Perfection isn't compelling

I got a chance to see Connecticut at Maryland recently.

Before I begin my remarks, there is an important caveat - I don't like to see anyone injured.  Period.  Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis's injury against Stanford was pretty scary for anyone who saw it live.  It looks like nothing was broken and in about four months, she should be all right.  Morgan Tuck needed some scoping, and that left Connecticut short-handed in their game against the Terps.

That being said, these injuries actually made Connecticut vs. Maryland - interesting.  Could Maryland beat a short-handed Connecticut?  Alyssa Thomas carried Maryland on her back for a while, and it looked like the Terps had the chance to shock the #1 Huskies.

But no. Maryland was NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME.

There's a play which I think exemplifies part of the reason why UConn can win games.  Laurin Mincy pops a long range shot against UConn and pops up her fist in triumph, smiling.  A dagger, right?

No. The Huskies act as if they weren't even paying attention, fast break down the other end of the court and catch Maryland's defense asleep.  So much for Laurin Mincy's triumphal moment.

There was a comment by USC football coach Pete Carroll that rang in my head:

“We’re not going to do anything different for this game since we’re not treating this game any different than another game. Every game is a championship game for us, so we’ll treat this one, the last one and the next one exactly the same. And that goes for our practices leading up to it as well.”

Connecticut plays every game like it's a championship game.

"It's about us getting ready to play. It's not about the other team. We'll beat ourselves before they beat us. That's always our approach."

Another quote from Carroll.  The only team that Connecticut is playing against is Connecticut, it always has been.  Connecticut always attacks, always, always wants the perfect play, always wants to play killer man-to-man defense.

Maryland tried to get Stefanie Dolson in foul trouble.  That's a mistake.  You don't give the enemy rope and hope that she'll hang herself with it.  If Dolson had five fouls, it would have been a big benefit for Maryland - but that didn't happen, Dolson continued to exploit Maryland inside, and game over.

My wife - not a basketball fan - watched this game with me.  "They must spend a lot of their practices passing," she said.  Connecticut can execute and execute quickly.  When they speed up a play, there's not much "what am I supposed to do now?"  The only player I know who improvised at UConn was Maya Moore, because Auriemma complained once that Moore was invariably out of position on plays, trying to guess where she should be based on instinct and making the right play anyway.

But there's only one Maya Moore.

Given that UConn-Penn State is on in the background - and Connecticut is up 30-18 - I wonder if anyone is going to be able to beat Connecticut this year.  Perfection might be the goal for Connecticut, but it doesn't make their dismantlings of the enemy that compelling unless you're a Huskies fan.  As Mike Peden said on Twitter, if this is the way that the women's BB season is going to be, I'm already counting the days until the WNBA starts up again.

(* * *)

From RebKell, someone posted a link that Jenny Boucek was talking to both Tulsa and Atlanta about that last open coaching job. 

Interesting comments about Boucek's grind-it-out style.  As for running with the Dream, well, we Ran with the Dream and we're 0-9 in WNBA Finals play.  Maybe we should try something else.

But here's my big prediction - the team that gets Jenny Boucek is the team that is going to eventually relocate to Oakland.  The Atlanta experiment or the Tulsa experiment is about to come to an end if either of these teams hires Boucek.  If the Dream pick Boucek, McCoughtry should start looking for apartments in Oakland.