A lot of the emphasis in the pregame analysis has been on whether Stanford can handle our defense. But Nat Parham, whose contributions to the Swish Appeal blog have been noted around here recently,
makes a point I've been worrying about:
quote:
To some extent, VanDerveer's willingness to play a zone defense against Gonzaga and force the Bulldogs to shoot their way out of it could be a concern for TAMU. If Stanford shuts down driving and passing lanes and TAMU starts to drift out to the three point line, the Aggies could be in trouble: Stanford's zone defense forced Gonzaga into 3-for-13 3-point shooting in the second half of the Elite Eight in Spokane and has held opponents to a rather cold 28.41% from three point land for the year.
I don't think of Stanford as a shot blocking team or as a team that draws many charges. But it seems to me that they are very good at this (also from Parham from earlier in the year)
quote:
It's difficult to know what exactly you might attribute the improvement to - especially between non-conference and conference play, sample size aside - but it sure was disconcerting to even watch Chiney, Kayla, and Nneka switching out onto guards and towering over an increasingly panicked sub-6'0" player.
They switch and help very well. They'll play that bandit D that Coach has talked about: tall defenders with two hands straight up making it hard to get good looks.
I'll be interested to see how we attack Stanford when we can't get transition.
[This message has been edited by biobioprof (edited 4/3/2011 1:21a).]
