Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 1/3/2024

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Even my daughter (mother to Logan and Barrett)

is looking for my Blog!!!

GO UCONN!!!!!

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Here is my UConn/Creighton Pregame Report

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Family ties with a love for basketball 💙

🎬 Watch Episode 2 of The Standard: In Season, on https://t.co/ANpv1RV17U #BleedBlue | @CokeNortheast
— UConn Women’s Basketball (@UConnWBB) January 2, 2024

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** Designates Upset

Tuesday January 2nd, 2024

No. 4 Iowa 76 Michigan State 73

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No new news about recruits so here is a couple of videos of two of UConn's 2024 players that are coming next year, Morgan Cheli and Allie Ziebell.

And some late breaking news. UConn coach Morgan Valley is now following on social media 6'6" Pania Davis, where she is playing basketball at New Mexico Junior College. Needs a little work but you can't teach height and UConn could always use another big. The first video is from a year ago. The second is more recent and you can see some changes in her body. She looks stronger. She would have 3 years of eligibility.

December 2022

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Simmoms (@leftymike)

October 2023

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Straight from the Dog

From my friend Cori - "I listened to the post game and CD specifically said Nika had a great game despite not scoring much. And, she called out fans and posters on message boards for being too dismissive of all the things that Nika does. CD said Nika is a leader and brings so many intangibles that contribute to the team's success and Nika does not get enough credit for what she does. CD doesn't give out praise like that lightly."

Thank you Coach Daily. All those fans deserve calling out. Nika is the heart and soul of this team and I don't understand the mindset of the fans who can't see that.

And this season she has really improved her shooting stats while playing a terrific team game. She is shooting 50% from the field and 40% on threes. Last year she shot 42% from the field and 34% on threes. Huge difference.

Keep up the good work Nika. You have support from THIS UConn fan.

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Phil sent me a message with an UGGY candidate. I'm thinking it would be a good one since Phil never has done that before. Then I looked at the link for the box score and figured it was a prank. This certainly could not be a real game. I mean, the name of the poor opponent is the College Of Biblical Studies Ambassadors. But it was!!!

I just don't have the heart to give a team an UGGY for a game that never should have been played. But I will share the numbers.

CBSA lost this game 159-18. How they scored 18 points is beyond me. I had them for 14.

They shot 8-43 from the floor for 18.6%, 1-13 on threes, they were outrebounded 60-19, 3 assists and the craziest number of all, 52 turnovers. 52.

God bless the College of Biblical Studies Ambassadors. Such a brave team.

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By PHIL

UCLA #1?

One of the AP voters selected UCLA as the number one team.

I’m going to provide some arguments in support of the selection, then I’m going to explain why they are wrong.

Support

UCLA has now beaten four top 25 teams:

• UConn
• Florida State
• Ohio State
• USC

No one else can say that.

I hear gamecock fans protesting, “hold on, we have four wins over top 25 teams!”. Well, it’s true that South Carolina played and defeated four teams who were ranked top 25 at the time, but North Carolina and Maryland are no longer ranked in the top 25, and Maryland isn’t even receiving votes. You are entitled to say that you beat a team ranked top 25 at the time but when we assess how strong South Carolina is, we want to look at the opposition as they are currently ranked not how they were ranked at the time.

That means UCLA can boast that they have twice as many wins over the current top 25 teams as South Carolina. We can’t use record as a tiebreaker, as both teams are 12 – 0. Strength of schedule slightly favors South Carolina, but both have played very strong schedules, and the important thing is the top teams played, not whether the weakest teams played by South Carolina are slightly stronger than the weakest teams they by UCLA.

That’s a decent argument and I can understand why anyone might find it convincing.

Wrong

But I don’t.

I put a lot of stock in Massey ratings (some might think too much).

I think many people look at the Massey rankings rather than the ratings and to be honest that’s what I do most of the time. The rating is the numeric grant metric calculated by Massey, which is then sorted, and the rankings are the values one, two, three assigned to the ratings in order.

Most of the time the rankings are all that’s necessary but is a case where looking at the rating value is insightful.

Massey has Carolina ahead of UCLA, but I’m not going to use that fact to say case closed. For example, look at UCLA and Baylor, ranked number two and number three in Massey. The rating for UCLA is 8.95 and the rating for Baylor is 8.95. I’m assuming they differ in the third decimal place, but for all intents and purposes, Massey treats UCLA and Baylor as essentially tied.

However, look at South Carolina, with a value of 9.56. I realize if you don’t look at these numbers on a regular basis you won’t have a sense of whether the difference between the South Carolina value and UCLA value is significant. This is where graphical representation can be very helpful.

I created a graph of the Massey rate values for the top 20 teams.

This graphic gives a little different impression than the simple ordinal rankings. You can see that UCLA and Baylor are virtually the same, you can see the separation between Texas, Connecticut, Indiana, and Colorado, and then you can see that the six teams starting with West Virginia are all virtually identical.

The key point though is that the gap between South Carolina and UCLA represented by the top two red lines is virtually the same as the gap between UCLA and Virginia Tech.

It isn’t simply the case that UCLA is ranked lower than South Carolina, the gap between the two is extraordinarily large.

Of course, that doesn’t mean South Carolina is a lock for the national championship. By coincidence, if you look at the values for last year, South Carolina had close to the identical gap over LSU and we know how that turned out.

However, if you want to choose the best team now, Massey rating suggests that not only is South Carolina the dog but it isn’t close.

Addendum: After sending my post to DD, I stumbled across an article by Mitchell Northam, who was the only AP voter to select UCLA as number one. My post was written and sent in before reading this but I think my post stands up well.

The only AP voter to rank UCLA over South Carolina in the top-25 poll explains why

Milestone watch

• Aaliyah Edwards had 1400 career points after the Toronto Metropolitan game. She scored 19 in the Marquette game to reach 1419. This moves her past Tamika Williams, Chris Gedney, and Peggy Walsh. She now needs 25 points to tie Kalana Greene.

• Nika Mühl had 492 assists after the Toronto Metropolitan game. She had 7 assists in the Marquette game to reach 499 assists. She is now in 14th place. She needs 32 to catch Laura Lishness in 13th place.

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By David in Naples

UConn plays Creighton Wednesday at 7 pm on SNY. Here are some fun stats for your enjoyment while we wait for another Huskies' victory.

1. Nika has 499 career assists, just 1 away from 500. She is in 13th place with Kelly Faris up next at 525.

2. Paige has scored 250 points so far and leads the team with a 19.8 ppg average. She now has 1,079 career points, good for 49th place.

3. KK and Ashlynn have score 116 and 114 points this season respectively. Good for 4th and 5th place this season behind Paige, Aaliyah (221) and Aubrey (127).

4. Nika does not have the most personal fouls. She has 27 vs Aaliyha (37) and KK (32). Aubrey has only 11 fouls in 294 minutes of play..!

5. Excluding the Toronto wipeout, UConn has given up 63, 64, 62, 62 and 64 points in their last 5 games. Opponents are shooting 37.5% from the field.

6. Aslynn had 1 free throw in the first 12 games. She went 4-4 against Marquette.

7. Paige has 53 rebounds, but only 3 offensive. Nika has 51 rebounds. (14 offensive)

8. Nika leads the team with 400 minutes played. Aaliyah is 2nd at 391 and Paige is 3rd at 373. All three have startd all 13 games.

9. Qadence, KK and Nika are all shooting 40% from 3 point range.

10. Paige has the most free throw tries at 54 and has made 80%. (43-54)

Go Huskies..!!

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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.

UConn 112 Marquette 43.

Great crowd! Paige is incredible!!

Net positives/minutes: Aaliyah 29/30, Paige 27/31, Nika 17/34, Aubrey 11/19, KK 7/25, Ashlynn 7/33, Qadence 5/14, Amari 2/3, Ines 1/2, Ice -1/9.

Aubrey uncharacteristically poor foul shooting, Ice 0 rebounds 4 fouls, Nika 10 rebounds.

Super aggressive defense after the opening 0-10 debacle. Play fast and win.

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UCONN LINKS

Several links are pay sites. Sorry!

Paige embracing new role a power forward

Play a complete game. Creighton prepares for UConn

UConn taking roll on to Creighton

Muhl has changes roles but she is still in control