I was at the game, with a good seat fairly close to the court where UConn was shooting in the first half. I love that venue.
There was a skeleton crew for the UConn band, four tubas and not much else. The National Anthem was sung by a woman named Aaliyah, nice job, looked her up and found that she died in 2001. So I will have to check that out further. Rizzotti was courtside, and a flashy young woman in pink sitting near her was Dijonai Carrington of the Sun, formerly Baylor, I think. Hopefully she has gotten over that non-call.
It seemed to come very easy in the first half, open look after open look especially on the interior. It just seemed to be clicking. In part it was because Florida State was missing their threes and their mad dashes to the basket were coming up empty. We were controlling the boards and able to get out in the open court where we tend to flourish.
I think Nika had nine assists in the first half and I got a close up view of how she does do an amazing job through slight movements, perfect timing, accuracy, and touch, of subtly "setting up the chessboard" so that the player gets the ball in perfect position to score.
She lost her cool though, twice, in the first half. Once, after being fouled by one of the interchangeable and pesky FSU guards, she threw an elbow that was reviewed. I was shocked that nothing was called, I was hoping at best for a Flagrant One. Maybe she got lucky and the elbow did not land, I couldn`t tell from being there. A second time was when she picked up her second foul, trying to run over someone setting a pick. Reminded me of Geno`s comment about how she hit someone because she hadn`t done so in a while.
First time I have ever seen a lane violation twice in a row. Nice that Dorka got some free throw practice in a game situation.
In the second half FSA was making more of their threes (I was surprised to see they were only 8 for 29 overall) and getting to the line more, and as a result we were not getting out on transition. The half court offense struggled in the second half. It seemed stagnant. We controlled the pace in the first half, FSU did in the second half. Aaliyah and Lou made some critical plays, largely on individual effort. We did play some zone at times in the second half and I think that was largely effective - took away some of their driving ability and helped keep our fouls down.
Latson is very talented and fortunately she fouled out with plenty of time left in the fourth. Lou really got clobbered taking the charge on the fifth foul, great job on her part to stand in there and I think she had four fouls herself. On that score, all of our players in foul trouble were able to stay on the floor while two key pieces for FSU fouled out.
I have seen all of our home games (Texas, NC State, Princeton) and I think FSU was as tough an opponent as any of them. They are certainly the quickest team we have faced at home. Their offense is largely to shoot from three, or to have one of their guards take it north to south and try to make the shot or draw contact. It did not work in the first half, but it did in the second.
I was close to their offense in the second half and it seemed to me that FSU benefitted from the referees going from a let them play approach to the exact opposite. Hate when that happens. One ref in particular. There were numerous times where there was at most incidental contact that was created by FSU guards throwing themselves at the defender. How is that a foul on the defender? Having said that, I think Caroline in particular has to do a better job to avoid silly contact.
I have never seen a team get whacked in the face more than this team. We must have had UConn players on the floor holding their faces at least six times today. Fortunately, nothing that appeared serious.
So great first half, mediocre second half, but take the win and everyone emerged healthy. Great games from Aaliyah and Lou, very good Dorka, good Nika - we needed all four - and so so from everyone else. In fairness, Caroline did have her moments, especially a layup in traffic late. She is clearly a gifted offensive player, just a bit out of sinc at the moment.
I watched a little bit of Iowa State - Villanova. Villanova didn`t show me much, but Iowa State looked good. Soares is enormous.
