South Carolina State @ the Pentagon

[kiyoat]

Condensed Game Video:

[kiyoat]

Yotes win 72-52.

With an opponent like that, I'm surprised we allowed that many points.

We shot 50% FG and 36% from the arc... which is very good.

We also allowed 52 points, 41% FG shooting .... yuck.  But at least they were held to 27% from the arc.

We're still in the reliance on Larkins mode.  That will win us a lot of games, but not always the big ones.

[yotewannabe]

Posted this on another thread. Didn’t see this thread.
I felt 13 turnovers was a lot against this team. I also would have liked to see us get some more steals or force more turnovers against a young/lesser team. Offense was better when we pushed the pace. Half court offense was stagnant against the zone. Nice game to have after a three day tournament. Thought there was a good crowd also.

[dbyote]

The encouraging thing to me is that our defensive intensity is 100x better than last year. Doesn't say much but we look interested in playing defense, both on and off the ball. I'm still not sure what our offensive identity will be but we are better on that end as well. Overall we have a much deeper roster. More options up and down the bench.

[yotenation]

Nov 26, 2023 10:46:39 GMT -6 kiyoat said:

Yotes win 72-52.

With an opponent like that, I'm surprised we allowed that many points.

We shot 50% FG and 36% from the arc... which is very good.

We also allowed 52 points, 41% FG shooting .... yuck.  But at least they were held to 27% from the arc.

We're still in the reliance on Larkins mode.  That will win us a lot of games, but not always the big ones.

They will always lean heavily on Larkins but I love the fact that she managed 16 points while taking only 5 shots from the floor.

[dbyote]

Grace's impact on that game was remarkable. We're at our best offensively when she isn't shooting at a large volume. Grange will help that even more. We have more threats now.

[soofooyote]

Good overall game by the Yotes, tough playing in that one around the holiday and after a long trip to the Bahamas. Couple things that didn't get called out already, one is we need to get Duffney going offensively. She continues to struggle to find her shot, even near the rim. She's doing great things defensively and elsewhere but we need her offensive production to be similar to a season ago to take some pressure off of Grace. Secondly, I'm super impressed with how Hempe and Mazurek are starting to return to form. They've played some solid minutes lately that remind me of how good they were prior to getting hurt. Those two players fully healthy and returning to form are going to help us a lot in conference play. Kieffer is going to be a player for us as well as she adjusts to the college game, very impressed with how she is improving already.

[kiyoat]

Nov 27, 2023 7:39:20 GMT -6 soofooyote said:

...Kieffer is going to be a player for us as well as she adjusts to the college game, very impressed with how she is improving already.

Yeah, I'm always interested in seeing the learning curve of players, as it shows up in stats.  Here's some on Kieffer:

O. Kieffer
Scoring per 40 min:

opponent	points	Min	per 40
Northern St	0	18	0
Creighton	3	17	7.1
Northern Colo	4	17	9.4
DePaul	3	19	6.3
Michigan	2	12	6.7
Arizona	1	9	4.4
SC State	9	21	17.1

O. Kieffer A/TO

opponent	assists	TO	A/TO	ave
Northern St	1	1	1.00	1.00
Creighton	0	0	0.00	1.00
Northern Colo	1	0	0.00	2.00
DePaul	1	1	1.00	1.50
Michigan	0	2	0.00	0.75
Arizona	0	1	0.00	0.60
SC State	3	2	1.50	0.86

That was a good game for her.  Good scoring and ball handling.  She looks to be a good arc shooter, too, but has not taken much volume there.  She's 3-for-8 on the season .375  but when you only shoot one or two a game, I can see where you aren't getting into a rhythm.  Would love to see what she can do with more attempts.

[kiyoat]

Looking at A/TO stats, Kendall Holmes had a much better game there as well.  She has had maybe the worst time of our guards in terms of turnovers.

she had 2 assists against 2 turnovers for an A/TO of 1.00 in that game.

She is 8-20 on the season, (0.40), and was 4/11 in the Bahamas trip (0.36).  That's a stat I'll be looking at for her through the season.  Turnovers have killed us so far, and you don't want one of your starting guards to have those kinds of stats.

To be completely honest, all of our players have had a less-than-stellar Assist/TO numbers.  Grace commits the most turnovers, but she also holds the ball the most, too.  she is 32/32 on the season (1.00 A/TO)

The bright spot on the team is Nicole AA.  She has 10 assists against only 6 turnovers, for an A/TO of 1.67

Maybe we should be seeing her at PG a little more often?

[kiyoat]

Comparing Duffney's stats to last year, she IS shooting a little more poorly (just a little), but really what I see is that her minutes and FG attempts have simply decreased.  She is not being asked to do as much in terms of volume (which is a good thing IMO), and not playing out-of position in the post.

Her Assist/TO numbers are better, and her # rebounds have decreased.  To me, that's the difference between playing a 5 and playing a 3/4 or stretch-4 kind of player.  Also, DePerry has taken some of the load off of her in terms of minutes and attempts.

So I wouldn't necessarily expect her to be a top-scorer this year, and that's fine.  She was never a great arc-shooter, so that hasn't changed.  I like that her ball-control and assists have improved.  She's just in a different role this year.  It's great that we can give all our players some rest and rotation.

[hoopsmom]

Overall, I thought the Yotes played very well on Saturday. Yes, they had turnovers, and yes, they struggled a little bit against the press until they figured it out. Duffney will find her shot, but she continues to do all those amazing things that don’t make the stat books. Watch her, watch her set screens, watch her tip balls to people. Watch her direct traffic. In addition, although we won by a smaller margin than State did, State had most of their points scored by only two players. We got our bench involved in the game early and often, which is a great sign for depth, and for the future.

[kiyoat]

Here's a nicely done video montage of the game, set to music.

I'm embedding it from Instagram.  Given up on trying to do that from Twitter...

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0KJCWKxmzw

[yotenation]

Nov 27, 2023 11:47:55 GMT -6 hoopsmom said:

Overall, I thought the Yotes played very well on Saturday. Yes, they had turnovers, and yes, they struggled a little bit against the press until they figured it out. Duffney will find her shot, but she continues to do all those amazing things that don’t make the stat books. Watch her, watch her set screens, watch her tip balls to people. Watch her direct traffic. In addition, although we won by a smaller margin than State did, State had most of their points scored by only two players. We got our bench involved in the game early and often, which is a great sign for depth, and for the future.

This is a good point. We got 37 points from our bench. State got 12. State is a good team as usual but with the injuries they have had, they are not terribly deep.

[yotenation]

Comparing scores is always kind of questionable. There are so many factors involved over the course of a game. For example, State's leading scorer Brooklyn Meyer scored 15 points in the second half in 7 field goals and 1 free throw. Larkins was our leading scorer and I don't think she had a field goal attempt in the second half (she did have 4 points on 4-4 shooting from the line).

[elcoyote]

Best time to compare scores is head to head.