May 2nd, 2017: Chicago at Connecticut

Just the Facts, Ma’am: A big fourth quarter powered the Connecticut Sun through a dubious start to a 81-72 win over the Chicago Sky. Danielle Adams put up 12 points, nine in the fourth, to lead Connecticut from the bench. Keisha Hampton and Tamera Young each had 11 to pace the Sky.

For big forwards, sweet passes, Matrix time, imbalanced rosters, rim protection, and stars in the making, join your intrepid and bloodshot blogger after the jump.

Gonna start with the second game first, while it’s still fresh. I’m currently standing at Geno’s waiting for dinner. Taco bowls are not available and I am very sad. Combine that with training the new guy, and I think I might try somewhere different for dinner tomorrow night.

Chicago certainly believes bigger is better, I’ll say that. So much size. It’s almost a shame half of it has no idea what to do with itself.

I don’t think trying to work on her outside jumper is going to work for Betnijah Laney. If you’re going to take a perimeter jumper, you have to have a little lift on it, and her shot is as flat as conspiracy theorists believe the earth is. I recognize that most of the emphasis at Rutgers is how to keep the ball out of the basket, but at some point that intuitive leap must be made that your team requires points. Amber Harris loves to stand and watch her shot. It’s not that pretty a shot. She shouldn’t be doing that. 6-6 centers should at least pretend to rebound. I’m not entirely certain why Cheyenne Parker was out there taking threes, unless someone either slipped her some of the really good stuff or Amber Stocks genuinely thinks she can run Parker out there as a three. It’s not working. She has strength in the paint- use her there. Box score watchers, your eyes did not deceive you and it wasn’t a joke. Tamera Young actually hit a three. She hit another jumper too; honestly, I think that was after the shot clock buzzer but everyone was so surprised that it happened that they were willing to just roll with it. Lots of hustle on the inside- I think she knows someone’s going to come for her job and is ready to defend it against all comers.

Shayla Cooper didn’t impress me at Georgetown, and she didn’t impress me at Ohio State, and clearly she didn’t impress Curt Miller in Connecticut, and she didn’t impress me here either. Has she always fancied herself a three-point shooter? It doesn’t look right on her somehow. Makayla Epps was sloppy- uncomfortable with the level of play, I think. Connecticut brought defense on her and she coughed it up. The box score credits her with an awful lot of assists; I think some of them were panic passes that she got lucky on. Rebekah Gardner brought the kind of heart and hustle you expect out of a training camp temp, but she’s not going to make this roster. She doesn’t have the skills and she doesn’t have the speed. Tori Jankoska is all right, I guess? She certainly has range- the three-pointer she hit was very deep. I think she might have a better shot of adjusting to the WNBA level than Epps does. Neither of them is a long-term solution.

Imani Boyette looked really tentative out there. I follow her on Twitter, so I don’t think she’s injured, but she looked like she was shying away from contact. I’d have liked to see her be more offensive-minded at the basket, though the existence of Jonquel Jones did a lot to shut down her offense. Jessica Breland seems to be adjusting well to the three spot, physical enough at both ends of the floor, but willing and able to stretch the opposing defense from the perimeter. She kept Chicago afloat in the early going. I love how she’s developing, and I’m proud that she’s a Liberty draft pick. Stefanie Dolson seemed to get more frustrated as the game went on. Lots of shoving- she got in a good one on Morgan Tuck, and filched a page from the Plenette Pierson Playbook on tangling the arms of the defensive player to draw a foul. Jonquel Jones (IIRC) was not amused.

Keisha Hampton shoots threes. It’s like she went to DePaul or something. (Don’t look at me like that, Jessica January.) She really seems comfortable in that role. I don’t know if she’s staying on, but she seems like she might be a nice backup to Breland when the Sky need to be more offensive-minded and less physical on defense. Cappie Pondexter is as she has always been: in love with the one-foot fallaway jumper, good at the drive and dish, vulnerable to being swatted, seemingly dissatisfied unless the offense runs through her. She had to run point when the starters were in, because, well, who else was it going to be, Boyette? Honestly. Pondexter-Hampton-Breland-Dolson-Boyette is one of the ridiculously biggest lineups I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some lineups.

For a team with so many bigs, Chicago wasn’t as dominant inside and on the glass as I would have expected. I think they need a point guard- whether that’s Vandersloot upon her return, Quigley upon hers, or Pondexter upon the cessation of her habitual recto-cranial inversion, I don’t know.

I’m going to cut to the chase and give Danielle Adams her shout-out straightaway. I don’t know how a woman that big moves that delicately. I don’t know how she gets beautiful finesse shots off. I don’t know how she draws fouls. She broke my neighbor’s brain. By the end of the game, all he could talk about was how she broke the laws of physics. Well done, Danielle, you’ve played one game in a Sun uniform and you already broke one of their season ticket holders. She powered Connecticut in the fourth quarter with threes, adroit flopping, and even a floor dive. (One more money quote and I’m done, from postgame: “I used to watch her on TV when she was with San Antonio, and I watched her hit those shots, and I thought it was all done with mirrors.”) Jennifer Hamson isn’t very strong- her screens move too much when she takes contact- but she blocks like a volleyball player. The hands get way up. I think she’s too one-dimensional to stick, but that’s a heck of a dimension. Reshanda Gray’s enthusiasm is appreciated, and she was good inside, but there’s something missing and I don’t know what it is. (I loved how much rim she got on the one jumper, though. Tap tap tap in.) Brionna Jones is very tough-looking, and seemed to get her feet under her in the paint as the game went on. She had a block on Tamera Young that looked like it was followed with a “not in my house”, which is funny coming from a rookie- Young’s played more games on that floor than Jones has.

Kelly Faris is a pest defensively, but someone who’s been in the league as many years as she has should be able to recognize game flow and not commit stupid reach-in fouls when it’s clear the officials are going to call stupid reach-in fouls. She needs to be more of a factor on offense. Don’t be scared of the ball, Kelly; if it hasn’t done anything to you by now, it’s never going to do anything to you. Jessica January did not take threes, as if someone was determined to prove to me that not all DePaul players take threes. I thought she really held her ground in the fourth quarter. Rookie jitters, a little, but more on the WNBA level (at least the preseason level) than I expected. Rachel Banham’s shot makes were very popular, but I was more impressed with the rebounds she pulled down. She’s stronger than I realized, I think. My neighbor was comparing her to Whalen, but beyond a superficial physical similarity and a shared alma mater, I don’t see it. Shekinna Stricklen shot Connecticut back into it late in the game, though her shot wasn’t falling overall. She’s quicker than I remembered. It is so, so good to see Allison Hightower back on the floor. I don’t think she’s all the way recovered yet, but her defensive instincts remain. One sequence of hers stands out to me- on a Chicago free throw, she moved from the left hash to the free throw line to box out the shooter, then quick as lightning got back to her original position to snag the runaway rebound.

Jonquel Jones, if she keeps this up, is going to be a monster inside, and I mean that in as complimentary a fashion as I possibly can. She has the length to be a rim protector on defense (she laid the freakin’ hammer down on Dolson) and a soft touch around the basket on offense. I don’t know how her perimeter work is, but wow, does she have the tools to be something special. Maybe she needs to work on her hands a little? But I’m sure she can. Alyssa Thomas is an athletic freak of nature, and again I mean that in as complimentary a fashion as I possibly can. She slices and dices defenses like someone very loud should be hawking her on an infomercial. She got into foul trouble in the third quarter, and the unit that pulled it together in the fourth allowed her to rest up for Los Angeles. I like the way Morgan Tuck and Jonquel Jones play together. I don’t know what it is about them that brings out the best in each other, but they seem to have a good simpatico. The finger roll isn’t quite working for her yet. I got the sense that both she and Hightower were on minute counts (which makes sense- they’re the biggest physical question marks on the squad, and the team is in a back-to-back situation).

Courtney Williams is very fast, and she certainly knows how to score, but I don’t know if there’s room for her on this roster. There might be only to keep it balanced, but I’m not impressed with her except in very small doses, and I’m not sure if Connecticut can afford the luxury of a small doses player. Jasmine Thomas got handsy, or at least got called for the reach-ins. Somehow, things just seem to click when she’s on the floor. She works really well with Alyssa Thomas on the fast break.

Favorite sequence, speaking of Thomas and Thomas on the fast break: first time out, Alyssa Thomas gets the runout, dishes off to Jasmine Thomas for the finish. Second time out, okay, Chicago is expecting the pass off and has it guarded. So what does Alyssa do? She fakes the pass, keeps it, and goes for the drive. I swear to you on my honor as a former Girl Scout she went into Matrix slo-mo time in real life as she went to the basket. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know if it was hangtime or phenomenal body control or she is the Chosen One and Keanu Reeves was just a pretender. It was amazing.

Connecticut really cranked up the defensive intensity. Chicago wanted to go inside, and Connecticut was like, “LOL no.” Bombing threes with this Sky lineup wasn’t the solution.

Officiating got a bit interesting in the third quarter, which is to say that the home fans strongly disapproved of the calls. I can’t say they were wrong, though there were some earlier calls missed on Connecticut. Would you be terribly surprised to find that Fatou Cissoko-Stephens was one of the officials? I can’t say I was.

I think it’s going to be very hard to make decisions about this Connecticut roster. Lots of good pieces.

I miss the Liberty’s Torch Patrol. Solar Power is unimpressive and really needs to sharpen up their choreography. (Also, it goes without saying that Timeless Torches kick the ass of all other dance teams of their ilk. It is known.)

We’ll see how things go tomorrow (which has come today) when the match-ups get shuffled. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also looking forward to the softness of my bed and the personal space heater waiting there for me.