Post-Game Quotes: Sacramento Monarchs at Detroit Shock

[SportsPageMike]

Post-Game Quotes: Sacramento Monarchs at Detroit Shock

By the Detroit Shock: July 26, 2006

http://www.sportspagemagazine.com/published/pro/postgame-quotes-sacrament.shtml

 

[Sirius]

It was just a terrible situation from the start and even when it was close at first, you never felt like they were really in it. I had a feeling they would be blown out by the 2nd quarter, so I just turned off the game. Good thinking, I suppose.

Beating CT is pretty much imperative now. Houston and Seattle are right behind us and they can take our spot.

 

[kennadog]

I'm disappointed. Our Monarchs just aren't really stepping up on the road, nor very often against the good teams. Its hard to figure out what's going on.

 

[Luv13fan]

We have been continplating what the issues with the Monarchs are all year.
Well Let me give an over simplication if I may...

Post-
Yolanda can only give about 20 good minutes with a compacted schedule like this. She is laboring. Snow and Ford have completely handled her. And Poor Erin has kinda hit the Wall. So we need the other 3 post players to step it up.

The Good news is DeMya Seems to be about 80-85%. Rebekkah seems to be putting consistant games together. But I believe it is a mistake to initate the Offense thru Yo. I think it is too demanding especially against a Big Team...

Wings-
Let me be blunt.
Nicole Needs to shoot the Ball. Make or Miss she has to shoot it. She need to be aggressive early. Nicole doesn't take shots early. We simply will not Win.
We pay her to shoot, she needs to shoot. If for no other reason to give us an opportunity to rebound. Yes she ended up in Double figures last night, but she needs to take shots early and often. Not when we are on the verge of being blown out.

We absolutely can not win with Kara Playing 8 + minutes and not taking a shot. She Did NOT take 1 shot tonight. Not ONE. And she missed the Technical free throw. We cannot win against a quality opponent with that.

We cannot win if Ticha does not actually attack the Basket. As oppose to the "drive under the basket and look to dish" move. She needs to get to the free throw Line. I would ask for her to take shots when she is open, but why. She doesn't do that. So why ask her to. Every time she has attacked the basket looking to score, we have blow the opposing teams out.(Seattle,PHX, and Indiana)

Coaching staff-
They need to incorperate shooting drills into practice.
I have been critical of this all year, so I am not kicking anyone while they are down.

This team has by far the Poorest Offensive skills I have ever seen. And it doesn't make sense. We are too talented, and to athletic, to be that poor offensively.

I don't mean that we can't score, cause obviously we can.
I mean the ability to hit open jump shots consistantly. Mid range jump shot. We pass on open shots, don't recongize mismatches on the floor.
We dont come off of screen correctly with regualarity. Half the time we don't set screens at all. We dont catch the ball prepared to shoot.
As a team, we are not fundamentally sound.
We have our moments. And when we do, we have games Like Indiana and Seattle. Most of the time we break down.

I looked at Detroit and thought to myself... Man we should do exactly what they do. They past the ball crisply. They made excellect passes out of the Double team in the Post. They were decisive in shot selection, and when they got out on the Break they attacked the basket.

The Team should Study that film. Cause if we do what they did, the way they did it,
We could do it better than them. I believe that.

So The Monarchs have hit a skid. But it is not the end of the world yet. We are still in a good position. The key is to get into the Play-offs. And we are still in the drivers seat as far as that is concerned. We have issues, but they are things that are totally correctable. We were in most of these games, and yes our defense keep us in ball games. But our Offensives Skill better catch up.

This is JMHO and I may be wrong.

 

[Purple Reign]

I Disagree....somewhat

Although the offense is not the greatest, this team's success is predicated on defense, plain and simple. And I do think that defense is about energy. And when your best defender in Yo does not have the energy it affects the rest of the defense.

Offensively, I agree that Powell, Ticha and Kara have to step up their game on the outside.

 

[Monty'sBiggestFan]

Both sides of the ball have been off and on all year. Its been a point of difference for fans as to which is most important, I don’t think its an either or proposition – both have quite frankly been spotty at times and its been a rare game when both have shown up effectively together.

The reason why I’ve harped on the offense so much since the beginning of the season even tho they did not have to rely much on it last year is because this year’s offense should for all intents and purposes be better than it is. Dorrell is an upgrade offensively over Newton, whatever combination of players coming off the bench in the spots that FeiFei and Miao did were going to produce more, Brunson should have started the season better, Lawson should have started the season better, Powell should have started the season better, Buescher and Maiga-Ba came into the season with a boatload more offensive capability than they had last year. But we haven’t seen that produce offense or keep us out of empty trips to the basket.

They say they do work on shooting in practice, they have spent practice time focusing particularly on FT as well when they were trying their damndest to shoot below 60% from the line in games. But since the defense has also broken down a lot this season, they’ve been spending copious amounts of practice time trying to fix that too. So until they start playing consistently on either side of the ball they are going to devote time to one thing or another that isn’t working well.

Coming off the Minnesota game, I figured they had at least figured out how to perhaps consistently take a shot within the offensive scheme. Against better defenses they seemed to carry that over into both games of the back to back and then completely lost control of everything. When teams don’t let them run, they are going to have to figure out how to generate offense out of their half court sets/motion. I still don’t know what happened in that Indiana game in the 3rd and although they had a lead against Detroit that they similarly coughed up – I never felt good about how they were playing in that game except for a few spurts late in the 1st and part of the 2nd.

I do agree about Yo, since she’s hurting again. I believe she got nicked up in that NY matinee game when one of her teammates rolled into her knee. They can run the offense through her because she has passed effectively to others when she can’t move to the basket like she normally does. But when the offense gets so stagnant that they aren’t moving the way they should be then it only compounds the problem. I was worried about Buescher hitting the wall when she was inserted into the starting lineup. The good thing is that Brunson is on her way back and DeMya is way above projections. Is the play of those two going to be enough to buoy them in the post for the remainder of the season while Buescher (and Yo too for that matter) get their legs back.

They take the game in CT and they come home 2-2 which I think we all agreed would be a solid record to have coming off the trip. I’m not sure (actually I am sure) why it would now seem like a salvage job to come home 2-2. But they need to grab that game tomorrow and come home and get prepped for the rematch w/Detroit. Gotta Reverse the curse @ Joey B’s!!

 

[Luv13fan]

Well I guess I would agree with you...



Yes our success is predicated on Defense.

We all know that. But we needed to get offensive output. We need balance. I know we can play defense. I just think we rely too much on it. We accept scoring droughts and expect our defense to hold. And most of the times it does.
But consistency in the offense is important. Meaning... being able to score in the Half court set. Have a balanced attack. If this was not important, what was the purpose of trading Tangie for Powell?

I am not putting the blame on Nicole by no means. So don't take that from what I am saying.

And I respectfully disagree with you MBF. They say they work on Offense. And that may be true. In terms of working on THE Offense. The Monarchs get open. So in that regard they are a success. I am talking about shooting drills.

Case in point.
They are very good at the Jump stop step thru that DeMya and Erin have mastered. It is clear that they work on that. What I doubt they work on is the Catch and shoot. Not the one they work on during warm ups. But doing it under duress. Catching and Shooting in rhythm. Taking 3 power dribbles, Pulling up and shooting.
I mention those things because that is where they are deficient right now. And it really is a small adjustment to practice. Not even 5 minutes worth of practice time. I would bet my paycheck that you would see a difference.

I think we are a good shape as far as the play-offs are concerned. Even if we don’t win in Conn. I would prefer if we did, and it would be tremendous. For Me the Big implication is the 3 game home stand. We have 4 games next week. We take those 4 and we are set. 3-1 and we are good.

We own the Seattle tie breaker, and a win against Houston should keep us ahead of them in the standings. So I am optimistic.

 

[Monty'sBiggestFan]

I’m not disagreeing with that at all. I wholeheartedly agree especially when this team’s shot is off and they are shooting below 30%. I think they do work on the fundys of catching and shooting because I really don’t get the sense that the offense is supposed to be predicated on dribbling or passing the ball around, especially from the players who get paid to shoot from the wings. I don’t think that suddenly became unimportant; for whatever reason the shooters just aren’t looking to take shots to the degree they did last year for sure. I know Abetamarco designed a new offense this year, he walked fans through it during a chalk talk during the offseason, but it seemed like only a tweak of what they did previously. I do agree too and I think I posted this in a thread from earlier this summer that the way the wing players act in the offense now we may as well be back with the 3 headed post player model and praying that other teams don’t go zone on us. In fact, I could have sworn that in that LA game in LA that the Sparks sat in a zone for much if not the entirety of the 4th quarter while we had both Nicole and Kara on the floor and never had to pay for it. And if Maiga can come back from overseas with more range on her middies, those who need work on their attacks on the basket and catching and shooting can too.

Two reasons why I think they need to have that CT win today. First, they’ve got to beat a championship caliber team on the road this season. Pure and simple. Second, I think their psyche gets busted if they come home off this trip 1-3 having lost to teams at the top of the East, and come home having lost 3 straight following a long win streak. They do need to take care of business at home, I actually am not worried about them losing position because I agree they should be able to win their remaining home games and doing so should help them stay where they are. They beat CT and then come home and handle their business against DET? We forget games two and three on the trip even happened (sorta).