Didn't get to watch but just saw the box.... and I can honestly say there are some red flags with our minutes distribution right away. Hopefully we realize where our strengths are sooner than later.
Yeah, and in the halfcourt too. To me, that was the big difference in the game. We constantly were reacting to the Noles running past us, rather than anticipating and moving our feet to be in position to cut them off. Happened all game long. If we just aren't athletic enough, we'll be losing to quick teams all year. I choose to believe that we are athletic enough, and just need to work hard in practice at stopping those quick drives. However, there's not much defense against a player like the FSU freshman, Latson. She was far and away the best player on the court. But we can assume a player like that will get her points, and we can still win the game by taking away the other players' scoring opportunities. Back to work, Gators. And oh, yeah, we need to finish on the layups.
I agree. They just seemed lethargic at times, like I wrote. I understand they haven't played together long so it's harder to anticipate what a teammate will do. When you have to think and react you play slower. Put backs should be free points and they missed quite a few. I also wonder why, with a size advantage, the entire offense that I saw was being run from the high post up. Yes, that potentially opens back cuts but I'd have posted them low and gotten f$u in foul trouble and taken easy old-fashioned 3-point plays all game and popped it out to Deans when f$u sagged. I missed a lot making dinner for my grandchildren though. LOL!
Bless that EastTN didn't see the box score at half time when Dut had played all 20 minutes I just went through the PBP, we shot the exact same percentage on layups (10-25) as we did from 3 (8-20) Execution was pretty bad in all facets but I think/hope most of that will iron itself out over the next month(s) as the team gets more comfortable playing together. I'm most surprised by the lack of coherent game plan from the coaching staff. Are we really missing Julie Plank? I don't think it's rocket science that starting a giant lineup, then trying to play full-court against a small, fast team is not the best approach. Our starting lineup has to now be something like -20 or -30 (+/-) on the year against mostly lousy competition. Also concerned about our depth. I see 5 pretty darn good players and not much beyond that. Rimdal and Dut seem the best hope to be serviceable rotation players so I can't fault them getting minutes. But both Correa and Deans went down holding their knee in this one and though they came back in and seemed okay, it really made me think that even one more big injury could make this season a real struggle. That all said, FSU did play really well, much better than I expected based on their scores to date. We'll see if they continue that or just overperformed in the rivalry game, but I think they'll be an NCAA team. Latson had I think at least 5 "+1s", really impressive, looks like a heavy favorite for national FOY at this point.