Cal State Northridge, Dec. 21

Double Dipper said this game could be entertaining and I wonder if he knows how right he is.

Northridge likes to run. They're 15th in the nation in possessions per 40 minutes at 80.2. For context, the #1 team in poss/40 is Sacramento State at 88.8, Oregon is #2 at 85.7 (and beat CSUN tonight 79-75), and Portland averages 71.9, which puts them at 205th out of 343 Division I women's teams.

Tempo is not the same as efficiency though, and the two teams are pretty evenly matched here. Portland scores 0.838 (187th in D1) and allows 0.936 pt/poss (294th) (these are also called offensive and defensive efficiency, respectively), where Northridge scores 0.844 (180th) and allows 0.845 (165th). The Pilots will need to tighten up their defense but they'll be fine if they keep scoring like they did tonight.

More context: Maryland leads the nation in o-PPP, at 1.17 and they do it on only 73.0 poss/40. Like I said tempo and efficiency aren't correlated all that well.

Note 1: I got these stats from wbbstate.com, and they might change a little by tomorrow when the whole site updates.

Note 2: If you didn't know by now, Paul Westhead is the women's coach at Oregon so it should come as no surprise they play at such a fast pace.

PurplePrideTrumpet wrote:Double Dipper said this game could be entertaining and I wonder if he knows how right he is.

No, not really, but what I do know is I love it when our teams get into a rhythm, are working together, and are successful like the women were tonight against BSU. No, I don’t know much about all the statistics, because on any given night……………………

I know that everything Cal State Northridge does goes through their 6’2’ Senior Center Jasmine Erving averaging over 16 points per game. I also know they are 5-6 (the Pilots are 6-7) and have had mixed results when playing WCC completion.

Wins: USF, LMU, Colgate, West Virginia, and San Jose State

Losses: Oregon State, UW, Santa Clara, Pepperdine, Fresno State, and Oregon tonight 79-75

See you Wednesday!

That was a good comeback by the women. The refs were letting it be a physical game and Northridge made good use of that in the first half. We got more physical in the second half as well as started making our shots.

If you weren’t there, you missed a good one. I think my Christmas present this year was the sight of 12 teammates acting like college girls jumping around and hugging at center court after the Pilots came from 11 points down at the half to overtake the Matadors 73-66. The Pilots only took the lead once, but they held it! It was a great atmosphere tonight with about 500 screaming and stomping kids helping the Pilots shut down Cal State Northridge in the second half.

It always appeared we were in the game if we could just start hitting our 3’s; but we never did (4/22) until ReZina broke up a tie game with less than a minute to go with a 3 off the glass. She deserved to finally make one. It was definitely a team effort, but Natalie Day took the team on her shoulders at times and finished with 27 and had 11 rebounds. Tonight she became 20th UP Pilot to score over 1000 points for the women’s team in a career; she did it in 2.5 years!

The ladies now get a few days off to spend time with family during Christmas, and are right back at it on December 29th when WCC play begins at home against Gonzaga. The Bulldogs and the BYU Cougars are expected to vie for first place this year, and they are the Pilots’ first two opponents during league play. At least the Pilots are at home.

For ye faithful:

RipCityPilot wrote:For ye faithful:

As I said, I think my Christmas present this year was the sight of 12 teammates acting like college girls jumping around and hugging at center court -- thanks for the video.