If Shannon had a better idea about how to attack the Pitt press, don't you think after all these years that she would have shared it?
Easiest thing in the world after a loss is to bash the coach.
I'd say he had them ready to play, because they came out of the gate and managed to open up a six-point lead. Or do you think his prep work had nothing to do with that, and it was all despite RS? Pitt has a great player who carried her team for the first half -- the rest of them certainly weren't killing us.
Line up Pitt's starting five with our starting five, and lots of stuff is quickly visible. Line up their first three off the bench with our first three off the bench... same thing. Big difference in size, and Ena may be the only one we have who begins to match Pitt quickness.
For all the questions about Lohman, I thought she played pretty well while giving away a lot of height.
We really needed to have Mandy handling the ball against the press -- we suffered most, I thought, when Johnson was on the point. A weakness there: she hangs on to the ball too long, although on occasion she can make a great pass. But she doesn't belong down low with the tall trees, and we would have done better, in my opinion, if somebody else had been handling the ball.
Cross-court passes play into the defense's hands, and the sideline/half-court line take away a whole lot of options for places to go. Got to get the ball ahead...
Ena, who was 19 points and 14 boards vs PSU, almost evaporated, and she had to be the one most disappointed by her night's work, with family et al. That was a huge hole from somebody who has made big contributions down the stretch.
LG didn't have a lot of size to start the season, and with the losses of Mandy, Rogers and Lohman, I don't see next year's team being a BETTER team than this year. With some others, it seems fairly obvious that Portland will be the team to beat, and whether you want to acknowledge it or not, the cats have made a lot of progress under their new coach. And they may have more beef and speed than we have coming back.
Take it for what it's worth -- we played a top 15 team, and we're certainly not at that level. We played well for 17 minutes, and I think our women may have been shell-shocked by what they encountered; certainly Rogers, who is a great shooter, was never able to get on line again. And then we went through the steals/turnovers and started just casting almost wild shots, instead of being a little more patient.
It was a good season, we saw some really good basketball. Joslyn could not make the difference all by herself -- and at Stanford, she won't have to do that.
Next year will bring what it brings.