wvitbear said:

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Here is the difference between Shocky and Charmin. Shocky wants individuals to get better.

Charmin wants the team to get better.

I am not the biggest fan of Charmin, but I don't criticize her for what she is trying to do now.

Charmin realized she had some talent with lots of role players. With that in mind, she needed to see what those role players could do, who they played best with, and what they shouldn't be doing. Injuries way layed some of her progress. but this is what I see.

First, she wanted to reduce the number of minutes that Leilani and Jayda played. She wanted them fresh in the 4th quarter.

She also wanted to improve on her defense. Defense means fresh bodies as defense is energy and you have to be fresh to get that energy.

She needed a back up point guard. Ergo Ortiz who can't shoot well from the outside but can run a team and defend fairly well.

She needed another outside scorer so we get Martin who can shoot and pass well.

We needed four bigs to rotate. Hopefully with slightly different skill sets. Claudia can shoot from out side. When have had a big who could consistently shoot fro outside?

Michele and EVa can block shots and when they get their feet set can score inside. Peanut is an enforcer.

Amaya and Mia are wing defenders. Amaya can develop into a fine all around player.

Role for Shocky, watch Amaya in warmups and give us a report on her change in shooting form, ball rotation on the release and trajectrory of her shots.

Who do you want out there defensively when we play the zone. And break down the zone for us. Is it a 3-2 or 1-3-1.

Seems like we have played better the second half in a lot of our games. Frequent subs have helped. But in the last game was it my imagination but did we only play 7 people in the second half?

Comments.

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ClayK said:

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In the modern game, wings must shoot threes. Amaya Bonner has attempted three in 10 games and missed them all.

Bonner, like many young gifted athletes, spent her whole youth career going to the basket to her left. No one could really stop her, especially as scouting is limited and her propensity to go left was never really noticed.

Bonner, for whatever reason, never played in a system that allowed/forced her to develop her three-point shot, and it is very difficult to do so this late in the development cycle. Playing her more will not improve her shooting, necessarily, and though she has the potential to be a good defender, that too was never demanded/expected of her at the lower levels.

If Bonner cannot force the defense to defend her beyond the arc, her defender will sag to the paint to clog up the post. And defense is not me vs. you, but us vs. them, so playing within the defensive scheme is equally as important as being able to shadow your man.

Bonner may well develop into a fine Pac player, but the other aspect we do not see is practice. If she is getting outplayed in practice every day, she does not deserve to get more minutes. We don't know that, of course, but generally coaches are not stupid, and play the players who have shown in practice that they can help the team play to its potential.

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wvitbear said:

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Clay, I disagree about improving shooting. The whole NBA has improved on its outside shooring over the last few years. Lelani went from shooting around 28% from three point land to leading the conference this year with almost 50%. she has improved every year.

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ClayK said:

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Shocky, you are right about development -- but it begins in practice. Players show who they are, and what their ceiling is, in practice. If you cannot outperform a particular player in repeated practices, then why is there any reason to believe that playing in games will result in a better performance?

The bulk of time -- and improvement -- comes in practice, not in games.

If a player does not improve with practice, there is little reason to believe they will improve by playing in games.

Now, all that said, it's possible Charmin Smith is simply making a mistake with Amaya Bonner, and Bonner is actually a better player than Mia or Karisma. She is a better athlete, but I'm not convinced she's that much better than Mia in that regard. There's more to athleticism that jumping ability and a quick first step to the left.

The other issue is this: Should you play to maximize your competitiveness and chance to win right now, or should you play to build for the future? As you and many others point out, Charmin's record is not good, which is hard on her, hard on the players and, perhaps most important, hard on coaches who go out and recruit.

If you punt this season and get blown out every night in the name of future wins, is that better than playing competitive games and telling recruits we're just a player away?

There are no simple answers to either situation, and given that we don't go to practice, and we don't know what recruits tell our coaches, we lack the information to really make an informed black-and-white decision.

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wvitbear said:

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If you watch Amaya during warmups her shot has gotten better. Higher arc and better rotation. But during the game when she gets excited, it reverts. She did make a three the other day and it looked pretty good.

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annarborbear said:

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In this instance, there is plenty of evidence that Charmin has explained to Michele over and over again what she is supposed to do. This has been observed many times in games and in practices over two and one-half seasons. Michele even put it all together in one game last year, the tournament game against Utah. However, the ultimate outcome is now beyond explanation. It certainly does put the team at a huge disadvantage.

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wvitbear said:

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I've played basketball but I was a better golfer. If you want to chnge your swing, you have to do it on the practice range. And you have to correct your flaws. Just hitting a lot of balls without correcting your errors will just imbed those errors.

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