Arkansas

8800 at today’s game - last year was about 8300 on Beyond The Classroom day.

Back from the game.
Hard to comment on the competition much since Ark-Pine Bluff was not that competitive (their best attribute was the fact one assistant was ex-Beaver Danny Evans, and the crowd warmly welcomed him when the announcer pointed out that fact). So I will comment more generally.

I have been to a couple of these Field Trip games, and the players are usually amped more than normal......this was Destiny's first Field Trip game, and I will attribute her bad/silly turnovers to the huge crowd of kids. We need her to calm down a bit, and that may take a few more games. Her ample talent needs to be channeled effectively. So far, I think SR is not holding her back (and he has always seemed [to me] a bit "philosophical" about turnovers) and trading some TOs for uptempo. Will be interesting to see how surgical he and DS get when the game could hinge on a couple of possessions. Right now it feels like he is trying to get the team "sped up".

Our inside game is improving, but I have to admit to still getting used to not having a *dominating* inside game. I guess you really appreciate Ruth, Bre, Kolbie, Marie, Deven, etc. when you get to see us get reset to where we are at present. And I didn't appreciate how much of a shot blocking artist Ruth was until I see someone with more height than Ruth but far less understanding of timing, angles, positioning, footwork etc. That said, if you get the ball to Jo high in the right position, it is almost a sure basket. The team seems to be working on getting her the ball in those positions. Her hands, however, make it hard to throw her open or whip a pass into her with surety. That same level of understanding (instincts?) makes me also appreciate the rebounding phenoms that many of our recent bigs were, comparatively speaking. Fortunately we have some good rebounding guards, and the emphasis seems to be on getting Thropay and Maddie ready for far more minutes than past seasons to also help with that. PM is promising but probably a season of seasoning away from high levels of contribution - that said, as previously noted, I suspect she is a budding star - the physical tools are all there, now it is just time and work. But if we are going to see any scoring improvisation in the paint, it will likely come from Taya, Maddie and Janessa. Maddie seems more motivated to score right now than Janessa.

Aleah is not "sighted in" yet from the 3 point line, but she is getting there. I think Kat is also getting there (interesting that one would say that about Kat, since she had a respectable-for-anyone-not-named-Kat 4/10 day). Destiny is pretty competent from 3, and we are seeing flashes of the Mik who won the HS shoot out as well......needless to say, with those folks plus Taya and KTMac, we will again be nationally prominent from 3 point land (and we will need to be, unless our inside game improves leaps and bounds). I think Jasmine will contribute both defensively and offensively this year (they even had her play point for a couple of late possessions) - she represents yet another change-of-speed and tendency guard in SR's seemingly endless stable of guards. She seems to have really good basketball instincts to me.

It will be interesting to see this team against upper shelf competition (next game - St. Mary's, who beat WSU, and in Vancouver, likely some top-shelf competition). I harbor an unsubstantiated opinion that we are not *today* a top-10 team, but that is just based on how dominant, cohesive and relatively complete some of our prior top-10 teams were. This team is not there yet, and this team might be an uptempo, shootout, guard-oriented, run and gun sort of team more than those post-oriented teams of the past. I associate (perhaps wrongly so) top-10 teams with significant talent in the paint (think Baylor), and I am not sure we will have that this year. Now there is more than one way to skin a cat, and it will be fun to see how far this team can get, and how quickly SR can get them there with what he has to work with....... We are rated #8 more on potential and past performance than demonstrated ability right now (true of the entire top-25, but I hope you know what I mean). If we had AA, I think our paint and midrange game would be quite different. From the amount of energy and attention I see Maddie and Janessa getting, I am not sure we will see AA anytime soon.

This will be a very, very interesting year. We will know more soon enough, and we get back to being more complete of a team next season (another nice touch - video from Kennedy Brown and Taylor Jones in Beaver gear introducing themselves and becoming part of the family). That said, this might be more of a transition season if AA remains on the bench......

Go Beavers!

Ricke71 has it right. Even against a low level of competition, it's pretty obvious to me that Destiny has more point guard skills than anybody we've seen. That's no knock on Syd - a different type of player. But Destiny's going to get the ball down the court a lot quicker than Syd ever could, and she's going to dish it off rather rapidly to whoever runs down there with her. The offense is going to happen RIGHT NOW, not after the clock is approaching 10.

Those who adapt to Destiny's style are going to thrive, and we have a bunch of players who will do just that. I was in Los Angeles and had Lakers tickets when Magic first got into the league. Same type of thing. Even though the starting point guard, Norm Nixon, was an NBA All Star the previous year, about 2 weeks in everybody in the building knew this was going to be Magic's team, and Nixon would soon be traded. The 2018 - '19 Beavers are, very obviously, going to be Destiny's team. This young lady is at another level.

The announced attendance today was 8,828. My guess would be that 3,000 of the faithful came disguised as cars circling the area in search of a parking spot (for which they paid an extra $10) and then gave up and went home. Amazing chutzpah on the part of the Athletic Department to sell about 2,000 parking spots and then provide about 17 of them. Hope Scott Barnes reads these blogs, and this post in particular. That was a debacle, and I'll skip this game next year if if asked to buy a phantom parking spot.

They ought to refund everybody's 10 bucks.

saying that Destiny is unproven (due to only 2+ games) is mistaken: she was a NATIONAL Freshman of the Year at a big time D1 program, and has been recognized as a major talent by a myriad of ranking services. The great news is that the Beavs HAVE the 3-point shooters (in spades+) to fully capitalize on her court vision and passing skills...not to mention that she has often been nothing-but-net from 3 range on her own. Syd was fantastic, and an all time Beaver WBB great... but she was playing point guard, when she’s actually a “2”. Same without Mik.

Per my opening comments, my observations were more general than game specific.
If you take her 1/6 outing last game from 3 along with this 2/4 game, perhaps my comments of "Aleah is not "sighted in" yet from the 3 point line, but she is getting there." are slightly more defensible.
But you make a good point - she is already trending ahead of last season in this, just the second game.

Here was kind of an interesting piece of news from an article attached below:

ESPN: Oregon St women rout Arkansas-Pine Bluff 89-33

”ROUGH AND RUGGED: Kilbert said he wished officials would have cut down on Oregon State's roughness. "In our league, there would have been a whistle blown every time down on that physical play. We never adjusted to it," he said. "They're big, they're strong, so they want it to be a physical game. We want it to be a freedom of movement game."”

While we are known for our spectacular defense, we aren’t typically know for it being rough.