Apparently the Irish are clearing the bench

Foul on ND. Non-shooting

Boyd scores and it's 72-56 ND

About a minute left

Irish come up empty

Rockets miss, ND gets possession and that ends it

Rockets lose 72-56

Unfortunate that the Rockets couldn't keep the offense going in the 2nd half. Played really good defense for the most part. The only team that has held ND to less than 72 points was UConn. So that says something. Just didn't have any answer for the ND bigs on the boards. That really hurt.

Still I think this was a really good effort. Wasn't sure coming into the game whether the Rockets would get blown off the court or show pretty well. Showed really well for more than a half. That bad offensive stretch in the 3rd was too much to overcome though. I think if they play like this consistently in MAC play, they will win a lot of games.

Boyd led UT with 15. Santucci and McIntyre 10 each.

St-Fort had 7 rebounds. Rokkanen 5 assists and McIntyre had 3 blocks.

Solid effort by the ladies against a very good ND squad...
I think a lot of mutual respect was garnered today in Savage...

Either we are much better than I thought or ND is more like #15, not #2. Their lack of depth will hurt them somewhere down the road. 24 and 32 are beasts and 5 was sort of sneaky good: not flashy but great stats. I’d take Kayla over #11 based on what I saw. We moved the ball well and played decent D. A few good looking shots dropping could have made this much closer. Good to see Tyra have an impact, especially the impact of her forearm shiver that knocked down a defender. And drew a ND foul. Nice to see some toughness.

Really was a much more competitive game than I thought it would be. Much more.

Game story from the UT site -

https://utrockets.com/news/2018/12/8/wom...-home.aspx

(12-08-2018 05:32 PM)cnyrocketfan Wrote:  Game story from the UT site -

https://utrockets.com/news/2018/12/8/wom...-home.aspx

Couple of nice compliments regarding the crowd from the ND coach and star player in the AP story:

"There's only one or two places in the (Atlantic Coast Conference) that can compare with this," McGraw said. "This is definitely one of the best home crowds and toughest places to play, especially with the band and the students right there. They really add a lot to the game."

AND

"It was really packed and really loud," Ogunbowale said. "Their fans were in it the whole game, which you don't see a lot for 40 minutes."

The Rockets came out on fire on offense in the first half but I don't think we were seeing ND's A-game either because in the second half the ND defense really stifled the Rocket offense---which is understandable given the match-ups. Likewise ND understandably pretty much controlled the rebounding, especially early on or otherwise the Rockets would have probably had a double digit lead in the first half. Still the Rocket D. was fairly good all game all things considered---ND just had too much talent not to score . Anyway going in, I thought anything less than a 20 point differential would be respectable and I still feel that is the case.

(12-08-2018 02:47 PM)northcoastRocket Wrote:  Unfortunate that the Rockets couldn't keep the offense going in the 2nd half. Played really good defense for the most part. The only team that has held ND to less than 72 points was UConn. So that says something. Just didn't have any answer for the ND bigs on the boards. That really hurt.

Still I think this was a really good effort. Wasn't sure coming into the game whether the Rockets would get blown off the court or show pretty well. Showed really well for more than a half. That bad offensive stretch in the 3rd was too much to overcome though. I think if they play like this consistently in MAC play, they will win a lot of games.

I agree. Rocket defense was the key to keeping the game respectable. Would have been nice to keep it in single digits which would reinforce the competitive nature of the game. Problem is the rockets are not good enough shooters to do that. 55% FG in first half dropped to 22% in the second half. And they were 1 for 10 shooting the 3 in the second half. And during the hot first half Boyd had 11 pts (all in the 1st qtr) and Rokkanen had 5 points. Together they had 6 points in the second half. Another problem was while McIntyre had an excellent defensive effort it was difficult for her to score with the two ND bigs in the game. And they wore her down. I also agree with other statements that ND didn't look like they had their A game. However, given all of the analytics, I thought the rockets put out a great effort and came closer to their potential than ND in this game. And the 6000+ fans was also a testament to the program.