We won in every phase of the game; except 20 turnovers to USC 12.

Unfortunately in the midst of the turnovers was a flagrant foul and a technical ... both with points given.

rrtodds said:

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Unfortunately in the midst of the turnovers was a flagrant foul and a technical ... both with points given.

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Plus 3 ten second violations ! Don't remember a single such in the last few years . SC coach learned from Gary to put on a press at the start of the 2nd half !

Well at least one of those was on the coach telling Knox to slow it down.

You could see the trend from the first of the game as USC used 11 players in the first half to 7 for the Ags, and one of our players was in a minute or less. You could see our team wearing down...I told my classmate that USC would press us in the 4th quarter. When you are tired, you miss shots and you turn the ball over more...very simple concept. All USC had to do was double team Curtyce and make her give up the ball, and then you would have a turnover with our other players confused to go to the hole or slow it down, and with GB barking it out from the sideline.

What needs to happen is to develop more players in these early games...USC played a lot of freshmen and sophs. We basically tried to win with 6 very tired players. We spend way too much time trying to get in to the half court set that GB wants...too much time trying to direct where each player is supposed to be..
If I am the opponent, I just use the USC formula to beat us, I have no idea why we do not press more to delay teams from getting in to their O and reducing the clock time they have to get a shot....I guess hard to do that too using only 6 players.

Unfortunately these issues are not new this year. Coach Blair is unlikely to change his habits.

SOS

Our guard play other than Curtyce is suspect. And with Curtyce it's not rock solid yet though she's FAR more confident this year. Blair is committed to a shorter rotation and it gets the rotation a lot of experience going into conference play. One can't argue this is his most talented team but they're playing decently well together. USC hopefully is just a bad matchup for us. It played like we were flat which often is a sign of matchup issues especially on guard play. And not enough talent to go small and spread the floor (either behind the arc or driving.)

I think Lumpkins might be the unknown that really works as a special sixth man style player and rescues us. But we need another guard who shows skill on ball. Too painful the way it has worked and too easy to press even with a 3/4 court press.

It seems that Coach Blair does not develop and play his bench players as well as he could. As pointed out earlier, he is probably not going to change at this stage of his career.