Connecticut @ Atlanta

First note:  I have a writeup of the Atlanta/Connecticut game which will be posting at Swish Appeal at 11 am ET.  So give me some click love.

Last night, for reasons that I won't go into, I had the opportunity to sit courtside at the Atlanta vs. Connecticut game.

Watching the game at courtside is a very different experience from watching it in the cheap seats.

In the cheap seats, you get an overhead view, almost a video-game view where you can imagine the players as pieces being moved.

In video games, you get a "tilted perspective" view.

Courtside, you get a "flat perspective" view.  You can't look overhead anymore, you can only see laterally on either side of the court.

I was surprised by how freaking loud courtside is.  You almost couldn't hear yourself speak down there.  But I wouldn't exchange a courtside view for anything, and if I ever get another chance to sit at courtside, I'll leap at it.

(I then thought, "The wealthy sit like this all the time."  People who are not wealthy have to purchase blocks of time where other people will pretend that they are wealthy.  For three days on a cruise boat, the staff will pretend that you are wealthy.  But for the wealthy, life is a cruise boat.)

The hard part of courtside is that since my depth perception isn't great, it was very hard to interpret what was going on and who was moving where on court to do what.  But there is a bonus to courtside in that you can see the looks on player's faces.  Armintie Herrington was providing a great bit of defensive play as the clock expired in the third quarter, and I could see the look in her eyes.  That was freaking amazing.

You can also hear the front row fans and boy are those some loud people.  They were riding referee Tony Dawkins like a dog, particularly after he called three quick fouls on Angel McCoughtry late in the third.

The fans knew him by name.  These were no causal fans, to pay four figures a year for a courtside seat.  They could not only be brutal, but witty.  One fan said after a particularly bad call, "They're marking that one down!  You're not going to be asked to work the playoffs this year!"

A side effect is that they could sometimes be brutal to the Dream players as well.  "For God's sake, someone play defense onMontgomery!"  I suspect that players, being players, can block all of that out.  Players have amazing tunnel vision, and I suspect that after 10 years of organized basketball, they develop tunnel hearing.

(* * *)

There has been some discussion about Anne Donovan.  Talking to someone in the Dream org yesterday, they couldn't believe what has happened at Connecticut.

That's grist for a whole article.  Remember, this isn't really Donovan's team yet.  It's Mike Thibault's old team with some broken parts.  Who did Donovan get in the draft?  Kelly Faris, is averaging about 1.1 ppg and two players that didn't make the team.  Ashja Jones is hurt and Kara Lawson is acting like she's hurt, so there you go.

To make my point, I want to talk about a side project I had been planning - it seems that at least in college coaching, there are a few college coaches who have an inexplicable drop off in win percentage before they retire.  They've been around for 10 years, have gone to the tournament, and then all of a sudden they can't win games anymore.  It's like a 37 year old batter hitting .300 one year and when he hits 38, all of the sand runs out of the hourglass and he's hitting .220.  The coach hits a wall, and the winning seasons are over.

After some thought, I determined that there is no way to separate recruiting ability from the equation.  A coach isn't so much a game planner as a CEO.  Most college coaches have someone on staff dedicated to full-time recruiting, and the success of the program can change dramatically once that person leaves.  To paraphrase something Pat Summitt's dad said, "You don't win take mules to the Kentucky Derby."  It seems that good talent can sometimes overcome bad coaching, but bad talent can't be turned into good talent by good coaching.

I don't think Anne Donovan has hit the wall just yet.  She turned the Liberty into a 20+ win team after she got her hands on it.  She's won a WNBA championship.  Give her time to get her players, and let's see what she can do with them.