More photos » by Bob Child - AP

University of Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma is happy with his team's newfound defensive intensity, while their perimeter play continues to evolve. (AP Photo/Bob Child)

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In a struggling economy, even the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team stayed home for the holidays.

With the University of Connecticut not hosting NCAA tournament games this season and head coach Geno Auriemma serving as president of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, the Huskies stayed home for Thanksgiving weekend and hosted the WBCA Classic.

Although Hofstra University, University of Richmond, Clemson University accepted invitations to spend the staycation with UConn, they might not have had pleasant experiences on the court: the Huskies won each of their games by at least 39 points. However, despite the wide margin of victory, the players an coaches weren’t content with the way they played in two of the games.

So how did these three games benefit UConn?

It was a chance to continue to build a new team identity. 

Since the beginning of the season, the players have talked about finding that new team identity. 

Last season, the team identity was built around point guard Renee Montgomery to such an extent that despite returning every other major contributor their identity is still developing. Auriemma willingly channeled all the aspirations of the team into simply getting Renee Montgomery a championship.  "Win one for Renee" wasn't quite "We have Diana and you don't," however last season’s team didn't need that kind of protection from its captain and Montgomery wasn't built to carry the same load in the same way as Taurasi. 

The sequel to "We have Diana and you don't" was "We're UConn and you're not" the following season.  In 2009, the team is still working to define the legacy of the next era. At least for UConn it's far too early in the season for identity defining rally cries, but last week featured the continuation of several early season trends that will likely help define this season's team.

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More photos » by Bob Child - AP

Maya Moore and UConn's quest for another national championship got off to a good start this week (AP Photo/Bob Child)

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After three regular season games, at the very least UConn has done nothing to indicate that its unanimous #1 ranking was undeserved.

After a brief championship banner unveiling without much pomp or circumstance, UConn opened their first game against Northeastern with a 28-0 run over the first five and a half minutes of the game, the first 22 points of which were scored before Maya Moore even took a shot.  There are few ways to get create a run like that, and this was the kind of execution that's admirable against any opponent, with Northeastern only committing three turnovers during that stretch.  Any fight Northeastern may have had was extinguished in those first five minutes, and UConn cruised to a school record 69 points at the half even though the team had already gone into their "work on the halfcourt offense and keep the score down" mode. 

The second game -- a trip to San Antonio to play ranked Texas and promote this spring's Final Four -- had the feel of last season's NCAA tournament games. With it's size and athleticism, Texas made the game difficult for UConn at times with the help of some UConn foul trouble, but there was no way that they could match UConn's level of play over 40 minutes. 

All-American center Tina Charles played only 8 minutes, starting guard Tiffany Hayes played only 7 minutes, and backup center Kaili McLaren played only 5 minutes in the first half because of fouls.  Despite playing without a true post player for over seven minutes of the last ten minutes of the first half, UConn still managed to increase its lead from 16 points to 21 points at the half. 

With the starters back in the second half, Texas had no chance of narrowing that lead.  It may have been a perfect early season game from the UConn coaches' perspective.  They got a chance to see the team overcome some adversity with a solid win, but they still had plenty of mistakes to complain about in practice. 

Friday's annual game against Holy Cross began slowly offensively.  Unlike Northeastern, the Holy Cross coaches and players had the benefit of playing UConn every year and that familiarity at least gives them a chance not to be overwhelmed right from the tip. 

Holy Cross managed to keep UConn in the halfcourt over most of the first five minutes, and the UConn players seemed unsure of what they wanted to execute.  UConn coach Geno Auriemma put on a press to speed up the game and a few forced turnovers and transition baskets resulted in Maya Moore and the rest of the team finding their groove.  The bench players played almost exclusively during the last fourteen minutes of the game, and carried themselves well, overcoming their more limited scoring skills with crisp passing.  The off the court highlight of the night though may have been Maya Moore candidly reacting with excitement to be on the jumbotron screen while sitting on the bench late in the game.  When asked about it after the game the National Player of the Year reminded everyone that, "Yep, were still kids."

So after three games, one against an opponent ranked in the top 15 by both the AP and the coaches, and an average margin of victory of only a tick under fifty points per game,  what can be said about this UConn team? 

It's too early to draw many conclusions  The real test for this team is on December 23rd against Stanford.  The heart of UConn's out of conference schedule - Stanford, Florida State, North Carolina, Duke, and Oklahoma - doesn't begin until that game with Stanford.  There may come a point where the grind of the Big East regular season mixed with those out of conference games wears the team down.  But, there are a few observations that can be taken away from these three games.

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More photos » by Bob Child - AP

8 months ago: Connecticut head women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma, left, and player Renee Montgmery listen to the applause of the crowd at Gampel Pavilion at Storrs, Conn., Wednesday, April 8, 2009 during a homecoming celebration for the team. Montgomery holds the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball trophy. Connecticut beat Louisville 76-54 in an NCAA college basketball game on Tuesday in St. Louis to win the title for the first time since 2004. (AP Photo/Bob Child)

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The 2009 National Championship banner will be unveiled this afternoon, and all but one of the UConn players that played minutes in competitive situations last season will be in uniform again. 

That of course includes the 2009 National Player of the Year Maya Moore as well as Tina Charles -- the All-American center and Final Four Most Outstanding Player -- who will be there after a summer leading the World University Games team in scoring and a few weeks playing with the Senior National Team this fall. 

Their two All-Americans return along with Kalana Greene, Tiffany Hayes, Kaili McLaren, Caroline Doty, Meghan Gardler, and Lorin Dixon, eight of the nine players that played rotation minutes during an undefeated season.  However, the one missing player is of course Renee Montgomery -- a player that led the team, handled the ball, and took the shot when the offense broke down for four years. 

While filling in the hole Renee Montgomery leaves behind both as a leader and a point guard is a challenge UConn coach Geno Auriemma would gladly do without, it's also a challenge that will largely define this season.  

Will arguably the most talented frontcourt in the nation be derailed by it's backcourt?  Who among Lorin Dixon, Caroline Doty, Kelly Faris or Tiffany Hayes, emerge as the point guard?  Or will it be a season with players being forced into the position of lead ballhandler without ever really claiming it?

The way the backcourt situation evolves will keep most fans' interest even as the UConn Huskies simply overwhelm most of their opponents this season.

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The WNBA crossed an important milestone this season: it was the first time the league averaged more than 1 point per possession. 

After being fairly flat for several years, the WNBA had it's most efficient offensive season.  Below is chart showing league averages for Points/100 Possessions (A measure of how efficiently teams score), Pace (The number of possessions per team each game), and Pts/G (Which is the result of efficiency multiplied by opportunity: pts/possXposs/g).  As you can see the league scoring dramatically increased in 2006, but that increase came almost entirely from the increased possessions per game due to the change to the 24 second shot clock with only a slight uptick in offensive efficiency.  This season saw a significant uptick in league efficiency as well as a uptick in pace.

Was this increase in offensive efficiency the product of having everyone in training camp before the season?  Was it the result of the shorter rosters this season?  Or was it the result of an increase in offensive talent?  I'm hoping for the latter, but what I'm really hoping for is that this was more than a one year spike. 

There's also no question that the Phoenix Mercury have had a significant effect in both boosting league efficiency and pace, and thankfully no one can say that you can't win championships playing that way in the WNBA.

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I watched a lot of NBATV this summer.  I watched Jerry West and Elgin Baylor trying to carry their team against the Celtics.  I watched Chamberlain and Russell play each other.  I watched the championship Knicks squads.  I watched Moses and Julius.  I watched the 80s Lakers and Celtics.  And thanks to Jordan, Stockton, and Robinson entering the Hall of Fame, I watched a ton of their games.  While watching all of those games, I was reminded that the period covering the late 80s and early 90s was by far the best period in NBA history in terms of the quality of play.  I'm going to talk about why, but also thought I would share some graphs showing the evolution of the NBA.  Here's a graph of league average offensive efficiency (pts/100 possessions) and league average pace (possessions/48 min) from the first season after the NBA/ABA merger through last season.

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• The Mercury are averaging roughly the same amount of points in the regular season and the playoffs (92.8 vs. 93.5) I looked at the Mercury regular season performance and realized that the Mercury's scoring improvement from 2008 to 2009 was coming from an increased pace, rather than increased offensive efficiency.  The playoffs have been the opposite of that.  The Mercury have averaged 9 fewer offensive possessions in the playoffs, but have been scoring the same amount of points because the team's offensive efficiency has been unreal in the playoffs, jumping from a league leading 1.06 points a per possession to  an incredible 1.19 points per possession.  However, the Mercury did give up a very high 1.11 points per poss on defense, up from 1.03 in the regular season. 
  
• There's no other way to frame this other than offense vs. defense on the team level.  While the Mercury are scoring 1.19 points per poss and giving up 1.11 in the playoffs, the Fever are close to their regular season averages.  The Fever are only scoring 0.96 points per poss, but they're also only giving up 0.94 points per poss as compared to scoring 0.97 and giving up 0.92 in the regular season.  Both teams have actually played a similar pace in the playoffs with the Mercury averaging less than 2 more poss/g minutes than the Fever.
• The two teams in the WNBA Finals were both out rebounded in the playoffs and the regular season.  Both have been much more active on the offensive glass in the playoffs than the regular season,  Who controls the boards in this matchup? 
• In the matchup of the league's best defensive and offensive players, Catchings and Taurasi have been equally important to their team in the playoffs.  The best player for their team both offensive and defensively by a wide margin.  Each has scored a quarter of their team's points and handed out a quarter fo their team's assists in the playoffs, and also led their team in rebounding.  What's unique about this matchup is that where each player's team needs them the most is not on the side of the ball where they are the best in the league.  Catchings has been THE key offensive player for the Fever in the playoffs, the only really efficient scorer.   Catchings's offensive efficiency has been 1.15 points per poss in the playoffs, none of the other 6 players that have played more than 35 minutes in the playoffs has done better than January's 1.02 points per poss.  Catchings has finished her 2 point FGA, shooting 58% after only 41% in the regular season, reached the FT line at an incredible rate of 2 FT/ 3FGA, led the team in assists, and crashed the offensive boards.  This is an enormous improvement over her regular season performance, and without it the Fever would have been out of the playoffs by now.  Taurasi's offensive performance has also been up across the board by a significant margin in the playoffs, but Taurasi's offensive efficiency doesn't  stand out on the Mercury the way Tamika's does.  Taylor, Bonner, Smith, and Willingham have all produced at least 1.23 points per poss.  Where Diana Taurasi is truly indenpensable to the Mercury is on defense.  She's the team's best weakside help defender (The most blocks by a player shorter than 6'4" this season), their most physical and most versatile defender, and a key defensive rebounder on a team without great rebounding posts. 
  

There has been a lot of discussion about UConn losing Renee Montgomery and what that means for this season. 

A debate about replacing Renee's intangibles could go on forever, but I thought I'd focus on the nuts and bolts of replacing Renee in the offense. 

No one of this season's roster can pick the pocket of an opposing guard at halfcourt like Renee, but I haven't seen anyone worried about replacing Renee on defense.  This also isn't about the individual merits of Tiffany Hayes, Lorin Dixon, or Caroline Doty starting at point guard.  Replacing a star player that was responsible for 25% of the team's possessions when she was on the floor is never a simple 1 for 1 substitution and it's a two guard system that doesn't put a lot pressure on the point guard's ball handling ability, this is the broader view of how the team as a whole replaces Renee.

To begin with, the Possession Distribution chart below is roughly how possessions were divided by UConn's starting lineup.  (I used stats from the 10 games after Caroline Doty's ACL injury where Geno used a rotation of 8 or less players to simplify things).

Possessions in basketball statistics are defined by acts that lead to the other team getting the ball, turnovers and the the FTAs and FGAs that result in a change of possession. 

Tiffany Hayes and Kalana Greene's 15% slice of the pie is indicative of the size of the offensive role for every player outside the big three of Renee, Maya, and Tina.  Caroline Doty, Lorin Dixon, and Kaili McLaren were all in that 15% area.  Meghan Gardler -- who played limited minutes in the 8 player rotation after Doty was injured -- was at 10% in her minutes and didn't generate the necessary shot attempts to get to 15%. 

Going into next season it's probably unfair to expect anyone except Maya Moore, Tina Charles, Kalana Greene, and Tiffany Hayes to increase the size of their pie slice from last season.  The size of a player's offensive role, or their slice of pie, usually doesn't change very much season to season, rarely more than +/-2%.  How efficient a player is with the possessions they use may change as the player improves, but their share of the pie doesn't. 

The exception to this are players that are highly skilled at creating their own shot.  They have the ability to expand their size of the pie when there is a gap left by a departing star, but even shot creators don't fluctuate as much season to season as you would think because usually the shot creators are taking the first bite of the pie before the role players get to the pie, in addition to the leftovers when the shot clock is running down. 

In Renee's case she was definitely familiar with the first bite, taking a very significant chunk of her shots very early in the shot clock before the ball got to her teammates.  So it's not that hard to imagine that the ball would have found similarly capable hands a little further into many of Renee's possessions.

The players that play the majority of Renee's minutes this season are likely going to be limited to around that 15% sized slice of pie.  That means 10% of the team's possessions, which amounts to 6 or 7 possessions per game, are going to end up in the hands of the four previous mentioned players.  That's a significant chuck, but not a particularly large one. 

Maya Moore and Tina Charles are capable of simply taking on that 10% by themselves without much of a drop off in efficiency, but I suspect a slightly more modest rise in their share of the pie.  Still they should combine to make up at least 50% of the pie next season, which puts half of that 10% in very good hands.

The key player here may actually be Kalana Greene.  Kalana had a small slice of the pie last season, but as a sophomore in 06/07 before Maya's arrival and Kalana's ACL injury dramatically altered the food chain, Kalana had a 21% slice of the pie, while maintaining the same level of offensive efficiency as Renee had last season. 

There have been a  lot of predictions made that Tiffany Hayes will greatly expand her offensive role next season and that may very well happen to some degree, but it doesn't have to have happen in order for the team to fill in for Renee.

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Was John's season a fluke? 

I've seen this the question asked quite a few times.  A player suddenly shooting the ball better at age 29 does raise serious questions, but I think there's a decent chance it's not a fluke. Lets take a look his shooting the last few years in Sacramento and with the Bulls courtesy of 82games.

The numbers that should jump out right away is his FG% on close shots.  63% for three straight seasons.  That's impressive efficiency around the basket.  And he's getting to the basket for a good % of his shots.  Gordon had an 80/20 split on his FGA for comparison.  So at the very least John will finish around the basket as well as any Bull.

It is true that he's only put up one really strong 3-point shooting season, but he was consistent all season long with his shooting.  He never shot worse than 37% in any full month this season, and shot at least 43% from 3 in his other 5 full months.  And he shot the ball pretty well from nearly every spot on the floor.  Prior to this season, Prior to this season John was a break even 3-point shooter at 33%, rather than a horrible 3-point shooter.  Visually it looks like he's developed a consistent, but unorthodox, trigger mechanism for his shot, but he obviously doesn't have a Ben Gordon like track record. .

The focus has been on John's improved shooting, but nearly as important was a career best turnover rate.  And the shooting and drop in turnover rate are likely connected.  This season in Sacramento 24% of his FGA were 3PA, and he was assited on 62% of his 3PM.  In 07/08 14% of his FGA were 3PA and 89% of John's 3PM were assisted.  That at least suggests that the pull up three he took often this season either never almost never went in or simply wasn't a part of his game prior to this season

In 07/08 and 08/09 in Sacramento, Salmons took the same % of 2P jump shots, had the same FG% on those shots, and the same assist% on those shots.

And he had the same FG% on side shots with the same AST%, but a quarter of his forays to the basket ilkely became those pull up 3-point attempts.  If he's shooting 40% on 3PA that's a reasonable tradeoff because it was that reduction in drives to the basket that likely led to a signifcant decline in turnovers.  In Chicago he took even more 3PA and his turnovers dropped even more.

Something that caught my eye almost  immediately is how much Salmons was assisted in Chicago compared to Sacramento. It's a fairly large jump, and I wouldn't have thought that Salmons was assisted on half of his shots in Chicago.  For comparison Gordon was assisted on 47% of jumpers and 38% of close shots.  At least part of the reason for the jump is Salmons getting a lot more assisted transition baskets with the Bulls, and the other part is more assisted 3s because he wasn't a primary ball handler in Chicago.

Much of John's game has been very consistent from year.  Improving his shooting allowed him to cut his turnovers, and turned him into a starting caliber player for the 1st time in his career.  So why did he shoot 41% o 3PA this season?  The stats suggest either he made changes mechanically that allowed him to make jumpers with consistency, or that with Artest gone and Kevin Martin out injured he was able to play big minutes as a #1 scoring option for the 1st time.  Which would have meant getting to take those 1 on 1  pull up 3s on a consistent basis instead of being put in catch and shoot situations as a reserve role player.  Salmons shot 41% on 3PA this year, but he still didn't appear to be an effective catch and shoot player.  It's probably a little of both.  He's an odd player, but I don't expect his shooting to be a fluke if he's allowed to do his thing.  If he's asked to conform to a system or asked to play a limited role off the bench where he can't get his 1 on 1 opportunities in the flow of the game there's a much greater chance that he reverts to the 33% 3P shooter and mediocre player.  You can live with John's style of play when it comes within the rythm of the game, but it's not what you really want from a guy coming off the bench.

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