Finally got to watch the game. Stress creator.
Several things obvious:
A). Westbeld is what we call "soft". Talented enough to help destroy non-thug teams, but both physically and psychologically soft vs thugs, especially when they're at least somewhat talented; Duke was VERY thuggish;
B). Duke's Greenwell is a SERIOUS problem. Only Maddy was able to slow her down [Lindsay a little bit.] If she was on our team, we'd be National Champs;
C). Muffet made a rare mistake. She felt that Hannah was just too short to play vs Duke's trees, but this is not true. Hannah plays about 6" taller than she is. When Muffet HAD to give up on Kate late in the game, and was forced to go with Hannah, suddenly Duke had big problems;
D). Everyone said that it was Lindsay being out in the third quarter which was our problem. Well, sort of. We actually began seriously fading early in the third due to several poor plays in a row by Kate. That plus Little Mabrey not having a clue set Duke into a confident mind, and they believed they could do it.
It's obvious that Maddy and Michaela both have to be hitting for us to thrive. Lindsay needs to shoot more. None of them, nor Brianna, can get into foul trouble. That's a rather fragile line to be walking. Some of that could be saved by Muffet playing Hannah more for whoever is getting fouls. Once again, Reimer's absence screws us.
We're still REAL good, and probably no one will want to have to go through us to get a championship. It still looks like we're one defensive rebounder short of a championship team [Duke rebounded one out of every three missed shots it put up, and we rebounded less than one of every four of ours.] But Lindsay, Maddy, and Brianna are all, in their separate ways, All-Stars. Not too bad.