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GO UCONN!!!!!
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The Boys and their Dogs -
Under the UConn blanket!!
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Geno Auriemma said on his radio show that he doesn't expect Aaliyah Edwards or Nika Mühl to be back next season.
— Daniel Connolly (@DanielVConnolly) March 7, 2024
He believes both are ready to move to the next step in their career.
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2024 BIG EAST Women’s Basketball Tournament
presented by Jeep
presented by Jeep
Mohegan Sun Arena – Uncasville, Conn.
March 8 – First Round
Game 1: 8 seed Butler vs. 9 seed Providence, 11 a.m. (BEDN)
Game 2: 7 seed Seton Hall vs. 10 seed DePaul, 1:30 p.m. (BEDN)
Game 3: 6 seed Georgetown vs. 11 seed Xavier, 4 p.m. (BEDN)
March 9 – Quarterfinals
Game 4: Game 1 winner vs. 1 seed UConn, Noon (FS1)
Game 5: 5 seed Marquette vs. 4 seed Villanova, 2:30 p.m. (FS2)
Game 6: Game 2 winner vs. 2 seed Creighton, 7 p.m. (FS2)
Game 7: Game 3 winner vs. 3 seed St. John's, 9:30 p.m. (FS2)
March 10 – Semifinals
Game 8: Game 4 winner vs. Game 5 winner, 2:30 p.m. (FS1)
Game 9: Game 6 winner vs. Game 7 winner, 5 p.m. (FS1)
March 11 - Final
Game 10: Game 8 winner vs Game 9 winner, 7 p.m. (FS1)
All times Eastern
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Based on "chalk" UConn will face Butler, Villanova, Creighton.
The Huskes are 5-0 against these teams with an MOV of 26, 44, 21, 20, and 21.
If they win, the games will be on Saturday, at noon, Sunday at 2:30 and Monday at 7:00.
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** Designates Upset
No. 5 USC Arizona (Late Game)
No. 7 UCLA No. 22 Utah (Late Game)
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Archbishop Mitty vs Long Island Lutheran
A spectaular HS game with No. 1 in the country Mitty being led by No. 33 in white UConn's own Morgan Cheli. She is going to be great for the Huskies.
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Straight from the Dog
What a great conference season for the UConn women's basketball team. They not only went undefeated, going 18-0 in the Big East, but they swept the conference awards.
Geno won the BE conference Coach of the Year and boy, did he ever deserve it. The Huskies were once again hit badl by the injury bug losing starters and bench depth. Geno held them together and with 3 upper classmen and 4 freshmen, UConn was able to win every game.
Paige was the preseason player of the year and she did not disappoint. Through all the trials and tribulations the Huskies went through, she was the steadying force all season long.
Aaliyah made the 1st team Big East conference team and I'm sure she got a few votes for POY. She had an amazing season and was as consistant as anyone on the team. The only big is not easy expecially when you are only 6'3".
Nika made 2nd team Big East and was as good as she has even been. Thank goodness for her. She led the team in 3 point shooting percentage. No, you didn't read that wrong. And her playmaking was amazing. Hopefully she will break the career record for assists for the Huskies before the season ends.
Ashlynn Shade played better than anyone imagined and because of this she was Honorable Mention and a well deserved Big East Freshman of the Year. I bet it was a close vote with KK Arnold.
And KK was honored in her own right making the Big East All-Freshmen team.
So congrats to all the UConn award winners. We are so proud of you!!
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In case you missed it earlier in the blog, Geno believes that Nika and Aaliyah both will not be returning to UConn next season.
Wonder why he did it now? Wonder why he didn't let the two players just announce it themselves?
I can give you a good guess. It's a message to the remaining UConn targets for 2024. Sarah Strong, Emely Rodriquez and Kaitlen Chen are all on UConn's radar and there will be for sure one available scholarship and time will tell if there are more.
This may be the start of recruiting news over the next couple of weeks.
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By PHIL
Ann Meyers Drysdale award finalists
I thought it be worth exploring in more detail.
One of Doggydaddy’s points is worth emphasizing:
It's a matter of what stats the voters find the most important.
I’m not about to argue the points aren’t important. They obviously are very important. We have all witnessed the hoopla around Clark’s breaking of multiple scoring records. All deserved. If you want to create awards to honor scoring leaders, I’m with you, but note that honoring scoring leaders doesn’t require a selection committee or an examination of any facet of the game other than the points per game. Again, not to say that points per game isn’t important, just that if you are going to have a selection committee, a long and then a short list of nominees and a final winner, you are essentially saying that multiple stats (including possibly intangibles) are relevant, and those involved in the selection process must determine how much weight should be assigned to each stat.
Let’s start by examining some of the stats provided by DD
The first one is minutes per game. I’m not going to suggest outright dismissing the stat, but I’ll argue that it ought to carry very little weight. If the minutes per game were extremely low, that might be a red flag but that’s almost impossible to be an issue. A player can have decent shooting percentages even if playing few minutes but when many of the stats such as points rebounds assists in turnovers are calculated on a per game basis, it’s virtually impossible to play only a few minutes and amass per game stats among the best (with the obvious exception of turnovers). I briefly mulled over whether player averaging close to 40 minutes per game would be meaningful, but I suspect that while that stat would be a testament to conditioning it may be more a reflection of lack of bench has nothing to do with this award. It’s too late to say “in short” , but I don’t think this stat deserves any meaningful weight.
Rebounds per game is a more interesting metric. More rebounds is good. Four of the five nominees are clustered in the 3 to 5 rebounds per game, with Watkins the positive outlier at 7.2 rebounds per game. It’s probably not a coincidence that she is the tallest of the nominees. That should not be counted against her, it may well help her get additional rebounds. However, roughly speaking, when you look at the five positions, you are usually expecting to get the bulk of your rebounds from the post and two forward positions. Rebounds garnered by guards are always good, but they are typically gravy — a welcome part of the whole package but not the main point of a shooting guard.
Imagine you’re the coach of a brand-new team, and you are ready to decide on your starters and main rotation. Two of the players are both skilled but have very different strengths. One shoots very well, and pulls down an average number of rebounds. The other is a so-so shot but is a rebounding monster. Which player is more likely to start and earn more playing time? It sounds like a trick question, but it isn’t, or at least not in the way you might think. The real answer is that it depends. It might depend situationally on the opponent and what’s needed more, or even down to the scoring time remaining in whose best in that particular situation, but over the course of the season, either one might be the better choice. You might even conclude that the strengths roughly offset, and they both deserve a lot of minutes. So, you as a coach might view them as comparable. Nothing wrong with that. However, if the conference asked for nominees for awards, and one of the awards is for a shooting guard, you aren’t conflicted. If there’s an award for a rebounding guard, your choices easy but if the award is for shooting guard, it’s also easy just the other player. This is an award for shooting guard. Rebounds are great, but they can hardly be highly weighted.
I have some thoughts on turnovers, where Paige has the clear lead over all the candidates albeit only a marginal lead over Osborn, but let’s cut to the chase.
This is an award for a shooting guard so nothing wrong with considering multiple stats and even intangibles but front and center must be the ability to shoot the basketball. That’s not the same as aggregate points. You can get a lot of points if you take a lot of shots. You have to hit a high enough percentage to persuade your coach it makes sense to keep on shooting, but every missed field goal attempt means another player didn’t have a chance to make the score.
There is no question that Watkins scores a lot of points — she’s second in the nation in points per game, but she does so while hitting 41.6% of her shots. That’s not terrible in the absolute sense of the term, but that places her 213th in the nation. (She accomplishes this by taking 35% of her teams shot attempts, while the other four candidates range from 18% to 26%.)
Frankly, it seems a bit head scratching to consider her seriously as the nation’s best shooting guard. Maybe we could design some other award where she would be a clear leader. She is considered a front runner for freshman of the year, and while I won’t automatically anoint her as the expected winner of that award it makes a lot of sense to me that she’s in the running. But if we are talking about a shooting guard, 213th overall doesn’t cut it and even if we restrict it to three-pointers where she is relatively better, she still ranked 106 in the nation.
What’s the best single metric for a shooting guard? I suggest true shooting percentage, which I talked about in an earlier post. I did that calculation for individual games, but it can be applied to the entire season. It is the results for the five contenders:
• 65.3% Paige Bueckers
• 55.4% JJ Quinerly
• 52.5% Ta’Niya Latson
• 53.9% Charisma Osborne
• 53.0% JuJu Watkins
This is a good example of a stat where a graph best illustrates the point:
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Remember the kid’s game where the question was “which one of these is not like the others?”
Four of these five candidates are all clustered in the 52% to 55% range, which is very, very good, but one of them sticks out.
No, I’m not going to argue that true shooting percentage should be the only metric. As argued before, if we go with that metric alone there’s no need for a selection committee.
However, many of these candidates are reasonably close to each other on most of the metrics, but I’m arguing that on the most important metric of all Paige is head and shoulders above the rest.
Milestone Watch
• Aaliyah Edwards now has 973 rebounds with 7 against Providence. She now needs 34 to catch Gabby Williams in 8th place.
• Nika Mühl had 632 assists after her 7 assists in the Providence game. She is tied Renee Montgomery for fourth place. She needs only 5 more to tie Jen Rizzoti for 3rd.
• Geno now has 1206 wins.
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.
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UCONN LINKS
Several links are pay sites. Sorry!
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