Game 1: Gophers Host Lehigh (11-11-17)

Ignatius L Hoops

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It's too early for a game preview; but not too early to note Lehigh injuries.


http://thebrownandwhite.com/2017/10/22/lehigh-womens-basketball-acl/


Thud.

Freshman women’s basketball player Ann-Marie Jacobs fell to the ground after going up for a shot in a warmup drill. As Jacobs was taken to the sidelines to be examined by the trainer, the group she was drilling with went to the other end of the court to regroup and restart the warmup activity.

Five minutes passed.

Thud.

Another player was down on the court — this time it was junior Hailey Pascoe from the other warmup group. She too was taken to the sidelines to be examined.

Jacobs and Pascoe, who both play the position of guard, tore their anterior cruciate ligaments, or ACLs, during their warmup on Oct. 6.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I have never had an experience where we had two kids have the same injury in such a short proximity of time,” coach Sue Troyan said. “I mean, it was during the first 15 minutes of practice when we were just warming up, the injuries happened within 5 minutes of each other.”...


...Because of swelling, Jacobs must take some time to complete rehabilitation exercises before she can have surgery. After discussing options with the trainers and Troyan, Jacobs will likely take this time to focus on academics and use the winter break to get her surgery and recover.

Pascoe, who suffered the same injury just minutes after Jacobs, will take a slightly different route.

Unlike Jacobs, Pascoe is not a new face to collegiate training or athletics — she started in 24 games as a freshman and played in all 30 games last season. Troyan said Pascoe’s two years of experience in collegiate training has allowed her to physically develop her body and be in a good enough shape to get her ACL surgery just a week and a half after the initial injury.
 

Probably should mention that Hannah Hedstrom (Joanna's sister) plays for Lehigh. Hannah started 29 games last season.
 

Game time will be 5 PM. Football game is at 11 AM that day, so traffic should clear out in plenty of time. A football ticket and $5 will get you into the home opener, as well.
 

Also Mariah Sexe from East Ridge is a freshman at Lehigh. Emma Grothaus of Mahtomedi and Megan Walker of Minnetonka next year.
 

Game 1: Gophers host Mountain Hawks

Following Minnesota’s win over Nebraska it’ll be a short stroll from The Bank to Williams for the basketball opener versus Lehigh. Once there, we hope to find some answers or, at minimum, some directed thoughts regarding a three post rotation, defensive scheming, and wing play among other slippery concerns.

The Mountain Hawks are picked to finish 7th in the 10 team Patriot League (ahead of Colgate, Loyola (MD) and Lafayette). Last season Lehigh finished 9th with a 5-13 conference record (10-20 overall). Eleven of fifteen players, including all five starters, return. This includes last season’s leading scorer, 5’10” guard, Quinci Mann (15.4 points per game). Lehigh averaged 63.2 points per game and allowed 69.4.

As noted above the Mountain Hawks have two players from Minnesota: Hannah Hedstrom from Minnetonka and Mariah Sexe from East Ridge.
Lehigh is coached by Sue Troyan who began her head coaching duties in the 95-96 season.

Last season, in power conference games, the Mountain Hawks lost to Villanova, 59-37 and to Cal, 96-63. In common opponents, last season, Minnesota defeated Army West Point 70-52 while Lehigh lost twice to Army 71-75 and 52-70 (yes, the reverse of the Gopher score).
For what it’s worth: Lehigh was 212-650 (.326) from behind the arc while the Gophers were 203-629 (.323).

It’s time to roll out the ball.
 


Can Stollings stop with the 4 guard lineup? You won't win many games without a legit post presence. Look how far the gophers have fallen since the likes of Whalen, McCarville, Bolden, and many others. Gophers made some good tourny runs in the early 2000's.
 

Can Stollings stop with the 4 guard lineup? You won't win many games without a legit post presence. Look how far the gophers have fallen since the likes of Whalen, McCarville, Bolden, and many others. Gophers made some good tourny runs in the early 2000's.

We don't know if she's going 4 guards. We still haven't seen the box score from the USD scrimmage.

According to some, Bello will be starting at the 4.
 

We still haven't seen the box score from the USD scrimmage.

I miss the days when P.D. Swanson would post the closed practice box score. There are no longer NCAA restrictions on posting or coaches talking about the game so I'm assuming both head coaches imposed their own.
 

We don't know if she's going 4 guards. We still haven't seen the box score from the USD scrimmage.

According to some, Bello will be starting at the 4.

That would be groundbreaking, a suggestion made last year by some.
 



The starters?

gophstarters2018.jpg
 


57-28 lead at halftime!

Diva has 16 points. 10 of 11 Gophers have scored (T. Bello with the goose egg).
 

Thought they looked pretty good in the first half. Hubbard's outside shooting was particularly impressive.

Most of all, I'm really happy to see them playing actual man-to-man (or woman-to-woman) defense. If I never see that damn two-three zone from the past two years again, it'll be too soon.
 



Thought they looked pretty good in the first half. Hubbard's outside shooting was particularly impressive.

Most of all, I'm really happy to see them playing actual man-to-man (or woman-to-woman) defense. If I never see that damn two-three zone from the past two years again, it'll be too soon.

Even played some full court.
 

Seven players in double figures; Bell with 8 assists. Good debuts for Pitts and Gonzales. I liked Gonzales; am anxious to see more. Hubbard shot extremely well. Wagner with a solid offensive game also. Brunson brings a lot of energy. Still not impressed by the D. We'll learn more about this team when they hit the road on Monday.
 

It's good to see the three point shooting return (Pitts adds a needed dimension). Gonzalez was probably the revelation of the opener showing some nifty, confident ball handling both one-on-one and in traffic. It will be fun to watch her as the competition improves. Gonzalez inbounded when she was on the court. That's tells me Stolling's loves her game.

In the three post rotation, Edwards started then T. Bello was first off the bench. T. Bello had 4 rebounds in 8 minutes compared to Edwards with 4 in 15 and Fernstrom with 1 in 12. So I'd say rebounding is still a question in the post. On the wing, Kaposi and Pitts combined for 11 rebounds in 37 minutes.

As pointed out above, it's wait and see on the D. We can say there's more variation and it's damn good to see a press. The first half was fine, but there were periods in the second half, when Lehigh ran more half court sets, that saw some easy looks coming down the lane.

Hubbard and Wagner did what they should do as did the Gophers in general.
 

My thoughts on attending the game are as follows

Positives:
-Not seeing that awful 2-3 at all. Was thriled to see woman-to-woman defense the entire game. Plus that press really seemed like something the gophers were comfortable doing and we could see more.
-3-point shooting. both the percentage made and the looks to me were good. Didnt seem to force bad attempts and the ones who took them seemed confident in them.
-The Freshman looked ready to contribute right away and bring toughness, shooting and ball handling to the team.
-Bell having 8 assists to 0 turnovers. She may have attacked a few times without numbers when she should of pulled it out but overall seemed to have more control on the game.

Negatives:
-Defense in the second half. First half was very good, but the second half had too many breakdowns that lead to open layups. Lehigh missed probably 4-5 layups so could of been more damaging than it was.

-rebounding. while I can admit 3-4 rebounds come to mind that simply bounced the wrong way for the gophers to get it, there was also too many times where the smaller Lehigh team just out ran the gopher players to the ball. Gophers also tipped the rebound too much. Instead of going to grab it with 2 hands they tried to tip it away from Lehigh.

Overall, while the game was enjoyable, I want to see how the offense and defense looks once competition level picks up. I hope the defense continues to get stronger but from my view, even with the break downs to layups, the defense this year looks like the best it has been in the last 3 seasons...not that the bar was that high but still it is encouraging not seeing that dreaded zone.
 

Misc. Notes: Apparently we have a new PA voice who has seemingly been instructed to ramp up the enthusiasm.

Pre-intros, the Percolator and it's sorry successors have been dumped in favor of the pep band.

Post game, at least after wins, the Rouser is delayed until post game hand shakes are complete (to the strains of "all we do is win") and the team has gathered in an outward facing circle around the M.
 

Loved being there!! Much better bench this year. More scorers. Lots of PUSH!! And person-to-person defense that was AGGRESIVE! Something we haven’t seen here in quite some time. Hope it continues. The Gophs have better competition coming up so let’s hope they stay aggressive!!
 

I think and hope Stollings is finally figuring it out that the best transition offense is the result of tight defense.
 

In the three post rotation, Edwards started then T. Bello was first off the bench. T. Bello had 4 rebounds in 8 minutes compared to Edwards with 4 in 15 and Fernstrom with 1 in 12. So I'd say rebounding is still a question in the post. On the wing, Kaposi and Pitts combined for 11 rebounds in 37 minutes.



Maybe when looking at the production of the post players, you should look at the one who scored 11 pts. in 12 minutes versus 2 point combined of the other 2 in 23 combined minutes. I believe the reason for lack of rebounds by the post players was the much smaller Lehigh post players were coached to leave the paint on their offensive end and draw our posts out to the perimeter. good coaching on their part.
 




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