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January 11, 2009
Huskies Happy At Season's Midpoint
The Huskies boarded their chartered flight home Saturday night feeling pretty good about themselves. Sure, there were some lapses in their 85-55 victory over West Virginia. Sure, they gave up as many as nine 3-pointers for the third time this season. But nobody’s perfect on this earth, and these are issues that Geno Auriemma will address in practice as the Big East portion of the schedule grinds on.
But for what minor warts this team possesses, UConn is 15-0 for the second straight season and for the seventh time since 1994-95. They are getting sensational contributions from Renee Montgomery and Maya Moore. Tina Charles is enjoying the best season of her career. Kalana Greene continues to progress from three off-season knee operations. And freshmen Caroline Doty and Tiffany Hayes have made an immediate impact.
Geno said the worst thing about this two-game swing to Tampa and Morgantown was that the new wedges that he brought with him to Tampa weren’t up to par. He said before the team left that he wanted to get some things accomplished this week. And he did. Mostly at the defensive end. UConn held South Florida, who had been the nation’s top scoring team to 37 points, 24.6 percent shooting and forced 26 turnovers. Saturday, it held West Virginia to 30.3 percent shooting in the second half.
``You know what was good? Because you don’t have a game Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and you don’t have class you do get a chance to spend a little extra time on certain things,’’ Geno said. ``So we did some spend a little extra time on Thursday and Friday, and most of it was on the defensive end working on some of our rotations and our press and that sort of thing. And that was good because I think before that we were spending way too much time in our offense and as a result … the week of exams before we went and played Penn State each kid probably shot about 500 shots a day and then we go down there and we’re like 6-for-50. I don’t understand it sometimes. That’s why I don’t worry about it. As long as we’re playing good defense and rebounding the ball pretty well and playing pretty smart the other stuff will take care of itself.’’
Renee said she is pleased with the team’s focus right now. The Huskies are clearly the favorites to win the national championship at this juncture. They are shooting 54.3 percent from the field, which would be the best in team history. They are averaging 88.2 points, which would be third all-time. They are allowing an average of 53.3 points, which would be fourth all-time, and they are holding teams to 33.7 percent shooting, which would tie for sixth all-time.
Geno and his staff continually evaluate this team. He doesn’t look at it as if UConn is 15-0. He looks at every game as its own entity. It’s that ``what have you done for me lately’’ type of thinking. And it’s this type of thinking that keeps the players striving to improve following each game. DePaul is next Tuesday night at Gampel Pavilion.
``It’s important that you just play the games that you’re playing and you play the style of play that you’re playing against,’’ Geno said. ``I think we’re getting better in some areas. I don’t like the fact that we gave up nine 3s (Saturday). So that’s kind of an issue that we need to keep addressing because that’s one area that could hurt you. But overall this is a great group of guys. It’s a great group of teammates. They enjoy each other’s company. They play well together. We’ve got great leadership. Our freshmen are really good. This is a really good group. Where they go from here, though, I don’t know. Tuesday’s a new day. Tuesday’s a new game against DePaul and then we reevaluate after every game. The way I look at it (this) morning is we won last night. Alright, now what did we do and what do we have to do better? So it’s like a series of evaluations after every single game. One thing we made a point of is we showed them some stats of the last four games. So sometimes we’ll take a block. But we don’t usually look at the whole 15 because sometimes with the competition early on it’s not really relevant. But if we keep it in short term, short blocks we can self-evaluate it. And so far I kind of like where we are.’’
Here are a couple of things Geno discussed in his postgame comments last night that was interesting.
Renee was 4-of-9 shooting from 3-point range (9-of-17 overall), but she passed up a couple of open 3s to instead drive to the basket.
``I hate when Renee passes up open 3s,’’ Geno said. ``And I think when she has to pass them up I would like for her to make a good decision. Either pull-up and take like a 15-footer or when the opportunity is there take the ball to the basket. But Renee … Her confidence level has been since her freshman year and is now so high that she’ll just take the ball to the basket regardless, whether there’s an open 3 there or not. She just wants to get to rim sometimes and she makes up her mind to do that and that’s what she’s going to do. And we’re trying to make sure that she understands when to and when not to. But I’d like for there to be a balance. Some drives. Some pull-ups. Some 3s. She took nine 3s out of 17 shots. That’s probably a good ratio for her.’’
Caroline (eight points, three rebounds, two assists) played 23 minutes and did not start the second half. Tiffany (10 points, five rebounds, three assists) played a season-high 27 minutes. Tina (eight points, nine rebounds) played a season-low 14 minutes. Kaili McLaren (five points, five rebounds, two steals) played 20 minutes.
``With Tina there was no one out there that she could matchup with,’’ Geno said. ``I don’t know that she took advantage of some of the situations that I think she had. And I thought that Kaili would be much more difficult for them to handle. And Tiffany … I just felt like defensively and in some other areas I thought she matched up better than Caroline did. And that’s probably what’s going to happen during the year. You’re going to have some guys who are going to matchup better than others and I’m glad we have the flexibility to be able to do that.’’
How about this stat: West Virginia had four assists and 17 turnovers. What?
As far as the doubleheader in San Antonio next season … UConn will play Texas and Tennessee will play Texas Tech. Team spokesman Randy Press took the time this weekend to officially clear up some confusion regarding Tennessee’s opponent at the site of next year’s Final Four. The Lady Vols will play Baylor at another event.
Rich
Posted by Elliott on January 11, 2009 7:03 AM
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