 points and Kansas State went up 20 points. Were they that much more impressive?

Indiana won their only game a 10 point win over a mediocre Rutgers team. Kansas State won two games. A game against a terrible McNeese State team by 62 points and a 28 point win against a low end SEC team Missouri.

Why did their numbers go up and UConn's go down?

Does any of this make sense to you? I sure doesn't to me.

Yeah, I know, the polls don't mean anything. But it's clear that the voters really don't pay attention before filling out their ballots. Or they are just dumb. I vote for the later.

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Speaking of Louisville, they played Morehead State, a pretty weak team. The Cardinals won 74-48 in their warm-up game before playing UConn on Saturday. They did what they have done in all their games against weaker teams. They played everyone on the roster. Louisville had 10 players with double digit minutes. While they won by 26 points, they only shot 40% from the field, 3-13 on threes. As you will see in my Pregame Report (coming out soon) Louisville doesn't shoot well and has more turnovers than assists and did so in this game as well. What they do really well is get to the free throw line and hit a high percentage of those shots. Against Morehead State they were 15-18 for 83%.

More on Louisville later in the week.

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In a game with two future UConn opponents in it, No. 19 Marquette beat No. 20 Creighton 76-70. Marquette closed on a 12-6 run to win the game. Both teams will be a tough test for the Huskies. They play Marquette on 12/31 and then Creighton the very next game on 1/3 three days later.

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By PHIL

Sue Bird Part 1

Background

I’m a big fan of Steve Levitt who is probably best known to many of you as one of the co-authors of Freakonomics. That book spawned a podcast by the same name, led by Stephen Dubner, the other co-author of the book. Levitt was an occasional guest on that podcast, but later decided to start his own podcast “People I Mostly Admire”. His podcast had less emphasis on economic issues than the Freakonomics podcast, with a wide variety of interview subjects. I highly recommend both podcasts.

On Jan 23, 2021, Levitt decided to interview Sue Bird. It was his first time interviewing an athlete. He wondered how it would go, as did I. Many interviewers tend to be from the athletic world, and their shared experience helps the interviewer ask insightful questions. I wasn’t sure whether an interviewer whose main experience was economics (with a brief foray as a wannabe professional golfer) would work as an interviewer. In my opinion, it worked very well.

Not surprisingly, some of the interview questions covered material well known to serious UConn fans, but I found I learned a lot I hadn’t already known. More importantly, and the reason for this post, is that some of the back-and-forth covered some intriguing subjects. My plan is to summarize some of the interview and identify some areas for further discussion. Let’s see if this works.

Levitt starts:

“Some people collect comic books or sports paraphernalia or old vinyl records. My guest today, Sue Bird, collects championships”.

She helped negotiate the landmark collective bargaining agreement for the WNBA players.

Steve Levitt notes this is the first time interviewing an athlete. He wonders how it will go.

Levitt: “When did you realize how good you would be? Did you know that in high school?”

Bird: “Yeah, I think I started to understand in high school how things could turn out. Even as early as middle school to be honest. Colleges start recruiting you then… and your eyes start to get a little wider”

Levitt talks about a common phenomenon known in psychology circles about athletes in schools often thinking they are better than they are and have unrealistic expectations of pro careers. His sense was that Sue Bird didn’t suffer from overconfidence. She agreed and attributed it to her dad’s “brutal honesty”.

She wondered if a little more confidence early in life would’ve been helpful, thought it might’ve been but is happy with how things turned out.

Question for discussion

How do we think other players stack up in the confidence metric? There may be several ways to think of this, and sometimes confidence is obvious but sometimes it’s a quieter confidence. Paige seems like an openly confident player. I’ll bet that Gabby Williams was confident but it seemed more of a quiet confidence. Diana Taurasi seems like the quintessential confident player, but from some things I’ve read, she may have been more self-doubting than she let on. I think Maya Moore is in between Paige and Gabby, there’s not much doubt that she played with confidence but while it was easier to detect than in Gabby, it was less pronounced than in Diana.

I think KK and Ashlynn are both confident players, but I think that fact will be obvious in about ten seconds watching KK while you might have to watch Shade of a longer.

Levitt suggested that overconfidence can be an issue. No UConn players spring to mind, but I wonder if there are examples of anyone else that comes to mind. Let’s tread carefully here, I don’t want to open this up as a chance to knock down some player, so perhaps it could be discussed in generalities — do you think there are players who come to college with an unrealistic expectation of their abilities?

Milestone watch

• Aaliyah Edwards has 1340 career points after the North Carolina game. She is in 39th place. She needs 25 points to catch Charde Houston.

• Nika Mühl had 466 assists after the Ball State game. She is in sole possession of 18th place. She needs 9 to tie Svetlana Abrosimova.

• Paige Bueckers reached the 1000-point milestone, early in the second half in the game against North Carolina. The two points broke the halftime tie, and were the start of a UConn run. Paige ties Maya Moore reaching the milestone in 55 games, the fewest of any UConn player.

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SPIDER STATS

Plus one for every assist block point rebound and steal. I don’t add extra for offensive rebounds as it already seems to favor the bigs. Minus one for every missed shot (2, 3 or foul), turnover or foul committed.

We have Paige and they don’t!

UConn 74 North Carolina 53.

Paige 29, Aaliyah 16, Aubrey 13, Ashlynn 8, Nika 8, Qadence 1, KK 1, Ice -2.

Year: Paige 169, Aaliyah 138, Aubrey 115, Nika 73, KK 62, Ashlynn 41, Qadence 28, Ice 4.

Year per minute: Paige .65, Aubrey .55, Aaliyah .50, Qadence.27, Ashlynn .27, KK .27, Nika .25, Ice .03.

Paige Blockers!! Great win. Beat Louisville. The Great Eight!

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UCONN LINKS

Several links are pay sites. Sorry!

Tiffany Hayes retires from the WNBA

Bueckers and Pili are on this weeks starting five

Why Geno is usuing a four guard lineup