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Post by goyotes24 on Mar 6, 2018 15:34:31 GMT -6
It really is disheartening to keep losing these types of games against State. The women have had a wonderful season, and that can't be taken away from them. They didn't get the one win they needed, but I assure you, they will have something to say in the WNIT if they end up getting snubbed out of the NCAA Tourney (I am not using the term 'snubbed' loosely, either).
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Post by coyoteglory on Mar 6, 2018 15:37:23 GMT -6
It really is disheartening to keep losing these types of games against State. The women have had a wonderful season, and that can't be taken away from them. They didn't get the one win they needed, but I assure you, they will have something to say in the WNIT if they end up getting snubbed out of the NCAA Tourney (I am not using the term 'snubbed' loosely, either). The truth is that we should be in the NCAA tourney. We've beat SDSU twice and Creighton. But out schedule was too weak.
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Post by Men's League Waterboy on Mar 6, 2018 15:43:10 GMT -6
I was inspired to share my feelings my Coyote Fan, so here it goes (feel free to give me lots of negative points for raising honest questions that I have about my favorite team though). Although this post will possibly see many disagree, hopefully at least a few will agree (as a caveat, this is not necessarily an overreaction to today but something I was pondering much of the nonconference season): Dawn won coach of the year this year, but I’m not entirely sure that she has been as good as we all (including myself during the conference season) thinks. In the non-conference, we were not good. We lost to several teams that we were more talented then and others that had more talent. Then, we went on a 20 game winning streak. But did we beat that many really good teams? SDSU twice, yes. Those were good wins. But besides that, how many wins were born by the fact that we are simply much more talented than everyone else. I guess I would pose the question to this board, what is our goal? To make the tournament or to beat lots and lots of Summit league teams each year that we have 3x the talent of? So, to get to the point. In the Summit league, players like Frederick and McKeever will always be better than the other players and almost all 150+ RPI teams we play each week. But against the better teams, they have consistently struggled. In the games against “better” talent, our offense has also consistently struggled this year. Everyone looks confused about who should be shooting and when. We don’t have any set plays (which I realize is Dawn’s offense), but then we end with lots of bad shots against good defensive teams like today. Put differently, it works against teams we are more talented than and hasn’t worked against ones we are less talented than. Why don’t we give players like Lamb and Trimboli and Duffy and Arens more opportunities to score in set plays? We should have thrown the ball inside to Trimboli as much as possible. Instead, half of our possessions end with McKeever or Arens holding the ball for 10+ seconds outside the arc which is so frustrating because as good as both of them are offensively, they don’t see the floor well. Or we end up with Duffy throwing the ball up with 3 seconds on the shot clock because it’s about to expire. My point is this. I’m not sure going on a 20 game winning streak against teams that we have much more talent than should be our goal. This is probably an unpopular opinion and also because I am frustrated with losing to the Jacks yet again. But we can’t set our rotations and offense up to beat the worst teams but must plan for the best teams. I hope Dawn can correct this for next year because I hate losing to the Jacks and can’t stand to see all of that blue cheering again. Totally agree with most of this, though I still think Plitzuweit is a heck of a coach and totally deserving of COY. Offensively, you can "equal opportunity" to death teams that you're more talented than. Especially in the regular season when there's another game coming up after the one you're playing. But when it comes down to winning tournament games, and the pressure that comes along with it, you need to know who your best players are and how to get them the ball in places where they can put some strain on opposing defenses. That was the difference between the two teams today. State knew what it was trying to accomplish offensively and consistently had the Coyotes scrambling defensively. That rarely, if ever, looked to be the case on the other end of the floor.
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Post by Coyote Fan on Mar 6, 2018 15:50:56 GMT -6
coyoteglory,
Thanks for putting your take out there. I respect people that aren't affraid to voice their opinions good or bad. I disgree and think Dawn is a tremendous coach. If it was just about talent they would not have endured the mid season slump they had when losing to Tulsa and playing some other poor games. Dawn did a great job of turning the season around and I don't think today alone takes away from everything that she had done and everything that the team has done. Here is what I think the problem was personally and kind of the reason why I picked the Jacks to win this tourney. I think the Coyotes subconsciously were too satisfied when they finished the season 14-0 and won the conference in upset fashion. They are still a good team but I don't think they had the edge to their game that the Jacks did because of having beaten them twice already. Lets face it outside of the elite programs in D1 basketball (probably top 10) what other program is going to be able to come into the Premier Center and beat that team. There are not many that is for sure. At some point Dawn will fairly be judged on how the Coyotes do at the tourney but I think that isn't the case this year. Starting next year I think we need to expect her to have this team play much better against the Jacks than what happened today.
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Post by coyoteglory on Mar 6, 2018 15:55:22 GMT -6
coyoteglory, Thanks for putting your take out there. I respect people that aren't affraid to voice their opinions good or bad. I disgree and think Dawn is a tremendous coach. If it was just about talent they would not have endured the mid season slump they had when losing to Tulsa and playing some other poor games. Dawn did a great job of turning the season around and I don't think today alone takes away from everything that she had done and everything that the team has done. Here is what I think the problem was personally and kind of the reason why I picked the Jacks to win this tourney. I think the Coyotes subconsciously were too satisfied when they finished the season 14-0 and won the conference in upset fashion. They are still a good team but I don't think they had the edge to their game that the Jacks did because of having beaten them twice already. Lets face it outside of the elite programs in D1 basketball (probably top 10) what other program is going to be able to come into the Premier Center and beat that team. There are not many that is for sure. At some point Dawn will fairly be judged on how the Coyotes do at the tourney but I think that isn't the case this year. Starting next year I think we need to expect her to have this team play much better against the Jacks than what happened today. I think if I could combine your post and cityleaguesniper's last post, that pretty much sums up my opinion. I agree that Dawn did some very smart things, but down the stretch we didn't know who our best player was. I think we figured out today that it's probably Duffy (although Trimboli should have been more involved in my opinion). But it took us the entire first five minutes to figure that out. I would honestly run more of our offense through her at the high post, less because of scoring and more because she's still the best passer we have.
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Post by usdcoyote on Mar 6, 2018 15:59:47 GMT -6
I was inspired to share my feelings my Coyote Fan, so here it goes (feel free to give me lots of negative points for raising honest questions that I have about my favorite team though). Although this post will possibly see many disagree, hopefully at least a few will agree (as a caveat, this is not necessarily an overreaction to today but something I was pondering much of the nonconference season): Dawn won coach of the year this year, but I’m not entirely sure that she has been as good as we all (including myself during the conference season) thinks. In the non-conference, we were not good. We lost to several teams that we were more talented then and others that had more talent. Then, we went on a 20 game winning streak. But did we beat that many really good teams? SDSU twice, yes. Those were good wins. But besides that, how many wins were born by the fact that we are simply much more talented than everyone else. I guess I would pose the question to this board, what is our goal? To make the tournament or to beat lots and lots of Summit league teams each year that we have 3x the talent of? So, to get to the point. In the Summit league, players like Frederick and McKeever will always be better than the other players and almost all 150+ RPI teams we play each week. But against the better teams, they have consistently struggled. In the games against “better” talent, our offense has also consistently struggled this year. Everyone looks confused about who should be shooting and when. We don’t have any set plays (which I realize is Dawn’s offense), but then we end with lots of bad shots against good defensive teams like today. Put differently, it works against teams we are more talented than and hasn’t worked against ones we are less talented than. Why don’t we give players like Lamb and Trimboli and Duffy and Arens more opportunities to score in set plays? We should have thrown the ball inside to Trimboli as much as possible. Instead, half of our possessions end with McKeever or Arens holding the ball for 10+ seconds outside the arc which is so frustrating because as good as both of them are offensively, they don’t see the floor well. Or we end up with Duffy throwing the ball up with 3 seconds on the shot clock because it’s about to expire. My point is this. I’m not sure going on a 20 game winning streak against teams that we have much more talent than should be our goal. This is probably an unpopular opinion and also because I am frustrated with losing to the Jacks yet again. But we can’t set our rotations and offense up to beat the worst teams but must plan for the best teams. I hope Dawn can correct this for next year because I hate losing to the Jacks and can’t stand to see all of that blue cheering again. I might put more stock in this had we not swept State during the regular season. It's tough to say we don't play a brand of ball that is capable of beating good teams like SDSU when we in fact beat them 2 out of 3 times this year. Now granted, we lost the biggest one, but I don't think that is because we all of a sudden were playing a brand of ball that was incapable of beating them. Just like I wouldn't say that about Amy's team 2 years ago when we swept them then lost in the title game. Sometimes you just play a bad game, and let's face it, State is damn good. It was always going to be tough to beat them 3 times this year. It's not like State took those regular season matchups lightly. I guarantee they were the biggest games on their schedule, so it's not as if they were busy game planning for their next opponent. We were picked 3rd in the conference and we won the thing by 2 games. I'm having a tough time mustering up much criticism for the coach. We played a bad game, that happens. It sucks that it happened in this game and sucks that it happened against this team. I certainly would not say we had the talent advantage today either. Some are acting like we choked against some scrub team. This is one of the very best teams State has ever had, and we just weren't good enough to beat them 3 times.
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Post by coyoteglory on Mar 6, 2018 16:01:51 GMT -6
I was inspired to share my feelings my Coyote Fan, so here it goes (feel free to give me lots of negative points for raising honest questions that I have about my favorite team though). Although this post will possibly see many disagree, hopefully at least a few will agree (as a caveat, this is not necessarily an overreaction to today but something I was pondering much of the nonconference season): Dawn won coach of the year this year, but I’m not entirely sure that she has been as good as we all (including myself during the conference season) thinks. In the non-conference, we were not good. We lost to several teams that we were more talented then and others that had more talent. Then, we went on a 20 game winning streak. But did we beat that many really good teams? SDSU twice, yes. Those were good wins. But besides that, how many wins were born by the fact that we are simply much more talented than everyone else. I guess I would pose the question to this board, what is our goal? To make the tournament or to beat lots and lots of Summit league teams each year that we have 3x the talent of? So, to get to the point. In the Summit league, players like Frederick and McKeever will always be better than the other players and almost all 150+ RPI teams we play each week. But against the better teams, they have consistently struggled. In the games against “better” talent, our offense has also consistently struggled this year. Everyone looks confused about who should be shooting and when. We don’t have any set plays (which I realize is Dawn’s offense), but then we end with lots of bad shots against good defensive teams like today. Put differently, it works against teams we are more talented than and hasn’t worked against ones we are less talented than. Why don’t we give players like Lamb and Trimboli and Duffy and Arens more opportunities to score in set plays? We should have thrown the ball inside to Trimboli as much as possible. Instead, half of our possessions end with McKeever or Arens holding the ball for 10+ seconds outside the arc which is so frustrating because as good as both of them are offensively, they don’t see the floor well. Or we end up with Duffy throwing the ball up with 3 seconds on the shot clock because it’s about to expire. My point is this. I’m not sure going on a 20 game winning streak against teams that we have much more talent than should be our goal. This is probably an unpopular opinion and also because I am frustrated with losing to the Jacks yet again. But we can’t set our rotations and offense up to beat the worst teams but must plan for the best teams. I hope Dawn can correct this for next year because I hate losing to the Jacks and can’t stand to see all of that blue cheering again. I might put more stock in this had we not swept State during the regular season. It's tough to say we don't play a brand of ball that is capable of beating good teams like SDSU when we in fact beat them 2 out of 3 times this year. Now granted, we lost the biggest one, but I don't think that is because we all of a sudden were playing a brand of ball that was incapable of beating them. Just like I wouldn't say that about Amy's team 2 years ago when we swept them then lost in the title game. Sometimes you just play a bad game, and let's face it, State is damn good. It was always going to be tough to beat them 3 times this year. It's not like State took those regular season matchups lightly. I guarantee they were the biggest games on their schedule, so it's not as if they were busy game planning for their next opponent. We were picked 3rd in the conference and we won the thing by 2 games. I'm having a tough time mustering up much criticism for the coach. We played a bad game, that happens. It sucks that it happened in this game and sucks that it happened against this team. I certainly would not say we had the talent advantage today either. Some are acting like we choked against some scrub team. This is one of the very best teams State has ever had, and we just weren't good enough to beat them 3 times. All this is very true. Although I think we could do more with our talent, I think you are right that beating them 2/2 already made it much much tougher.
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Post by Coyote Fan on Mar 6, 2018 16:03:17 GMT -6
coyoteglory,
I agree that Dawn did not have her best day coaching today. The way the Jacks were guarding the interior the Coyotes game plan in the beginning should have been quick ball movement to look for the open three. They weren't hitting that shot today but I would rather work for an open three then to drive into 3 players, get confused and end up taking a contested shot closer to the basket. You go inside when you can but if it is not there you can not force it especially since the officials were letting them play physically. Any open shot in my mind is better than any heavily contested shot. Sometimes you just have to be able to hit the three and the Coyotes couldn't do that enough today. Dawn P did not win a national title by accident. She knows what she is doing IMO and her recruiting and future coaching will adjust to what happened today. All of you know that if I didn't think she had it in her I would be the first to say it.
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Post by gopheryote on Mar 6, 2018 16:04:47 GMT -6
The lousy day for the offense will get a lot of the attention today (rightly so), but I still contend - just like during the Seekamp era - that Coach Johnston is a wizard at teaching and implementing the grab-and-hold defense that works in year-end tournaments. They clearly teach it and work on it (they didn't play that style all year), and it seems to surprise the Yotes every year. Our girls were completely stumped by what was or wasn't a foul, and had enormous foul trouble, which played into the bad offensive flow. It isn't as simple as being more physical or more aggressive, but more of a technique (grab/use hands away from the ball, but on the ball push aggressively with your body seems to be part of it). Frustrating, but it is how it works in conference tourneys and march madness for both men and women.
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Post by goyotes24 on Mar 6, 2018 16:05:24 GMT -6
It really is disheartening to keep losing these types of games against State. The women have had a wonderful season, and that can't be taken away from them. They didn't get the one win they needed, but I assure you, they will have something to say in the WNIT if they end up getting snubbed out of the NCAA Tourney (I am not using the term 'snubbed' loosely, either). The truth is that we should be in the NCAA tourney. We've beat SDSU twice and Creighton. But out schedule was too weak. I agree, it was too weak. But it was really by virtue of all the other teams in the league being weak. When you have a season like the Coyotes have had and beating your conference opponents (exception being SDSU/WIU) hurts your RPI, the other programs in the league should really look at why they are where they are as a program. Understanding that SDSU has had the upper hand for the large majority of the time, USD/SDSU have essentially anchored the league overall as it pertains to fielding competitive programs. Nonetheless, this is a conversation for a different thread. Congrats to the Jacks women (again). Fingers still crossed on the off chance that we get an at-large bid. But still excited for WNIT.
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larobe
Sophomore Member
Posts: 179
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Post by larobe on Mar 6, 2018 16:57:21 GMT -6
Condolences on your loss, no matter who you are it's tough to lose the Championship game. I think Dawn Plitzuweit is a good coach, as smart as she is, and hopefully the rest of the Summit too ,that I think the Summit teams will schedule the OOC portion of their schedule tougher. It's hard to get the Home and Homes with P-5 teams I know, the Jacks have been able to because their RPI is usually high enough that if the Jacks win (upset?), it's not necessarily a huge blow to a teams own rpi. Credit AJ for always scheduling tough, he took his lumps early too, but then they attracted better recruits who'd rather play a p-5 school rather than rpi 263 mid-majors. They benefited by the experience too, play the best to be the best. W Ill win on the road against Stanford as a very good example. Your team is talented and the season isn't over for them. Best of luck in the post season ahead.Go make some noise.I'm alway's pulling for Summit teams in the post season ,because like each other or not, we depend on each other to make the conference stronger.
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steelsd
Sophomore Member
Posts: 168
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Post by steelsd on Mar 6, 2018 17:18:45 GMT -6
Was at the game, and overall you could see the talent level of both teams. Outside of your weak OOC schedule, there is no doubt you belong in the NCAA’s. Here’s hoping both teams can get in because I think both teams could make some noise. Would be great for the conference to have both of us do well. Good luck!
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Post by kiyoat on Mar 6, 2018 17:38:35 GMT -6
Highlights from Dawn in the post game interview: (paraphrasing)
Coach P: It was a tough game and a tough start. Down 9 points to begin the game, and we never seemed to be able to gather momentum after that.
SDSU's size and athleticism really bothered us. They were able to get the ball inside, attack us, and at the other end of the court we had a tough time getting in the lane.
Q: The Jack's defense really seemed to be a factor in the Game. Was there anything you were doing differently? I don't think that it was anything necessarily different.... The way the game started, the first possession. They were able to get the ball around the basket, and we just really weren't (able to). That was the difference in the game. It wasn't from a lack of effort from our young ladies.
We didn't rebound as well, but we got more shots. And we missed more shots. So that gives them more defensive rebound opportunities. I thought our effort was good. We will go back and evaluate the film and get better. We've got to identify better opportunities to score. There were a lot of shot clock scenarios where we just didn't get good shots.
(couldn't hear question from Zimmer): I do think that there were SOME opportunities, but then you get a little rushed, a little frazzled, then when we DID get some open shots, we missed them where we haven't been missing them in many other games. When you're in that situation, and you try to rally, try to communicate... We had some opportunities in the 3rd quarter.
As poorly as we played in the first quarter, (we were) only down two or three possessions at that point. Even in the 3rd quarter we were saying "we've come back from more than this in three minutes. We can do this. We can find a way." I thought our kids' composure and toughness to continue to battle back was really good. They care a great deal. They carry themselves with an awful lot of class. These two seniors that were just up here answering your questions very intelligently after a very heartbreaking loss. I'm very proud of the young ladies we have, and how they do things.
(couldn't hear question from Stu Whitney): No. I think it was more just the scenarios. We missed assignments, and they made us pay. On the other end we struggled to create opportunities.
(couldn't hear question) It's tough. We are who we are. We're in the Summit League, and we don't have an opportunity right now to maybe get two teams in. That's unfortunate, because I do think both teams would have the opportunity to represent the League at a high level; to compete and to make something happen.
Q: Are you resigned that USD isn't going to get an at-large bid? The only way that happens, I think, is if the committee takes a look at what has happened over the course of the last 21 games. From that standpoint, I certainly think our ladies deserve the opportunity. From a numbers standpoint you could argue against it. At the same time, you look at what happened last year in the Missouri Valley, and you hold onto hope, but it's just a little bit of a dream.
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Post by kiyoat on Mar 7, 2018 13:05:41 GMT -6
Here's something, at least:
And it wasn't even a Summit League record. All of the P-5 conferences are done on the Women's side, with only the MVC and Mt West that could get anywhere near these numbers:
8704 Summit (SDSU) 8215 SEC ----(South Carolina) 7501 AAC ----(UConn) 7424 ACC ----(Louisville) 5387 PAC 12 -(Oregon) 4519 Big 10 --(Ohio State) 3520 Big 12 --(Baylor) 2264 Big East (DePaul) 2103 A 10 ----(George Washington)
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