OSU game Saturday

[twistedredbird]

Well, looking ahead to Saturday's game, I think ISU should handle OSU well, as long as we can handle their quick defense. No real "bigs" on this team, and they are extremely guard/penetration driven. Riley is taking 7 3s a game, but only hitting at /274. Interestingly, she is scoring about 7ppg from the line. Stopping penetration without fouling will be important in this game. I look to BF to key in on her and switch Ezell, Aus, and Stuckey on her. Bolte maybe, but AR is probably a little too quick for her.

They may be ranked, but looking at their schedule, their only quality win was TCU, and one of their losses to LARK was suspect. Riley is why they have press and votes.

ISU WBB should win this game.

[mred]

It'll be interesting to see how the coaching staff chooses to handle Riley. She's the PG, so we won't be able to just keep the ball out of her hands. I wonder if we'll sag off a bit to stay in front of her and hold her to jump shots. As you pointed out, she's not a great shooter. We need to do all we can to keep her from driving (making layups and/or drawing fouls), and I don't know what the best option is.

OSU isn't very tall (nobody over 6-2) and win games by forcing a lot of turnovers and holding opponents to a poor shooting percentage. Despite Riley's relatively poor shooting (35.9%) they do shoot 44.3% overall, so their other players shoot nearly 50% as a team. I haven't seen OSU play this year, but I wonder if they get a lot of transition baskets to bring up that percentage.

OSU does make (and attempt) nearly as many threes per game as ISU and they do spread it around (four players attempt at least 3.5 threes per game), so we can't just key on one or two players from long range like we did against Vandy and Minnesota. I'm not sure any one defense will be particularly effective, so hopefully we do a lot of switching to keep OSU from settling into one method of attack.

Eze and Aus will have to play smart defense,when guarding Riley, because Riley is definitely quicker. Stuckey is pretty quick herself, but she needs to be careful not to foul. Aus has been really bad at getting first half fouls, so hopefully Eze and Denae will get most of the Riley time in the first half.