CrazyPaco
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RE: Women's NCAA Finals TUE Nite
(04-07-2014 01:37 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote: I know that those teams bring in college men to practice against. What I don't know is who wins those scrimmages? I would bet that more often than not it's the dudes.
I guess we can agree to disagree but I have tried to look at it with an objective eye and there's just no way the guards I saw playing for Stanford and UConn last night (I watched for about 10 minutes before again losing interest) would hold up against even an average HS boys basketball player. If he is in any sort of strength program, the HS boy would be WAY too strong for the college girl and she wouldn't be able to get to the spots on the floor she would need to get to for her to consistently score. Eventually they would just settle for perimeter shots and that is a recipe for disaster. There would be almost nothing in the lane and they would be dominated on the boards.
Now, maybe a truly special player like Maya Moore or Sheryl Swoopes or Chimique Holdsclaw in their primes might be able to get into the lane a bit more than most but even then that would be an immense struggle, IMHO.
Also, my local HS has a kid who is 6-8 or 6-9 and the kid has offers to play D1 hoops and D1 baseball. He's pretty good but he's nothing extraordinary. Still, again he would be WAY too strong for UConn's forwards and center and he would annihilate the Huskies in the low post. It would be like facing Brittany Griner if she had actual athleticism instead of just being able to kinda/sorta move for a freakishly tall woman.
UConn would have no choice but to collapse down on the ball but even then the HS boys team would have easy 10-12 foot looks all game long. Also, UConn's low post folks would all have to hack the hell out of the kid to have any chance. That would lead to foul trouble and over time, the combination of my local HS boys team getting all of those easy looks and UConn having to work hard for all of its looks, that would wear down the Huskies, IMHO.
Who knows, maybe I am underrating them? I hope not and I don't think so but maybe I am? I will say this much, they are all more athletic than my old arse. I just think it is a very low level of basketball and it is pretty much unwatchable. It is fundamentally unsound and, comparatively speaking, very unathletic as well.
That said, I wish the fans of both UConn and Notre Dame all the luck in the world tomorrow night. I certainly won't be watching but many others will so congratulations on a remarkable season to date and good luck tomorrow evening.
My pick is UConn but that is based almost entirely on the fact that either them or Tennessee seems to win the national championship just about every year.
Those elite women's players you are talking about, in their primes, would have no trouble against typical high school boys. I'm not talking about boys going to D1 programs, but the vast majority of the rest of them. The ones you typically see in PA.
I sometimes filled in on scrimmages with Pitt's women's team in the 90s, which was not a very good program, and was a manager on the men's team, and played many games with many mens players that were D1 and worked both men's and women's basketball camps. Now, myself, I probably could have played DII somewhere. You know other managers I played with daily ended up as walk-ons when Williard took over. Athletically, I was 6'2" but I could dunk, two handed, taking only one step; could do 180s, and could dunk two handed (couldn't palm the ball) taking off from the dotted circle inside the foul line. I wasn't a great shooter or ball handler, but I could shut down Jason Maile defensively. What I couldn't do, worth a damn, was preventing Carol Morton, a 2nd team All-Big East player in the pre-UConn era, from blowing the hell by me and scoring. She was as quick as Jerry McCoulough. She made me look like a fool if I had to guard her. I could shut down Joanna Huemrich, a first team All-Big East player before the UConn era, because she just wasn't strong enough inside and I could out jump her. The point guard of my high school team that started future NBAer Danny Forsten at forward, a future SEC starting quarterback at shooting guard, and an all-conference D2 player at center, and went to the AAAA state championship game was not as good of a point guard as Carol Morton. Could UConn have beaten that team, no. Could they have beaten other boys teams, absolutely.
Now obviously, what kind of high school basketball team you are talking about makes the difference. A typical AAA PIAA .500 boys basketball team in Western PA, IMO, has absolutely no shot at beating UConn's women if officials blow the whistle. IMO, people really underestimate how good women at that level, the UConn level, are...how athletic they are, how well coached they are, etc.
(This post was last modified: 04-07-2014 02:48 PM by CrazyPaco.)
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