****************************************************
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
GO UCONN!!!!!
***********************************************************************
MVLi is back at it again
— UConn Women’s Basketball (@UConnWBB) January 25, 2024
Aaliyah Edwards is Katrina McClain Award Top 10 Candidate!
***********************************************************
Geno Pregame Interview
Nika Muhl Pregame Interview
Ashlynn Shade Pregame Interview
Aaliyah Edwards Pregame Interview
***********************************************************************
Ok, did Notre Dame overlook Syracuse? Was it a trap game? I'm not buying it. Syracuse beat Notre Dame earlier inthe season so you know they were ready to get revenge. They were at home with a rabid Notre Dame crowd. No, it wasn't them overlooking the Orange.
Notre Dame just was exhausted in the fourth quarter and were smoked 28-14. They basically played 6 players and you could see they were fatigued. I don't know what was wrong with Marshall other than she didn't play well. She only played 9 minutes. It looked like around 2 minutes a quarter. In and then out. Strange.
The Irish shot horribly in thie game. They shot 33.3% from the field AND from the 3 point line. A supposed good rebounding team they were outrebounded 50-34.
They better play much better on Saturday or it could get ugly quickly.
More about Notre Dame in my Pregame Report but here are the game highlights.
***********************************************************************
** Designates Upset
Games Thursday January 25th, 2024
*************************************************
— ASGRBasketball (@ASGRBasketball) January 24, 2024
Independent: 1@TDNike pic.twitter.com/X05692MDCm
-----------------------------------------------------------
From a local article on Leah Macy ('25):
During her absence from the floor, Macy also got to take a New Year’s visit to UConn, one of the many college basketball powers in pursuit of her commitment — “I really enjoyed it. It was amazing,” she said. She said she plans to take the recruiting process slowly and will probably make no more college visits until her high school season is over.
“I would say I’m down to like, eight (schools) or so,” Macy said. “And I’m just still building relationships with the coaches. We can take official visits now, but I don’t think I’m gonna take any until I commit, just because I took the unofficials I want. So I think I’m gonna wait it out this high school season.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morgan Cheli No. 33 for Mitty
Great article on Allie Zeibell
*************************************************
Straight from the Dog
Well, that was a fun game if over the top reactions are your thing. South Carolina pulled it out at the end winning 76-70. They broke LSU's 29 game home winning streak. Good. I'm glad that South Carolinka will probably be undefeated when playing the Huskies. What a win that would be for UConn. Notre Dame first of course.
Just a couple of observations.
Are these players on amphetomines? My god, the hyper acts of the players after making a good play is just over the top. I guess I'm more old school.
The blocked shots by Cardoso and Reese on each other in consecutive plays was fun to see. They just about knocked out their eye lashes. The smirk on their faces is so annoying.
Speaking of Reese, what a bad play fouling out with 4 minutes left. It wasn't even a questionable call. From behind she smacked the players arm as she was shooting. Just bad leadership and just really dumb.
I do like Bree Hall. She hit a could of big threes and is probably at 50% on the season. Nice job. Great post game interview as well.
Ok, I don't even want to talk any more about these two teams. I don't like them, their coaches, they way they play and the way they are coaches.
*****************************************
By PHIL
Weakest Teams
A friend (Linkster) recently made an interesting observation. The remark was that the weakest women’s basketball teams are far weaker than the weakest men’s basketball teams relative to the top teams.
I think the statement suggested that the range of the top 100 women’s teams is roughly comparable to the range of all the men’s teams (talking about Division I).
There is a relatively easy way to measure this claim, which has the interesting side benefit that it can be measured over time. Let’s do both.
First, let’s get an annoying technicality out of the way. There are 362 D1 men’s teams. One of them stands out and not in a positive way. Mississippi Valley State is ranked last whether you look at Massey or NET. “So what” you might be saying, “somebody has to be last”. True, but they aren’t just last, they are materially worse than the next-to-last team. “How much worse?” I don’t hear you asking but I’m going to answer anyway. The Massey rating differs by 0.55 which doesn’t tell you much of anything, so I will put it in perspective. That difference is more than the difference between UConn men and Dayton men. I don’t want to discuss them further — I’m just explaining why my subsequent calculations will ignore that team.
If you go to the Massey site they have an option to do a matchup. Enter two teams and it will calculate an expected outcome. Choose the current number one team (Purdue) and the next-to-last team (Stonehill) and Massey predicts that Purdue will win: 90-53 A 37-point margin
Let’s try the same thing on the women’s side but instead of using the last or next-to-last team we will use Fairfield, currently ranked number 101 on the women’s side.
Massey projects that a game between South Carolina and Fairfield would result in a score of: 86-49 A 37-point margin
(To do this properly you would really need to examine a few more data points, but the single selection is good enough to make the general observation.)
In other words, roughly stated, the difference in talent between the top and the bottom men’s team is very comparable to the difference between the top and roughly 100 ranked women’s teams.
My friend was exactly right.
We can use this approach to look at how things changed over time. (Caveat I am looking at a single snapshot, and a more proper analysis would look at multiple data points, but the single snapshot will illustrate the point.)
Let’s go back a decade to 2014.
That year Florida was the top-ranked men’s team. Let’s see how they would fare against the next-to-last men’s team Southern Utah. Massey projects that Florida would beat Southern Utah: 80-42 A 38-point margin
in 2014, UConn was the top-ranked women’s team in Utah was number 101.
Massey projects that UConn would be Utah: 79-38 a 41-point margin.
The margin for the men’s team is only one point different over the decade, which is definitely noise, not anything meaningful.
The calculations for the women’s team suggests that the margin has dropped from 41 to 37, suggesting that parity is improving, but the single snapshot isn’t solid enough to make that a definitive conclusion. It might be nice for some enterprising young statistical analyst to use the entire datasets to see if some conclusions about changing parity in the women’s game is statistically supportable. It’s my gut reaction that some of the improvement is more pronounced the teams beyond 100, which obviously isn’t captured in the calculation I just shared, but there is a hint that there is some improved parity among the top teams.
Milestone watch
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.
UConn 98 Marquette 47
Net positives/minutes played: All Universe Paige 29/32, Ashlynn 23/38, Nika 16/29, KK 11/29, Aaliyah 10/30, Qadence 4/16, Ice 3/21, Ines 0/3, Amari -1/2.
The fab five! Lay up practice for Ice. Zero assists for KK, some of her drives should result in beautiful dishes.
Covid is the Katie Abrahamson-Henderson of the disease world- you get beat up, it is ugly, you just hope to survive without lasting injury.
********************************************************
UCONN LINKS
Several links are pay sites. Sorry!
*************************************
Message Boards
UConn Territory - The best UConn women's message board ever!!!
Vol Nation - Tennessee women's basketball board
ND Nation - Notre Dame women's basketball board
Rebkell - WCBB for everyone that thinks they are smarter than everyone else
UCONN Information
UConn 2023-2024 Statistics (updated after 1st game)
I'm always open for suggestions. Just please reply to this blog or email me at:
No comments:
Post a Comment