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OkSU game

got 1 of 2, 67-63 Purdue with 1:07 left timeout OSU.... Learn in the last 12 minutes has very much picked Purdue up on both ends of the floor.
 
Learn with O board and fouled, hits both fts, 69-65 after Collins bucket, 40 seconds left
 
That's the final, Petree with 20, Learn and Ellis with 12 each and Terry with 11....... Layden with 6 on 2-9 shooting, Harper 4 points on 2-5 shooting and Hardin 1 point on 0-2 and 1-2 fts......
 
We ended up winning rebounding 39-36 which is a huge turnaround after being down by 8 in the third quarter...... Woltman and Learn big part of that keeping OSU's big posts off the glass. Harper did not play the 4th quarter
 
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Wish I could have seen this one too. None the less, another good win for the ladies. 6 and 1 heading into a Wednesday night game at Mackey against a 5 and 1 Syracuse team in the Big 10/ACC Challenge. I'll take that.
 
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Wish I could have seen this one too. None the less, another good win for the ladies. 6 and 1 heading into a Wednesday night game at Mackey against a 5 and 1 Syracuse team in the Big 10/ACC Challenge. I'll take that.
I'd say our first good win this year and hopefully the last two games are a wakeup call for the coach
 
The coach is doing fine. They are a FG from being undefeated at 7-0.
That discounts that our last three pointer in the FSU game was a meaningless gimme.... But we will have to agree to disagree on how KG is doing so far this season
 
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The coach is doing fine. They are a FG from being undefeated at 7-0.
I think our biggest source of disagreement is the 5 cupcake games. You seem to put stock in those results, to me they were easy wins that UMinn could have beaten pretty easily in 4 of the 5 at least.

To me at least its like a world class chess player playing High school chess team as a warm up before a big tournament. No matter how many little mistakes he might make, he is still going to mop the board with them. This can lead to bad habits and systemic sloppy play. But when he makes those same errors against players of his skill level, he will lose.

My concerns are:

- CKG (paraphrased) "We only practice our offense 15-30 minutes a practice because the offense will take care of itself, it will always be there". To me that is not enough time to work all 10 players through to get them developmental time on the offense or for all combinations you will use in games to get practice time together, and players like Woltman and Learn who need it most are probably getting very little of that time. And our offense against FSU and OSU looked like it needed a lot more practice to avoid the scoring droughts and being stagnant.
- small ball lineup, Harper was dominated in both the last two games and we gave up lots of Offensive rebounds because of it. The Big Ten is not a league you can successfully play small ball in IMHO. Even CKG has stated we will need Woltman and Learn in conference games...... SO PLAY THEM AGAINST THE CUPCAKES SO THEY GET BETTER!!! Learn off the bench saved the OSU game... Maybe play her more so she develops more and you might win a couple extra tight games in conference play. Limiting her to 5 minutes of garbage time against SW Arkansas St polytechnic is not doing her any favors and could come back to bite this team in later games or in the transfer portal.

- Layden at point, she is not a good enough ball handler or distributor for this to work against good teams and is begging to get us pressed.... it also takes her away from being an offensive weapon where she is most effective.

- Hardin starting or playing large amounts of minutes..... she is an albatross around this teams neck and she will not help us get into the top half of the Big Ten standings.
 
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I think our biggest source of disagreement is the 5 cupcake games. You seem to put stock in those results, to me they were easy wins that UMinn could have beaten pretty easily in 4 of the 5 at least.

To me at least its like a world class chess player playing High school chess team as a warm up before a big tournament. No matter how many little mistakes he might make, he is still going to mop the board with them. This can lead to bad habits and systemic sloppy play. But when he makes those same errors against players of his skill level, he will lose.

My concerns are:

- CKG (paraphrased) "We only practice our offense 15-30 minutes a practice because the offense will take care of itself, it will always be there". To me that is not enough time to work all 10 players through to get them developmental time on the offense or for all combinations you will use in games to get practice time together, and players like Woltman and Learn who need it most are probably getting very little of that time. And our offense against FSU and OSU looked like it needed a lot more practice to avoid the scoring droughts and being stagnant.
- small ball lineup, Harper was dominated in both the last two games and we gave up lots of Offensive rebounds because of it. The Big Ten is not a league you can successfully play small ball in IMHO. Even CKG has stated we will need Woltman and Learn in conference games...... SO PLAY THEM AGAINST THE CUPCAKES SO THEY GET BETTER!!! Learn off the bench saved the OSU game... Maybe play her more so she develops more and you might win a couple extra tight games in conference play. Limiting her to 5 minutes of garbage time against SW Arkansas St polytechnic is not doing her any favors and could come back to bite this team in later games or in the transfer portal.

- Layden at point, she is not a good enough ball handler or distributor for this to work against good teams and is begging to get us pressed.... it also takes her away from being an offensive weapon where she is most effective.

- Hardin starting or playing large amounts of minutes..... she is an albatross around this teams neck and she will not help us get into the top half of the Big Ten standings.
Michael — I do think you bring up interesting points. I just don’t buy into them completely. As for practice, Coach Gearlds is at practice and none of us are. She knows what her team needs to work on better than us. Learn played a key part in our last victory so it is not like she was not ready for the moment.

And most of the time, isn’t Terry our PG? Layden last year showed herself to be streaky, I don’t think that is because she plays some PG but I know you disagree.

On Hardin I too am frustrated by her tendency to miss wide open shots. But she actually is hitting 0.447% FGs and 0.429% of her 3PT shots. The only player with a better % for 3PT is Ellis at 0.600% (and why is SHE not starting and getting more minutes? - I don’t know but I am pretty sure KG has her reasons.) And I think you discount Hardin’s abilities on D. I think that is what Coach values from her almost as much as her occasional hot streaks.

Anyway, interesting to discuss. I think the team has done about how most of us expected (and better than I expected this last weekend.)
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Michael — I do think you bring up interesting points. I just don’t buy into them completely. As for practice, Coach Gearlds is at practice and none of us are. She knows what her team needs to work on better than us. Learn played a key part in our last victory so it is not like she was not ready for the moment.

And most of the time, isn’t Terry our PG? Layden last year showed herself to be streaky, I don’t think that is because she plays some PG but I know you disagree.

On Hardin I too am frustrated by her tendency to miss wide open shots. But she actually is hitting 0.447% FGs and 0.429% of her 3PT shots. The only player with a better % for 3PT is Ellis at 0.600% (and why is SHE not starting and getting more minutes? - I don’t know but I am pretty sure KG has her reasons.) And I think you discount Hardin’s abilities on D. I think that is what Coach values from her almost as much as her occasional hot streaks.

Anyway, interesting to discuss. I think the team has done about how most of us expected (and better than I expected this last weekend.)
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Even some minutes with Terry on the court, CKG has Layden on the point and Terry on the wing.... I do think it is affecting Layden's game, but the world would be boring if we all agreed all the time.

Hardin's D is not near good enough to justify going 4 on 5 on offense. And Hardin shot a good percentage against our weak opponents last year, only to disappear in the big games and most of conference play as she did this last week. Totally agree on Ellis.

Learn being able to save us is not a credit to how she has been played but an indictment..... How much better might she be if she had gotten meaningful minutes in the first five games? Might we be 7-0 now????
 
Anyway, interesting to discuss. I think the team has done about how most of us expected (and better than I expected this last weekend.)
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Just to address this statement. We are right where I thought we would be, the first 5 opponents were awful teams, guaranteed wins. I figured FSU and OSU were tossup games, we would likely win one.

Buts lets look closer at who we have played:

Marshall, predicted finish in their conference 10th and have since lost to Norfolk St and Duquesne
Murray St predicted 4th in MVC
SIUE predicted 6th in Ohio Valley Conference and currently 0-5 with only a couple games below 30 point blowouts
IndSU predicted 8th MVC
Harvard picked 4th out of 8 Ivy's
FSU predicted 9th in ACC Syracuse predicted 10th
OSU predicted 9th B12

who we have left OOC:
IllSt picked 2nd MVC could be a tough game
Syracuse predicted 10th ACC
Campbell won the Big South regular season last year, could not find a prediction for that conference for this year
Tx A&M picked to finish 11th in the SEC

When I call our schedule soft, I don't think I am exaggerating at all and losing any of these games is not exactly encouraging for our chances in the BT, which is not the strongest at the top, but is deep in talented teams... I predicted us to be 10-1 to 8-3 with 11-0 not unreasonable while still predicting us to finish in the middle to bottom half of the Big Ten standings by years end.
 
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