Let me first say that ISU is a very good team with perhaps the best inside/outside balance in the conference. ISU returned all their starters from last year's team, they have 3 all-conference players - with Pickering and Oakes locks to be first team Big Sky performers, based on their performances so far in the season, and they have a very good coach who scouts opposing teams well and is excellent at exploiting weakness.
That being said, PSU is not chopped liver, and should never have been blown out to the extent they were in this game. We need to face the ugly fact that this game was a blowout by ISU as they led by 25 in the second half before losing interest and backing off. They had a great game plan in double teaming Lanz, preventing her from getting the ball down low on offense, and forcing other players to shoulder the scoring load. Friendly home court officiating, with spurious offensive foul calls that put Lanz and Van Brocklin on the bench, and in early foul trouble, combined with a few of our shots rimming out led to a tough 15 point halftime deficit.
But, make no mistake about what really caused PSU to lose this game: post defense. The glaring stat of this game was "points in the paint-PSU 20,ISU 38". ISU announcers kept mentioning it, and everyone else can plainly see that PSU has no interior presence on defense. I've harped upon this same fact for most of the last few years and wondered why our head coach has such a strong aversion to playing a ZONE DEFENSE. We went to a zone early in the second half of the ISU game, with moderate success, and then abandoned it after they scored a few times. I believe that we need to stick with the zone, get our ladies used to playing it with more consistency, and employ variations of it throughout an entire game in order for us to have chance of staying with the big dogs in the league. I know from past seasons that Sherri would rather play "man" defense and that she considers anything other than a "mano a mano" scheme to be a sign of weakness. This seems to happen every year, in fact, until our coaches finally realize that we can't just compensate for our obvious and glaring weakness by outscoring all our opponents. We might win a few games against the top teams in the league by shooting 60%, or hitting a bunch of 3's, but not consistently.
We are now at a key point in the season where we are facing the elite teams in league and they are all viewing "tapes" of the ISU game to see how we were handled so easily. We can expect to see a heavy dose of other teams attacking the paint. I believe our only chance of beating these teams is to put a primary emphasis on defense, playing zone, keeping the ball out of the paint, and forcing them to beat us from the outside. We have the athletes on this team to do this and be very successful. We have switched over to a zone in the past couple of seasons with very positive results. All we need is a commitment from the coaching staff to adjust their philosophy, stick with it, and do what needs to be done. Go Viks!
That being said, PSU is not chopped liver, and should never have been blown out to the extent they were in this game. We need to face the ugly fact that this game was a blowout by ISU as they led by 25 in the second half before losing interest and backing off. They had a great game plan in double teaming Lanz, preventing her from getting the ball down low on offense, and forcing other players to shoulder the scoring load. Friendly home court officiating, with spurious offensive foul calls that put Lanz and Van Brocklin on the bench, and in early foul trouble, combined with a few of our shots rimming out led to a tough 15 point halftime deficit.
But, make no mistake about what really caused PSU to lose this game: post defense. The glaring stat of this game was "points in the paint-PSU 20,ISU 38". ISU announcers kept mentioning it, and everyone else can plainly see that PSU has no interior presence on defense. I've harped upon this same fact for most of the last few years and wondered why our head coach has such a strong aversion to playing a ZONE DEFENSE. We went to a zone early in the second half of the ISU game, with moderate success, and then abandoned it after they scored a few times. I believe that we need to stick with the zone, get our ladies used to playing it with more consistency, and employ variations of it throughout an entire game in order for us to have chance of staying with the big dogs in the league. I know from past seasons that Sherri would rather play "man" defense and that she considers anything other than a "mano a mano" scheme to be a sign of weakness. This seems to happen every year, in fact, until our coaches finally realize that we can't just compensate for our obvious and glaring weakness by outscoring all our opponents. We might win a few games against the top teams in the league by shooting 60%, or hitting a bunch of 3's, but not consistently.
We are now at a key point in the season where we are facing the elite teams in league and they are all viewing "tapes" of the ISU game to see how we were handled so easily. We can expect to see a heavy dose of other teams attacking the paint. I believe our only chance of beating these teams is to put a primary emphasis on defense, playing zone, keeping the ball out of the paint, and forcing them to beat us from the outside. We have the athletes on this team to do this and be very successful. We have switched over to a zone in the past couple of seasons with very positive results. All we need is a commitment from the coaching staff to adjust their philosophy, stick with it, and do what needs to be done. Go Viks!
