THE WEDNESDAY JARED ANDERSON RECAP
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| Coach Walz and ref Kevin Dillard discuss favorite Christmas selections. |
Are you Team Walz on this? I am! Let me know in this comments section when you think it is acceptable to start listening to Christmas music.
There was plenty to joke around and be joyful about in the Cards 90-55 rout of Toledo last night in the KFC YUM! Center. UofL improves to 3-0 and prepares to host Michigan Thursday night in semifinal action of the preseason WNIT Tournament. Louisville, Michigan, Oregon and Texas A&M are all still undefeated in the brackets.
I told Paul at halftime Louisville would score over 80 but fail to reach 90. Paulie assured me that 90 would be reached. A bunch of free throws at the end of the game and a jumper from Dana Evans secured Paulie's boast.
The Cards outscored the Rockets in three of the quarters and tied them in the third. Overall, the stat sheet showed Louisville domination, but that wasn't necessarily the case. The first half started slow for the Cards. Seven of their first nine points came from the free throw line. Louisville made nine straight free throws to start the contest and ended up shooting 25-31 from the charity stripe for 80.65%. Quite impressive. As Coach pointed out to Paulie, on three of the misses, the Cards regained possession and converted on a layup and two three-pointers. According to the Walzian theory of revised free throw configuration, that would give the Cards a 28-31 success rate on free throw sequencing.Paulie seemed to "get the math". How about you?
The rest of the offense was slow to get going. Except for Asia Durr, who scored 11 of her 14 points in the first half. The defense didn't look great either -- Toledo finding ways to score easy baskets on surprisingly wide open shots. The Cards held a 20-14 advantage after the first quarter and led 43-25 at the half. The second half started slow but got better as free throws helped skew the final quarter's state some -- but the Cards managed to take control and maintain possession well.
Myisha Hines-Allen and Jazmine Jones had impressive efforts with 17 points and 10 rebounds each. Myisha pointed out in the post-game presser that she has four assists, one more than Jazz. Asia "Durr-ific" was the only other Card to crack double figure scoring with 14 points. She made a trio of threes tonight to improve her season total to 13 on the year. Averaging just over four per game will definitely get this ACC Preseason Player of the Year in triple digits for the season again.
J-A-R-E-D Report
We've seen the F-R-E-D and C-A-S-E reports this year and Paulie challenged me to create my own report -- so buckle up and hang on for a wild ride.
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| Jared Leto |
A - Assists: 18 assists for the Cards. They shared the wealth among each other Tuesday night. One play that showcases this was when Myisha (who now goes by Du-Blay -- for her double-double prowess) was driving along the baseline for a layup but found stellar junior Arica Carter for a wide-open three. The Cards earn a capital "A" here.
R - Rebounds. Louisville out-rebounded the Rockets by 30. 57-27. UofL had 19 offensive boards and 38 defensive grabs. Those 19 offensive rebounds led to 25 second chance points. Capital "R" no doubt about it.
E - Efficiency/Effort. 11 players saw action for Louisville tonight and all played double-digit minutes. They spent their court-time hustling up and down the court. By the end of the contest they even employed a suffocating defense. Struggling to make jump shots and layups, the Cards strongly relied on free throws to create points. The 25 made "free ones" are enough to earn them a capital "E".
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| Is Paulie napping or battling Spellcheck? |
THE INAUGURAL JARED REPORT: j-A-R-E-d. Not too shabby at all. Maybe Paulie will provide a FRED report later today in the comments section.
Attendance last night was disappointing. Announced at 5444, that might be accurate if you include media, pep band, cheerleaders, security, concession stand employees and the stat crew but there were way too many seats empty Tuesday night.
Coach was seemingly displeased with the turnout as was I. He has every right to be. This is the #5 team in the nation. It is one of the top women's basketball programs in the nation. The competition is tough but attendance numbers have been decreasing over the years. The fans that were there Tuesday night get a capital "A" from me but more people need to get their butts in the seats. Is it time for Coach to "buy a round of beer or soft drinks" for attendees again? Yes, there were four top 25 teams on TV last night in MBB. That shouldn't be a reason for the KFC YUM! to be more than 3/4th empty, though.
OTHER STUFF
Softball announced the signing of five newcomers for the 2018-19 season. Two are from Kentucky. I'm not a big fan of the recruitment news and excitement for any sport -- for fear of the highly anticipated players disappointing me or me not giving the lesser-recognized recruits attention or credit. Softball head coach Sandy Pearsall seems thrilled about the signing of all five. ( Has anyone else noticed the striking resemblance between her and asst. strength and conditioning coach Beth Burns?) Of course, we still have the 2017-18 season to focus on and cheer for comong up very soon.
Rowing's fall schedule concluded over the weekend and the Stroke Girls had a successful outing in the Rivanna Romp. The varsity eight grabbed second place.
Referring back to my Christmas music mention, I know we don't all agree that Christmas music should start in November....even though Coah Walz is probably humming "Let It Go" from Frozen today. I do know that we all agree that November is donation month at CARDINAL COUPLE. The donations so far have been generous and outstanding. We cannot thank our donors enough for the money we've received so far. Since we're halfway through the month, can we double the current numbers? JARED ANDERSON
POST GAME WALZ: WALZ DISCUSSES TOLEDO WIN AND CHRISTMAS MUSIC
POST GAME MYISHA AND ASIA: DOO-BLAY AND 50 PIECE DISCUSS THE WIN AND NICKNAMES
( Not only did Jared write today's article, but he also took the basketball photos you see today. A double-double for him, also. Maybe we should start calling him DOO-BLAY along with MyZilla)
TOMORROW: Paulie is travelling to Mercer County today to interview future Card Seygan Robins and head coach Chris Souder. Hear it and read it here tomorrow.
Paulie
I was also disappointed with the attendance. I've heard some attribute the drop in attendance to scandal fatigue to which I say "why take this out on the student-athletes?" and some to busy schedules. I think there may be another factor--that our local print and television media acts like the program doesn't exist. Oldsters like me still rely to some degree on the print edition of the C-J for local news. If you didn't already know about the schedule or that there was a game last night, you sure wouldn't have learned that from the C-J's Sports section yesterday morning.
ReplyDeleteTrue and the C-J didn't send usual Louisville WBB writer Danielle Lerner to the game last night. Steve Bittenbender got the call. The C-J has been abysmally poor at coverage on UofL WBB. Walz is doing all he can, appearing on every TV and Radio talk show he can find.
DeleteFans, come support these outstanding athletes. You just might have some fun in the process.
Paulie
I dropped my prescription to the the Courier-Journal A few weeks later they called and offered the paper at a reduced price. I said that I would renew when the sports departed quits being sexist. The caller, a woman, could not answer.
DeleteGreat write up, Jared. I too was disappointed with the turnout. This team can ball!
ReplyDeleteGood game last night,the cards are learning to play good team defence.I was really impressed with Sydney game on the defensive end.
ReplyDeleteMLW
I also like the development of Hometown Philly girl Bionca Dunham.
DeleteMLW
Listened to Nick and A.J.'s call last night. My ACC Network Extra feed kept messing up so I missed most of the broadcast. I really like those two.
ReplyDeleteI like the J-A-R-E-D add. What say you, Paulie, with the FRED report?
-- The Real Joe Hill --
Yeah, I'll FRED it out:
ReplyDeleteFree Throws: Capital "F"
Rebounds: Capital "R"
Effort/Execution: small "e" (too many turnovers and too many missed "Bunnies" underneath
Defense: Capital "D"
FRED SUMMATION : F-R-e-D
Paulie
Nice job, Jared
I think games like last night's happen when you're playing a bunch of players who don't normally see that much time together as a unit. Players playing in positions they're not used to playing. There will be a huge difference when conference games start and the rotation dwindles. Basically, it'll be one or two reserves at a time, not 4-5 all together.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm sick of local media coverage, which amounts to little to none, for a top 10, top 5 team, is senseless to me. It's like they'll only cover after home games or games like the Ohio State game when Durr scored 47 and they HAD to say something.
On the attendance issue do not forget about the former season ticket holders who did not renew because of the new U of L Mobile App seat assignments. There were many who just did not like knowing where they would be setting each game.
ReplyDeleteDCW
The mobile app has definitely been a major complaint to me in e-mails and conversations. It may be time to re-evaluate it and alter or scrap it. We'll see how attendance is in these next two, providing the Cards can get by a tough Michigan squad.
DeleteI'd like to see 10,000 + show up for the Thursday night game. And, if we play Sunday, the same.
Paulie
Nice piece. It's interesting to see how the various crew members look at measuring performance. It might screw up the "name thingy" folks are doing but I suggest someone come up with a ball handling efficiency metric. Could be a function of turnovers and the opponent. Point being, in some games eight turnovers are too may because the opponent isn't very good, doesn't focus on defense or press...conversely in some games 15 turnovers might be acceptable if you're playing a strong pressing / defensive squad. Would be fun to think that through and come up with a measurement that makes sense. Probably could come up with an opponent defensive intensity "grade" and throw it up against turnovers to come up with a score. Just a suggestion.
ReplyDeleteThe attendance is a bit alarming but it has been trending downward generally in WCBB other than South Carolina for a while. Further WNBA attendance is so bad they stopped reporting attendance in the box scores last season and then at the end claimed attendance was up due to streaming which is laughable. So...clearly attendance is global challenge for WBB.
Regardless it's good to get another W and have a chance to see lots of kids play.
The ball handling efficiency metric intrigues me. We have two Speed School formers on our staff. I'll see if one of them will tackle a possible formula. Maybe something like total possessions, result of possessions, checking the categories and coming up with some percentage on efficiency?
DeletePaulie
That could work. With all of the tape the ULWBB staff reviews I'm sure they have some kind of an estimate of how tough defensively a given opponent will be although they might not want to share it. If you could come up with some kind of a number rating (1 - 5?) then it could be used with turnovers and some of the other variables you mention. So if someone could come up with that ranking then I imagine you could come up with a turnover target for a given opponent and then assign a grade based upon how much over or under our turnovers come at after the game. It could get a bit complicated as I know Walz wants his kids to be aggressive but assuming he wants the same level of aggressiveness every game that may not have to be factored in. Don’t want to get too cute about it but it could be meaningful.
DeleteI didn’t realize you had a couple engineers on your team. They do stuff like this in their sleep. Between them and an experienced horse handicapper like yourself it would be interesting to see how that would come out. Might not mean much initially but would be cool to track and play with over time.
Let's be careful on interpreting that "Speed School formers". Case is well and truly legit. I, on the other hand, spent two years at Speed School and then switch to Computer Information Systems in the Business School. And even at that, still didn't graduate.
DeleteSimplistically, you could just adjust what an "acceptable" number of turnovers based on what group the opponent's defensive efficiency ranks or ranks in steals/average TOs forced falls into.
DeleteThere is also definitely something more complex that could be worked up. All of these scores or ratings would presumably become more accurate as the season goes on and opponents' defensive rankings even out.
I’m pretty bad at being active in the comments section on here because the bank has many sites like Blogspot blocked and the WiFi isn’t always strong enough for my phone to connect. Nevertheless, thank you for the kind words on today’s write-up.
ReplyDeleteI’m still tweaking the J-A-R-E-D report and it will get better as the season progresses and I get to do more with it.
I’m hoping the mobile app season ticket stuff gets resolved by the ticket office soon so we can bring more loyal fans back. And as we settle into a normal rotation of players things will get better. I graduated with a music degree so don’t like to me on a ball handling efficiency system... haha
Jared
Don’t look to me* silly iPhone autocorrect
Delete