One of my favorite movies is Ground Hog day, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. In case you haven’t seen it, Murray plays a TV newsman assigned to the Ground Hog day festivities in Punxsutawney, PA. Murray is charming on camera, but a nasty, self centered person off camera. Staying overnight due to a freak snowstorm, he wakes up the next morning to the song “I got you babe” and relives the same day…Over and over. He finally becomes a better person, letting him out of his personal nightmare.
After looking back at this season, there is no doubt why that movie comes to mind…Over and Over.
Game after game, UConn jumped on their opponent early and coasted to the end of the game. Sure there were a few bumps…The early game against Stanford, the road game against Oklahoma, two tough Big East games with St.Johns and West Virginia. But even those games were eventually turned in the same movie.
Over and Over.
Here are some interesting numbers. 34, 46, 37, 42, 48, 45, 35, 24, 42, 47, 43, 46, 48, 35, 36, 47, 38. That’s 17 games where they held their opponent to under 50 points. Heading into the Big East Tournament, it appeared that the Huskies had let up a little on defense, allowing 62, 52, 60, 53, 66, 62 and 51 points in their last seven regular season games. But once the next season started (Geno breaks down the year into 3 seasons, the regular season, the Big East Tournament and the NCAA tournament), the defense took it to another level.
In the Big East Tournament, they only gave up 41, 44 and 32 points. In the NCAA tournament, they gave up only 39, 36, 36, 50, 50 and finally only 47 in the title game.
Ok, enough numbers. They were just incredible on defense. There have been plenty of arguments on the best UConn team. 2002? 2009? 2010? Valid arguments are available for all 3 teams. But there is no doubt who was the best defensive team…2010 hands down.
Once of my favorite ways to watch UConn this year was to focus on the defense. Watching them switch assignments, rotate from player to player, cover for each other, it was just a thing of beauty. Poetry in motion.
Just ask their opponents.
“They just get it,” Florida State coach Sue Semrau said. “Their mentality is so good it is almost second nature. They get the big picture.”
“You try to think, well, maybe we can do this against them, and then they expose this,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. “They’re good individually. They’re great collectively. And when you add a team that is No. 1 in the country in field goal percentage defense — that has my attention more than anything they do on the offensive end.”
So, will UConn miss the scoring of Tina and Kalana next year? Of course. But most of the scoring can be made up by others taking up the slack. Defensively, Tina and Kalana just “got it”. They knew where to be and when to be there. They covered for their teammates. My guess is that Geno will determine playing time based on defensive effort. The five new players will learn that pretty quickly…defense comes first.
Defense. 2009-2010 was just the best. Can’t wait to see what 2010-11 brings us.
Related posts:
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
DodGone right Mark.
Neal(Oz)
Oops DogGone