Shocks v Loyola

[WuDrWu]

Shocks move to 4-1 with a tight win over the Ramblers.

Caught a little on KN22....very ugly. Tie game under 4...Shocks win by 7 (I think).

[The Mad Hatter]

Re: Shocks v Loyola

Shocks move to 4-1 with a tight win over the Ramblers.

Caught a little on KN22....very ugly. Tie game under 4...Shocks win by 7 (I think).

Loyola is a pretty good team. This is a very good win for a young team. We are going to have to win with defense a lot this year, especially early in the year, and we held a Loyola team averaging almost 73 points per game to 54. Their previous low score had been 65 points.

Haleigh was tremendous tonight. 25 points on 7-12 shooting from 3 point range.

Jody mentioned that Loyola is fairly similar to a lot of Valley teams, and from what I saw I agree. Our young players have a lot to learn on the offensive end, but our defense is going to make us hard to beat at Koch.

[flyingMoose]

Re: Shocks v Loyola

Shocks win by 7 (I think).

Actually, 62-54.

[1972Shocker]

I thought the 1st half was pretty well played. The Shocks built a 52-43 lead midway through the 2nd half and then got a little lackadaisical. A couple of point blank misses, a couple of poor turnovers and 4 missed 3-pointers during a 5 minutes stretch and the 9-point lead turned into a 52-53 deficit.

Haleigh bailed us out with 2 of her record tying 7 treys (although one was a bad miss that banked in) and Sheena hit two big FT's to put the game away with about 1 minute remaining. Fortunately our 1-6 performance from the line in the last minute did not hurt us.

Haliegh with a career-high 25 points was the difference in the game. She was 7-12 from behind the arc. Good thing because the rest of the team was 1-16 from behind the line.

Otherwise, it was more of the same. Glimpses of our athleticism and potential interspersed with glimpses of our inexperience. The lack of an effective inside game continues. However, we did play pretty well defensively for the most part. We were especially effecitive shutting down Loyola's perimeter game.

Shot set selection could be better. A little more patience when we get in the half court offense might help. Clearly this team is best when running and in transition.

Bottom line, however, is a win against an experienced squad.

:goshocks:

[The Mad Hatter]

A little surprisingly, Loyola only outscored us by 2 in the paint. Chynna quietly had 12 points and was very effective inside, other than uncharacteristic poor free throw shooting (although I think a lot of that was losing her legs at the end of the game).

[1972Shocker]

I wonder how many of our "points in the paint" were transition baskets and how many came in the half court offense.

Chynna did make a couple of nice buckets on the inside in the 2nd half. The nice thing about Chynna is that she can also step outside the paint and score.

We also missed our share of shots in the paint including one trip in the paint by Morgan in the 2nd half where she missed 4 in a row (probably was fouled on a couple of those).

I suspect that MVC teams will employ a pack-it-in and hound Haleigh defensive strategy this year. We will need some of the newcomers to step up and take some of the pressure off of Haleigh if that happens and we need to continue to score in transition off of our defense.