December 20, 2011

Orange CRUSHED!!

... 97-80 ...
by

Nneka the Unstoppable
who was not to be denied a victory tonight. She crashed and twisted through doubled and tripled defense for layup after layup. She threw in a jumper now and then to further baffle the Vol defenders. She made all of her free throws. She grabbed rebounds and passes that were seemingly out of reach. She stayed in control against aggressive defense, not committing a foul until six minutes into the second half.

She ended with a grand total of 42 points (her career high and just four shy of Jayne Appel's Stanford record), 17 rebounds (eight of them O-boards), and two steals.

Toni the Tiger
who played with determination and ferocity for 38 minutes. She drove the lane. She hit five of ten from beyond the arc. She scored a career-high total of 26 points.

At the point, she handled the Vols' pressure defense with calm assurance and sometimes just blazed through and past it. She forced held balls by grabbing them out of Vols' hands. She scrambled for loose balls.

Toni was no laid-back tie-dyer tonight!

and all their teammates
who, although they didn't post great stats, played an awesome game tonight.

They sometimes seemed tentative against the full-court press that the Vols applied on almost every possession. But they handled that and the Vols' aggressive defense with just nine turnovers — their season-low!

Their defense held the Tennessee scorers in check. Shekinna Stricken scored 27 points (almost twice her average), but the perimeter was pretty well closed off to their other long-range shooters. The Vols made just 30% of their 3-point attempts, well below their season average of 42.4%

Here are game reports:

The box score and play-by-play,

The Stanford press conference video with Tara, Nneka and Toni,

The Tennessee press conference video with Holly Warlick, Glory Johnson and Shekinna Stricklen

The game highlights video,

A postgame video featuring Nneka and Toni

A gallery of photos by John Todd (Stanford Photo),

Photos by Paul Sakuma (AP Photo):

It takes more than two to stop Nneka Toni in heavy traffic Nneka stops and pops over Glory Johnson Chiney grabs a rebound away from Taber Spani Don't mess with Lindy Toni foils Meighan Simmons' attempted steal Celebration!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to see Toni get some attention! Yes, Nneka was amazing. But without some guard pressure to keep the defense busy, Nneka would have had a harder time. 26 ain't too shabby!

Anonymous said...

I agree! :) YaY Toni!!