Awesome first game by the Beavers

I mostly agree - Lamar was no pushover, and played well. They had some quickness on their side, but their post was 5'11.
We should have been able to pound it inside even more than we did, but as the saying goes, "the best thing about freshmen is they become sophomores".

Our biggest areas of improvement will be rebounding and in-bounding. The latter is very correctable, the former will take a little more doing. We did just lose three starters who all occupy Beaver top-10 career rebounding spots, so not surprised about that fact.

Our back court just got much stronger with Pivec and Tudor helping to spell the returners. This is a good thing as Kalmer was sporting a bandaged finger or two and sat the game out (what is it with our guards and their hand injuries?). Hopefully she will be back soon.

I was impressed with Bre Brown also. While we all expected Gulich to shine and take many of the Ruth minutes, I think we will have more "Ruth by committee" and Bre will be a significant factor this year (note one scouting service had her as the #49 player coming out of high school that year, so I think there is lots of potential there). She was particularly active shot blocking, which was nice to see (albeit against a small team).

In general, I agree with you, beavsteve, the talent level has been going up in general with SR teams, and there are several newcomers who will get plenty of minutes this year and what is nice is the dropoff with the first several subs will not be that much. Tudor has a very quick, sweet long range shot. Pivec reminded my wife of a quicker Ali Gibson, sort of a do-anything, do everything scrappy guard (not a bad thing to remind people of Ali). Thropay and Washington will take a little more time, but they are full of potential. Tarea Green will get a couple minutes I suspect to spell Bre and Marie, especially as we go up against bigger teams.

Better yet, it looks like lots of the returners refined their game more over the summer. Katie looks like a big time scorer out there and Wiese seems to have worked on ball handling. Would have liked to have seen Kalmer out there, but luckily we are not thin at that position.

The Pac-12 talent has also been going up, however, so I still think we finish about where the pundits say, but there is plenty of potential for us to surprise this year.

As an aside, my wife and I sat in front of the Pivec family (parents, grandparents). What a class act, sweet family! Part of what makes me really proud of the Beaver team, Final Four runs aside, is how high character the program is under coach SR. And today I was able to see why our young ladies are so amazing by interacting with Pivec's family - very impressive set of people.

Go Beavs!

Agreed... great first game. But, that was nowhere near a Pac 12 opponent. And we're not stronger having a "Ruth by committee". We'll need more of an inside game as the preseason unfolds as we're not scoring 39 from three on a nightly basis.

She had a bandage around a couple fingers of her hand (don't recall which). Reminiscent of what Jamie was sporting 2 years ago and Syd last year (though it is way too early in the season to be punching walls :-)).

Hopefully a minor practice mishap and being held out for precautionary reasons.....

Go Beavs!

Oregon plays Lamar tomorrow. Should be an interesting measure of both teams. 

also, Cal beats Saint Marys 74-67 and then Washington State beats Saint Marys  85-69

 What do you make about that?

btw, the article you linked says Lexi Bando

This is an appeal to all Beavers--Can we agree to let the Ionescu thing go? She made a choice. We would have welcomed her here if she had chosen us. I am not looking forward to four full years of snide comments about her on this board. Let's back our players and show a little class in our attitude toward her which in my case is mostly disinterest except for the couple times a year we play the dux.