Extry, extry, read all about it!

 https://www.dkpittsburghsports.com/2018/11/05/dukes-women-tcu-texas/

https://www.dkpittsburghsports.com/2018/10/15/duquesne-richardson-omogrosso-experience/

https://triblive.com/sports/-topstories/14253061-74/chassidy-omogrosso-grows-into-leader-for-duquesne-womens-basketball

https://triblive.com/sports/college/duquesne/14253313-74/basketball-preview-duquesne-women-hope-to-close-palumbo-center-with-a-10-title

Watching. Dukes off to poor start. Shooting 3-15 in first quarter. Currently down 18-13 with 4+ to go on second.

TCU 27-18 at half. Bad shooting day (24%). Lots of turnovers - double digits.

Last edited by HookShot (11/06/2018 2:00 pm)

After watching the TCU game, my immediate evaluation of this season's team is as follows:

The Dukes may indeed perform well against most of their A10 opponents, but today they struggled offensively and defensively against a team with superior length and quickness on the perimeter preventing Duquesne to manufacture much offense, along with size and athleticism in the post, where TCU had no trouble getting the ball into their bigs and Duquesne gave up way too many point blank baskets.

I am certainly no coach, but I have seen far less talented teams than Duquesne employ nasty match-up zones, making life difficult against bigger, more athletic opponents.  Without the quickness on the perimeter, it's just too easy for such opponents to run their offense.   

Hope for some changes.  Go Dukes!

I have known Dan for years and I love him.  Second, his overall record as a coach speaks for itself.  Third, he knows his players better than I ever will- knows their strengths, abilities, weaknesses, etc.

It seems the offense that Assistant Coach Matt employed runs the same way, season after season, no matter what the talent level is.  Unless you have guards who are physical enough and can drive to the basket (we've had some in previous years), and Conor is the lone guard who can do it, Duquesne becomes more one-dimensional - meaning it's much harder getting the ball into our post players - and Duquesne has to work harder to manufacture points, which is what happened today.  Kadri-Ann and Laia were aggressive when they got the ball and I liked Laia's game today.  There will be nights when Laia will put up big numbers.  The problem is consistently getting them the ball and when our guards are not penetrating, that task becomes more difficult. 

I have not seen many changes, defensively as well.  I have never talked with Dan about it, but I don't think he is a fan of playing zone.  TCU had no difficulty getting the ball into their posts for easy scores.  Aggressive match-up zones can be one way to counter another team's superior quickness, size and athleticism.  There is a semi-zone we seem to play in the post, but it's not effective against a team like TCU.  I wish we could be more flexible on defense.

On a hopeful note, the would have been a lot closer had the Dukes hit a number of wide open mid-range shots in the first and second quarters.

One point about the defense -  While he IS the Head Coach -  Rachel Wojdowski is in charge of the defense -  Don't know how much of the decision of whether to play man-to-man, zone , press or what is her decision.  During time outs - she DOES have a good deal of input - same for Schmidt with the offense. 

While she was not at the Dukes and Dogs day THIS Year - she was there LAST year and instead of her running one team (White/Grey Sweats)  She worked with BOTH TEAMS during the stoppages on Defense will Schmidt worked with BOTH TEAMS on offense.

Texas is a potential Final 4 team -  Syracuse (whom they play in a tournament) is #13 in some early rankings