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Dukehky
09-19-2012, 01:28 PM
Just wanted to hopefully start a little chat about the girls' season.

This season will be the first in Coach P's tenure where it would be seen by a large number of people as a failure if they don't get to the final four. As I'm sure most of us are aware, big upsets are far more rare in the women's game than in the men's game, especially in the tournament. Even though Coach P has had the 1 seed at Duke, no one really expected them to win a National Title. But this year, it would be disrespectful to our team to not expect great things, and the highest achievement I think they can reach, and should reach, is a Final Four, if not the National Championship game.

This year, I think Baylor is the best team by a fairly big margin, mostly due to Griner, but our team is really, really deep and really, really talented. While I think beating Baylor is probably not going to happen, reaching the Final Four really should happen with all the talent and experience our team has garnered over the past few seasons. I'm looking forward to Elizabeth Williams having one more year under her belt, hopefully missing fewer lay-ups (she drove me crazy sometimes) while still dominating on D and on the boards. I'm also looking forward to just watching Chelsea Gray play, she is an absolute stud, and is a ton of fun to watch.

While looking ahead is never a great thing, especially since this season hasn't even started yet, I've said it since this year's juniors committed, next year will be Duke's first national championship, and this year will be an important building block to that achievement.

wandalee
09-19-2012, 09:12 PM
Really excited about this year's team. Hopefully, EW will be completely healed from her stress fracture. Having Chloe back will add some depth that we sorely missed last year.

Kedsy
09-19-2012, 09:28 PM
Really excited about this year's team. Hopefully, EW will be completely healed from her stress fracture. Having Chloe back will add some depth that we sorely missed last year.

Don't forget we get Amber back too, and we have a pretty good recruiting class coming in. My guess is lack of depth will not be a problem for us this season.

Dukehky
09-19-2012, 10:12 PM
Amber is the key to the season in my mind. For those who haven't seen her play, she is amazing. With her available, we have the ability to go HUGE with our line-up with E/Ally, Amber, Haley, Trish, and Chelsea.

Also, didn't want to start another thread, but Krystal Thomas got a letter published on Huffington today about Breast Cancer awareness, it's really thoughtful and quite moving.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/krystal-thomas/wnba-breast-cancer-awareness-week_b_1891461.html

uh_no
09-19-2012, 11:20 PM
Just wanted to hopefully start a little chat about the girls' season.

This season will be the first in Coach P's tenure where it would be seen by a large number of people as a failure if they don't get to the final four. As I'm sure most of us are aware, big upsets are far more rare in the women's game than in the men's game, especially in the tournament. Even though Coach P has had the 1 seed at Duke, no one really expected them to win a National Title. But this year, it would be disrespectful to our team to not expect great things, and the highest achievement I think they can reach, and should reach, is a Final Four, if not the National Championship game.

This year, I think Baylor is the best team by a fairly big margin, mostly due to Griner, but our team is really, really deep and really, really talented. While I think beating Baylor is probably not going to happen, reaching the Final Four really should happen with all the talent and experience our team has garnered over the past few seasons. I'm looking forward to Elizabeth Williams having one more year under her belt, hopefully missing fewer lay-ups (she drove me crazy sometimes) while still dominating on D and on the boards. I'm also looking forward to just watching Chelsea Gray play, she is an absolute stud, and is a ton of fun to watch.

While looking ahead is never a great thing, especially since this season hasn't even started yet, I've said it since this year's juniors committed, next year will be Duke's first national championship, and this year will be an important building block to that achievement.

I think the gap to uconn is a lot smaller than people think (i know no one will pay an ounce of attention to me saying this as a uconn homer), and here's why

uconn lost by 5 to baylor in december last year (at baylor), furthermore they had an 11 point lead on baylor late....it took 25-9-9 from griner.

Arguably Uconn's best player was a freshman last year coming into her own. She played 30+ minutes coming off the bench. It's likely she has much more room to grow than griner, who is probably much closer to her ceiling.

Uconn had one large weakness last year, depth in the interior, and while they might have had the best group of guards in the country, they really had one serviceable big who really couldn't hold her own against griner, especially once in foul trouble (which she found herself often). Uconn is bringing in the top TWO recruits in the nation, one of whom is 6-3 dunker (the other being the best incoming PG, deepening their guard roster). They also have a 6'2 girl coming in, so suddenly they go from being extremely thin inside to having a formidable force....one that at least give griner a bit more trouble than she had last year.

The team is undoubtedly much stronger than it was last year, the only loss being tiffany hayes (more than being made up for by the incoming class)....all in all I think the amount this team is better than last years team is MORE than the difference between this and last year's baylor teams. Given the margin was close last year, I think it must be even closer this year.

Now, Are they demonstrably better or on par? I'm not sure. I think its too early to say "baylor is far and away the best". I know you guys can't stand geno, but you can never count his teams out.

stillcrazie
09-20-2012, 08:42 AM
Amber is the key to the season in my mind. For those who haven't seen her play, she is amazing. With her available, we have the ability to go HUGE with our line-up with E/Ally, Amber, Haley, Trish, and Chelsea.

Also, didn't want to start another thread, but Krystal Thomas got a letter published on Huffington today about Breast Cancer awareness, it's really thoughtful and quite moving.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/krystal-thomas/wnba-breast-cancer-awareness-week_b_1891461.html

I saw Amber on campus a couple of weeks ago, still walking in crutches. I hope she will be able to start the season with the team, but have not heard anything either way.