LADY RAIDER BB Middle Tennessee (21-4, 11-0) vs JAX State (9-14, 4-7) Wed. 02-21, 6:30 pm. ESPN+
- Thread starter MTFAN61
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The Lady Raiders find themselves riding an 11 game winning streak, & setting at a season high #37 in the NET. JAX State is sliding on a 2 game losing streak. They're coming off a disappointing 61-51 home loss to La. Tech. The Raiders are looking for another great crowd at The Glass House Wednesday night.
Nashville Channel 4 sports had a nice report on the Lady Raiders from Murphy Center Tuesday night. Nice to see some local press for the team. The group seems as focused & determined as any I have seen in recent years. After coming off a dominating road trip out West I'm looking to see a better offensive outburst at home. We only averaged 64.5 ppg on our road trip due to a tough 3 quarters at UTEP. Our offense has become very productive the last month or so. Look for the Raiders to get back to their old ways tonight. With a nice supportive home crowd predicting a good
80-50 victory. It would be great to get some more quality minutes for some of our bench players tonight.
80-50 victory. It would be great to get some more quality minutes for some of our bench players tonight.
I think this one could get ugly pretty quick, they have no players taller than 6’. Nas should be able to dominate inside
Worst 1st half in a long time. Can tell ladies thought they had this one won before hitting the court. Then in 2nd quarter frustration & rushed shots kicked in. One of those games where a time out or two for refocusing would have come in handy, but we know that's never a part of a CRI game plan.
Despite clearly coming out slow and not ready to play, we kicked it up BIG time in the second half to win by 26 (final score 66-40). That's 5 more than our margin of victory in the last game, in which we also scored 66 (it was 66-45). Boldyreva was unstoppable inside when we decided we could throw her the ball lol...
Concerned that if this team can pretty much shut down our offense, other than AB, what will better teams do in the NCAA assuming we make it? Gregory could not even get a shot off most of the night
Will hand it to JAX St. They made a decision to try to shut us down from 3 using their speed & athleticism. Their perimeter D frustrated our shooters (especially Gregory) all night. But with this team you can't shut down everyone. Sacrificing doubling down low Boldyreva ate them up all night.
Now on to WKU. Hopefully our outside shooters shake off tonight's frustration for a good Saturday morning effort.
Now on to WKU. Hopefully our outside shooters shake off tonight's frustration for a good Saturday morning effort.
Good point. Knowing they were committing everything to the perimeter defense I think the coaches should have loaded the double barrel shot gun & used Boldyreva & Iullia together most of the night. We could have likely picked up another 10 points on the score board.
Lady Raiders show defensive reputation in rout of Jax State - Middle Tennessee State University Athletics
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Middle Tennessee women's basketball looked fearless in the second half on Wednesday, holding Jacksonville State to just five made field goals
goblueraiders.com
Tough Second Half Results in Third Straight Defeat - Jacksonville State University Athletics
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. – Jacksonville State's women's basketball squad started hot, but could not maintain their success in Wednesday's 66-40 setback at Middle Tennessee.
jaxstatesports.com
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If someone was scouting our team, stopping Savannah and Jaylen would be the first thing to try to gum up the works for us. In addition to that, Savannah, Jaylen and Ta'Mia love to drive to the right more than the left to slash to the basket. Savannah is the only one that will come in from the left around 40% of the time. Teams in the NCAA will be able to do things like this to us. Maybe the coaches can use this type of game to prepare for the NCAA, assuming we do get there.
First off, I don't think people can appreciate how hard it is to stay motivated to play at a high level when your clearly the best team in the conference. Middle is going to get everyone's best shot and some nights, it's not all there. This is why every team should preach defense and fundamentals, those traits always travel and they did tonight.
This game was exhibit A why MT hasn't won a NCAAT game in the last 15 years. When you and live and die by the 3, it just takes one bad half to end your season. I can only hope that Insell is saving a possible starting lineup of Boldyreva and Grabo for tourney time. He's forgotten more about basketball that I can hope to know but my lord he's stuck in his ways and won't change for nothing.
I pray I'm wrong, but I'm convinced Whitson will shoot us out of a game
This game was exhibit A why MT hasn't won a NCAAT game in the last 15 years. When you and live and die by the 3, it just takes one bad half to end your season. I can only hope that Insell is saving a possible starting lineup of Boldyreva and Grabo for tourney time. He's forgotten more about basketball that I can hope to know but my lord he's stuck in his ways and won't change for nothing.
I pray I'm wrong, but I'm convinced Whitson will shoot us out of a game
Yeah, they definitely tried to have someone jump out quickly to slow down the arcing drives to the right. I also was hoping to see Boldy/Grab in at the same time, even for just a short time.
Don’t hold your breath. Read the news reports about what Barnes did last game at halftime to have the Vols rally back to beat Mizzou. Makes all the sense in the world but I don’t see it happening. remember the WBNBA draft pick we had last year that never could crack the starting lineup…….
Adding to your good points, I believe the lack of substitution late in a game when we are up by 25 will bite us playing really good teams. The bench is not game ready. If we get into foul trouble with a couple of starters there is a big drop off in production.
You are right about Whitson. She is valuable on the floor with her defense and rebounding, but she has been horrendous in her shooting most of the year. I know she hit some big shots at UTEP and couple last night but many are not even close to connecting. Wish she would continue to help the team in leadership but pass up some of her shots.
Let me say also, Coach Insell has forgotten more about basketball than I will ever know. I have the utmost respect for his coaching ability and knowledge. When I complain, I try to figure out if he has an ultimate reason for what he does. With lack of substitution he wants the girls to jell together and learn to deal with game situations on their own. That is great until one or two of those players are not available. In this case, there is also a fine balance between keeping a high enough margin that we don't go down in the Net and building the bench. That should have been done earlier in the year. With our weak conference, we may just have to keep blowing people out. I agree that our bench is not ready for what usually if not always happens in our NCAA games. We always have someone get in foul trouble that never gets in foul trouble. They usually are our best player or one of our best. We never recover as we do not have an adequate bench to deal with that loss. I also suspect that the really good teams hone in on our weaknesses and focus on getting fouls on those players early. Teams usually pick out the other teams best offensive players and focus on them. Why not focus on getting them fouls early also. Our weak point this year is at point. Savannah Wheeler is fantastic point, but if she got 3 early fouls in a game, we would be in a lot of trouble. When Courtney Blakely transferred and Jada Harrison got hurt, we lost our quality backups. When Savannah was out two or three games ago for an extended period in the game, Jaylyn took over at point. She was a point guard in high school and can adequately run things, but you could tell things didn't run very smoothly. It is not a recipe for catching up against a quality opponent. If nothing else, we need to spend some time in games with Jaylyn running the point to get more comfortable with it. I have always dreamed of Anastasia and Grabovskaia playing together. It could be potent, but they seem to have trouble figuring out defense at this point when they are both in there. I hope he is practicing with them in practice a lot as it would help us in so many cases. With the weakness of our conference as a whole, we will have a hard time maintaining our Net Rating at this point. rant over for now.... We are lucky we have Coach Insell, but that doesn't mean he is perfect.
A couple of points here. One, the coaches - and CRI himself - have said multiple times this year that the idea is to have Boldyreva and Grabovskaia able to be on the floor at the same time against P5/NCAAT teams like we expect we will have to face. They're definitely planning for that and it is a part of how the team is practicing at this point, even if we haven't seen it in games that often. They're getting better at it every day.
Not every team uses their bench all that much and, to be fair, our rotation with Sifa, Iullia, and Jada (to a lesser extent the Gracies) is pretty good compared to some other teams, including Top 25 (or better) ones who keep their main star players on the court most of the time. What has hurt us in the past has been a lack of adjustment or a bad matchup, not necessarily a massive drop off due to the bench. If we're playing Iowa, for example, and our starters are getting shellacked, the bench isn't likely to do any better -- just how it is gonna be, like what we saw with a dreadfully underseeded Colorado last year.
I think what this year has proven is that the team is capable of winning games in a variety of fashions now... blowout wins, tough defensive battles, offensive explosions. That bodes well for our NCAA chances this year compared to years past where we totally crapped the bed in some games like this. For example, last year's season opening loss to Mercer... This year, our 4 losses are to Princeton (ranked in the Top 25), Michigan (NET #48 and a bubble team), Belmont (NET #72 and tied for 2nd in MVC), and Grand Canyon (NET #86, 1st in WAC). We've taken care of business against almost everyone and our losses are to NCAA tournament quality teams.
Not every team uses their bench all that much and, to be fair, our rotation with Sifa, Iullia, and Jada (to a lesser extent the Gracies) is pretty good compared to some other teams, including Top 25 (or better) ones who keep their main star players on the court most of the time. What has hurt us in the past has been a lack of adjustment or a bad matchup, not necessarily a massive drop off due to the bench. If we're playing Iowa, for example, and our starters are getting shellacked, the bench isn't likely to do any better -- just how it is gonna be, like what we saw with a dreadfully underseeded Colorado last year.
I think what this year has proven is that the team is capable of winning games in a variety of fashions now... blowout wins, tough defensive battles, offensive explosions. That bodes well for our NCAA chances this year compared to years past where we totally crapped the bed in some games like this. For example, last year's season opening loss to Mercer... This year, our 4 losses are to Princeton (ranked in the Top 25), Michigan (NET #48 and a bubble team), Belmont (NET #72 and tied for 2nd in MVC), and Grand Canyon (NET #86, 1st in WAC). We've taken care of business against almost everyone and our losses are to NCAA tournament quality teams.
Actually, blowout wins -- if we keep them up -- are increasing our NET even with CUSA being totally crap. He's definitely not perfect but I think one thing working in our favor this year is a great NET ranking. Our likely seed, whether that's an at-large or CUSA tourney winner, means we will most likely NOT be facing a higher seed on their home court in the first round game. Now we could always get a bad matchup against next year's Colorado... but, more than likely, we are gonna have an easier go of it against a #6, #7, etc. seed than facing NC State, UCLA, etc. in their own arena. And, I think with the way our team is set up this year and what we've seen the coaches do, we already have a gameplan if a star player gets into foul trouble - Grabovskaia at 5 (or 4 if Whitson is in trouble), Ineza at the guard, Gregory at PG if Wheeler's in trouble... add in a few other bench players if needed and we are in decent shape.
Not calling timeouts to make adjustments is about the only other thing I might complain about. But hey, that was incredible defense after the half last night. I think at one point with about 6 minutes to go in the game, Jacksonville St. had only scored 3 points. That was amazing.
Yeah the lack of timeouts makes me irrationally (or, maybe rationally...) annoyed lol. Defense was outstanding in the second half -- and so was our focus, because the team focused on running sets correctly and getting the ball to Nas which, surprise, worked wonders.
