Start of holiday tournaments (Wed. and Thu., Nov. 27-28)

[JordyG]

I was just wondering who lost to Georgia State by 9, because I'm not seeing that on Cal Baptist's schedule/results this year.

Sorry, you're right. Cal Baptist was undefeated going into the game after crushing a tough Life Pacific team last time out. My mistake.

 

[JordyG]

I was just wondering who lost to Georgia State by 9, because I'm not seeing that on Cal Baptist's schedule/results this year.

Yes. By the way, Stanford was the first team Cal Baptist played this year with a winning record.

 

[triaddukefan]

Holy cow, Stanford looked like they were running away with it in 3Q but Cal Baptist has charged back, now down by only 2 in mid-4Q. This is going down to the wire.

told yall

 

[Plebe]

told yall

You know what happens when the Baptists go up against the ... nondenominational private school students?

 

[nwhoopfan]

Stats don't tell you everything, but they are interesting. Both teams attempted 69 FG. Cal Baptist was 17-40 behind the 3 point arc, Stanford only 4-23. So CBU nearly pulled off the big upset by bombing away on a night Stanford couldn't hit anything from distance. Big FTA advantage for Stanford as well--26-9.

All 8 players that show up in the box score for CBU hit at least one 3, 6 hit 2 or more, one player had 4.

 

[TheFarmFan]

Couple things to add some context to the Stanford-CBU game (while noting that I did not actually watch the game):

1. We are a younger team than we look, in terms of experience, largely due to injuries. If you look at our starting lineup, we have one player who's been a consistent starter in every game since the beginning of last season: Kiana Williams.
-Senior Nadia Fingall missed most of last season with an ACL tear and is on minutes-restriction, which really hurts what we can do inside (note how effective she was in the windows she was on the floor - 18 points in 14 minutes), and also makes it harder for her to develop offensive consistency.
-Senior Dijonai Carrington had knee surgery over the summer and didn't even play last night. She's also been on minute-restriction when she has played. (And she missed a chunk of her sophomore year with an injury, and was also out for a game or two last season after a concussion.)
-Senior Anna Wilson has missed significant chunks of the past few seasons with a variety of injuries. Both she and Carrington were injured in their McD's A-A game and I feel like have often had question marks about their health.
-Junior Maya Dodson has been in a boot since the season began and missed a chunk of last season with a similar stress fracture. Perhaps because of this, she has been a very minimal paint presence for us since her freshman year, despite being a consensus top tier recruit out of HS.
-Sophomore Lexie Hull missed half of last season with a stress reaction/fracture, and while she's coming along quite nicely now, I still think losing that floor experience hurts.

That means that our one steady, reliable starter since the start of last season has been Kiana Williams. Tara has really leaned heavily on her to run our offense, and you can tell because she keeps Williams in essentially all the time in close games.

2. Because of this, and the graduation of Alanna Smith, we don't really have a designated scorer. Williams, in theory, should be that, and she tends to turn things on in close games, but I don't know that she's naturally inclined to take over games. Lexie has shown the propensity for this, and I think will get better with time. But even though we have a really top freshman class, we don't have many players who we've had to rely on to "bail us out," and I think it shows when things get tight. It showed in the Gonzaga game, and it showed last night.

3. We really need to improve on our three point and free throw shooting. Those are two ways to bail out of trouble, and we have been hurting in both departments. CBU exploited us with the former (we shot 4-23 3pt%), and the Zags with the latter (a godawful 58% at the line) - when you don't hit your free throws, and the other team has a massive edge on treys over you, it's really hard to hold and build on a lead late in the game. In this respect, Williams' stroke has been off much of this season so far (she was 1-9 from downtown last night).

All in all, I'm sanguine about things - I always thought we'd be something closer to the 5th-6th best team rather than 3rd, as the polls seem to be ranking us. As is almost always the case with Tara teams, I think we'll improve rapidly as the season progresses, and I view this tournament as a great test to see which players will "step up" when called upon.

 

[DaBball]

MTSU up 40-19 over Auburn at half...

 

[Plebe]

Couple things to add some context to the Stanford-CBU game (while noting that I did not actually watch the game):

1. We are a younger team than we look, in terms of experience, largely due to injuries. If you look at our starting lineup, we have one player who's been a consistent starter in every game since the beginning of last season: Kiana Williams.
-Senior Nadia Fingall missed most of last season with an ACL tear and is on minutes-restriction, which really hurts what we can do inside (note how effective she was in the windows she was on the floor - 18 points in 14 minutes), and also makes it harder for her to develop offensive consistency.
-Senior Dijonai Carrington had knee surgery over the summer and didn't even play last night. She's also been on minute-restriction when she has played. (And she missed a chunk of her sophomore year with an injury, and was also out for a game or two last season after a concussion.)
-Senior Anna Wilson has missed significant chunks of the past few seasons with a variety of injuries. Both she and Carrington were injured in their McD's A-A game and I feel like have often had question marks about their health.
-Junior Maya Dodson has been in a boot since the season began and missed a chunk of last season with a similar stress fracture. Perhaps because of this, she has been a very minimal paint presence for us since her freshman year, despite being a consensus top tier recruit out of HS.
-Sophomore Lexie Hull missed half of last season with a stress reaction/fracture, and while she's coming along quite nicely now, I still think losing that floor experience hurts.

That means that our one steady, reliable starter since the start of last season has been Kiana Williams. Tara has really leaned heavily on her to run our offense, and you can tell because she keeps Williams in essentially all the time in close games.

2. Because of this, and the graduation of Alanna Smith, we don't really have a designated scorer. Williams, in theory, should be that, and she tends to turn things on in close games, but I don't know that she's naturally inclined to take over games. Lexie has shown the propensity for this, and I think will get better with time. But even though we have a really top freshman class, we don't have many players who we've had to rely on to "bail us out," and I think it shows when things get tight. It showed in the Gonzaga game, and it showed last night.

3. We really need to improve on our three point and free throw shooting. Those are two ways to bail out of trouble, and we have been hurting in both departments. CBU exploited us with the former (we shot 4-23 3pt%), and the Zags with the latter (a godawful 58% at the line) - when you don't hit your free throws, and the other team has a massive edge on treys over you, it's really hard to hold and build on a lead late in the game. In this respect, Williams' stroke has been off much of this season so far (she was 1-9 from downtown last night).

All in all, I'm sanguine about things - I always thought we'd be something closer to the 5th-6th best team rather than 3rd, as the polls seem to be ranking us. As is almost always the case with Tara teams, I think we'll improve rapidly as the season progresses, and I view this tournament as a great test to see which players will "step up" when called upon.

This is all great analysis.

no Carrington + no Dodson = problems for Stanford.

Stanford looked to be pulling away safely, up by as much as 21 in the 3rd quarter. Then I lost my feed for about 15 minutes or so, and when it came back Cal Baptist had pulled to within something like 7.

Cal Baptist made an ungodly number of 3s -- 17 of 40 might be what DePaul would get in their best game of the year. And because everyone on CBU was making them, every Stanford player had to be way out on the arc guarding their player close, which opened up a ton of driving opportunities. I was even more shocked at how quick some of the Cal Baptist guards were.

Fingall was the difference in this game for Stanford. For all its 3-pointers and quickness, CBU didn't have the size to match up. But as you say, when Fingall was off the floor, Stanford just couldn't seem to take advantage with Belibi and Prechtel.

If Carrington can't play against Syracuse, I think Syracuse wins this game today.

 

[Gamecockfan77]

MTSU up 40-19 over Auburn at half...

Wow.