Showdown at Red Square (Women's edition)

[kiyoat]

The first of likely three dust-ups with the Jacks that will likely determine the season champ, Tourney seed and at-large odds.

No pressure.

Before I get into stats, my overall impression is that this will be a closely contested game between the two most talented, best coached, best supported teams in the Summit. 

The Jacks are very talented, as always.  Selland and Miller have been very consistent, productive and well-rounded.  Playing both inside and outside well.  Guebert is always a threat to go off from the arc, and plays great defense.  Larson seems to only have one gear: High intensity.  When the rest of the team has had some ups and downs defensively, she seems to always get after it.  Although they don't have a dominant center this year, Larson plays bigger than she is, like our "Junkyard Jas" last year. 

Aside from those four, the rest of the team has shown flashes, but possibly lacks consistency.  A.J. has always been good at getting the bench players minutes and developing the bench.  I probably haven't watched enough Jacks WBB to get a good feel for where the backup players are, development-wise, but have noticed some ball-handling errors from Riley C-J and Irwin (first two guards after Macy and Maddie) that we could possibly exploit.

I wouldn't expect the Jacks to mail in a performance in Vermillion, so I'm assuming we will get their best effort, and it will be a very tough game.  To be honest, I'd almost rather see the Jacks take an early lead, and lower the intensity a little after that.  Kind of like what happened in the Green Bay game, when the Phoenix came back to make the game close in the third quarter.

[kiyoat]

Massey gives us a 56% chance of winning this game, with a typical score of:

69-66

At this point I have no idea what to expect from either team. The Jacks performed more than admirably vs a murderer's row schedule, but have shown a tendency to let up in a handful of games. The Yotes have had some truly breakthrough performances this year, and have been very consistent defensively, but have been a little up and down offensively (until this last bizarro-game).

I'm not going to over-analyze the match-up. I'll just say: get your popcorn.  Don't miss this game if you can help it.  Normally I have a prediction, but I'll sit this one out.  I'll just say I think the most likely outcome is a close, hard-fought game.

[Yotes]

Those moral victories against Baylor and Oregon are very impressive, and common opponents give them the edge, but I'm still very confident home court will be defended. They haven't won in Verm in 5 years. We might just win in their barn as well. The regular season series is well in our favor since we established ourselves in D1. Postseason on the other hand......

Things do feel differently this year. The Denver loss is a real downer, but this feels like the best team since Seekamp's last season with the WNIT title. That team wasn't without its own disappointing road loss to kick off SL play. I think we'll learn a lot Sunday. More importantly though, we should have a lot of fun watching things go down.

[gopheryote]

I have caught bits of ESPN+ Jacks games throughout the season, and generally agree with leatherneckcountry that this Jacks team doesn't have the 'it' factor right now the way they have in the past. They will win a bunch of SL games, and may even beat the Yotes Sunday, but not because they are more talented/deeper/etc.
One thing I would like USD to do (but doubt they will since it isn't their style) is to take one defender and deny/shadow Guebert the whole time, without playing any help D. WY took her out of the half court O that way, and played it 4 vs 4. I like USD's match up on the defensive end if it is 4 vs 4 w/o kick-outs to Guebert.

Side note regarding the Jacks/Baylor game: I happened to watch almost all of it (don't remember why). And it was pretty clear that game was defined more by Baylor's effort than anything SDSU did or didn't do. It wasn't the same level of play/intensity/anything that BU played with against UCONN. Much like Yotes MBB vs. Kansas being tight for 3/4 of the game.

[larobe]

Jan 4, 2019 22:02:59 GMT -6 gopheryote said:

I have caught bits of ESPN+ Jacks games throughout the season, and generally agree with leatherneckcountry that this Jacks team doesn't have the 'it' factor right now the way they have in the past. They will win a bunch of SL games, and may even beat the Yotes Sunday, but not because they are more talented/deeper/etc.
One thing I would like USD to do (but doubt they will since it isn't their style) is to take one defender and deny/shadow Guebert the whole time, without playing any help D. WY took her out of the half court O that way, and played it 4 vs 4. I like USD's match up on the defensive end if it is 4 vs 4 w/o kick-outs to Guebert.

Side note regarding the Jacks/Baylor game: I happened to watch almost all of it (don't remember why). And it was pretty clear that game was defined more by Baylor's effort than anything SDSU did or didn't do. It wasn't the same level of play/intensity/anything that BU played with against UCONN. Much like Yotes MBB vs. Kansas being tight for 3/4 of the game.

I had the same perception, especially Brown, their 6'7" center, she seemed to move much quicker ,all of them really , against UConn, obviously a much bigger game. But still, letting someone hang around to potentially lose a game, you can't say they had no effort , they just didn't have as much , granted, playing against the Jacks. Brown makes all the Jacks look so tiny out on the court. As far as Brown hitting outside shots, she hardly took any against the Jacks, but at her home court against the Huskies, she was nailing just about everything. Cox, on the other hand, their 6'4" forward, was more effective hitting shots vs the Jacks , and not very against UConn. Baylor is a very good team, obviously, breaking UConn's ridiculous regular season winning streak. A side note, every P-5 power team has the cream of the crop for bigs, that's the one element of putting together a team to challenge these teams that is the most difficult to put on a Summit teams roster, all the other positions we do much better. SDSU has had some good ones at 6'2" , but that's still a tad undersized. Anyone playing in the Dance, has to up their game as much as their talent dictates, because everyone else will.I also refrain from predicting between these two teams....maybe home court prevails,but who knows …..Maddie can zip around defenders and has become very good at driving to the hoop, she's more of an all around player than people give her credit for, saw evidence of that in their game in Vegas against Baylor, I'm sure you noticed too ....everyone sit back and be treated to watching the two best in the Summit putting on a show, enjoy your popcorn. 

[elcoyote]

Geez, never thought I'd see the day when 6'2 girls were considered undersized. Wonder if we'll ever see a 7 foot female player?

[kiyoat]

Jan 5, 2019 22:41:35 GMT -6 elcoyote said:

Geez, never thought I'd see the day when 6'2 girls were considered undersized. Wonder if we'll ever see a 7 foot female player?

Yeah, I agree that 6’-2” isn’t undersized in D-1. Unless you are specifically comparing to the handful of oversized centers on the few truly elite teams. I’ll even throw in the upper half of power-5 teams. This year we faced two P-5 teams that were similarly sized to us, and they will likely be tournament teams.

Larobe’s overall point is valid, though. Power conference teams hoard talent. Talent + size is rare. Thus the universal recruiting quandary. I would say, though, that the low-population upper Midwest is awfully good at producing big, talented female athletes. Just don’t tell anybody.... shhh!

[kiyoat]

Let’s go Yotes!!!

[Yotes]

That was an absolutely putrid non-call to send this one to overtime. That was not "letting them play".

[Yote 53]

Terrible non-call. Game should have ended at the free throw line and should be over right now.

[Yotes]

The defender didn't get any part of the ball. It wasn't even close. What a joke.

[Yotes]

Obviously this one should have ended already, but that was a very impressive comeback for our girls in OT to come back from 7 down and send it to double OT. Keep that energy rolling.

[Yotes]

The universe balances out in the end, Yotes win 105-98 in double OT. Dawn improves to 4-2 in this series.

One big takeaway: They do not have a good answer for Sjerven. She killed the bunnies underneath on both sides today. It's no surprise we went to her for the game winner in regulation, which absolutely should have been the end if the refs didn't have a grossly incompetent moment.

Good win. Team showed a lot of heart. Very frustrating we had that loss to Denver or we might have been ranked this week, move on to the next one and keep rooting for Iowa State and Missouri.

[coyoteglory]

I think Yotes hit on the thing that makes me happiest about this win. We were down 7 in Overtime! And we still came back. So proud of our ladies! Great job!

[lynn]

Incredible game to watch. Tough to watch refs swallow the whistle at the end of regulation. Tremendous heart displayed by what should be two tournament teams. Sjerven was the girl they had no answer for during this one and selland is a tough match for us. Difference in the game was 3 Pt fg percentage at the end of the day. Guibert couldn't get going today witch surprised me for a senior. I am sure she will be a much bigger impact in brookings. Great win for the Lady Yotes!!!! Today is a good day.