Hi Eric!
Thank you so much for your incredible Valkyries newsletter and explainer videos. Reading choice quotes from the game notes aloud has become one of the (many) Valkyries traditions in our house.
I wanted to submit a photo and description of our little poodle Wally for consideration as a Spoiler Protection pet.
For such a small guy, Wally has the wingspan of Gabby Williams. Like Gabby, Wally is great on defense. He sticks to his mark like glue, constantly tripping us up with his long legs and prancing gait. Plus, he steals our hearts every day of the week!
— Ellen and Ali
General offer to Valkyrie Nation: if you send me a tasteful picture of your loved animal, I will add it to the rotation of Game Wrap animal pictures. Please include a couple of sentences about them and how you want your name to appear.
Extra points if they are wearing Valkyries gear, but even without is okay.
No AI please.
Email to apricotan@gmail.com
Thus endeth the WNBA in Connecticut
It’s okay if you don’t know what all these stats are. My high-strung computer calculates some rough advanced statistics for the game.
Teal = better, blood orange = worse.
And here is a home-grown graph of the game win probability tonight.
It looks right to me, but if you use this for anything important or anything bad like gambling, then you get what you get.
Coach Nakase pregame
Star reporter Jane Kenny kindly asked this question for me about NN’s decision to play zone in Chicago and Minnesota.
NN’s answer: “Well, yeah, um, in Chicago it was partly just an opportunity from... matchup based, so we just didn’t see the matchup that we liked. We mixed it in. Obviously it’s depending on, like, shooting ability. Also, with their type of offense. So if a team that moves the ball a lot and has a lot of picks, that could be also a time. Also time just to junk it up.”
The FIBA players (Janelle, Gabby, Cecilia) will be with the team through NY.
EA: It makes sense that they wouldn’t want to fly back across the country, then back again to FIBA.
Gabby and Veronica fight over who gets to guard the best player. NN says, “you guys can duke it out”.
NN laughs, the first time she’s heard “Valkatraz”. “I like that, I like that.”
Kaitlyn Chen is super smart. Relationship has evolved. KFC didn’t talk to NN for the first couple of months. KFC getting more patient with teammates.
NN: You know, she has that Princeton in her. She’s very, very smart. And so when you’re really smart, things come to her quickly. And so when it comes to her quicker than maybe some other, like, just people in general, even myself, you know, sometimes she’s like, “Duh,” you know? And I’m like, “Wait, what did you just say?” Like, but it’s because it just comes quicker to her, you know? And so she’s kind of also sometimes waiting, like, “When is everybody going to catch up?” And I’m like, “Well, when I figure it out.”
Veronica Burton pregame interviewed by her father
Q1
10:00. I’m not planning to write as many notes today, but this opening play was a cute one. It starts off looking like a baseline cut, and then, bam-o, surprise, it’s a horns formation. Traditionally smalls in the corners, two bigs on the elbows, and then it becomes a rip cut for Veronica, where she cuts straight to the basket and gets a back screen from one of the elbows. I acknowledge that in modern basketball and on this Valkyries team in particular, who counts as small and who counts as big is fuzzy.
Then another called play, which ends up flowing into what I call HORNS follow. VB sets a screen for the left elbow into a dribble handoff. A little instant zoom action. Flows into a bailout option, Save Us Gabby, and she does.
9:09. Looks to me, the Valkyries saw the play call and decoded it. Natalie looks over to the bench, then is yelling what the play is from the sideline.
By the way, Charlisse Leger-Walker has some YouTube videos where she breaks down long stretches of film from her games. Honestly, that is the coolest thing. Most people don’t seem to know she’s doing that.
7:17 - 6:36. CLW left with early foul trouble, which means Hailey Van Lith came in, which means Veronica Burton goes into permanent “barbecue Van Lith” mode. She goes right at her on three consecutive plays.
5:01. Kennedy Burke goes right at Gabby. Gabby keeps backpedaling to avoid the contact, which throws off Kennedy’s balance. That’s called “pulling the chair”.
That term is clearly an old-timey phrase, which comes from a troubled era when it was okay to sneak up on somebody and pull a chair out from under them and make them fall to the floor unexpectedly.
You may want to check any historical facts I write with a proper historian or book.
4:00. The Valkyries throw a surprise full-court press, and then they go into their 2-3 zone, which, as I mentioned before, is a good little move for after timeouts because the other team has usually planned a play. The zone will make them do something else.
The Sun counter with a classic zone counter, which is to flash a big right to the middle, where now everyone in the zone has to turn and look at them. That will allow the other players to cut behind defenders. But oh no -- instead Miller turns it into an isolation vs Amihere where Ja can help, and misses. That’s not the way to attack a zone after a flash. I am guessing GSV will run this zone until CON proves they can punish it.
3:11. I hesitate to say this because a lot of people give Hailey Van Lith a hard time, even though she’s quite a good basketball player. Anyway, the Valkyries attackers are treating her almost like she is an entity who cannot interact with them physically. They just go right through her.
2.57. The Sun try the “flash middle and post up the big” plan again (see 4.00) and it fails in the same way. Ja helps on the spin move. CON need to have cutters occupying the other parts of the zone. This kind of posting up is just going to invite double and triple teams.
2.30. WHAT ARE WE DOING, CONNECTICUT? Same 2-3 zone, CON this time sends Beers in to post up the middle. This time Kaila helps L.A. and it’s... a jump ball.
2.08. Burton dribble handoff to Kaila, she draws two, kick out to VB and... TEENY TINY HOP OF DOOOOOOM
1.53. The Valkyries are still in the zone?! I don’t mean that figuratively, like they are playing exceptionally well. I mean, they’re literally still playing a zone defense. Connecticut hasn’t come anywhere close to solving it, and on top of that, they’re getting basic entry passes stolen. I think of a zone defense as something you do to junk it up a little bit, maybe get a good two minutes to discombobulate an offense. But the Valkyries ran it practically the last two-thirds of the Chicago game, and now they’re just pretty much defying Connecticut to find any solution. They can’t run it all game, can they?
1.23: Okay, finally, Connecticut has some off-ball movement. Pass to Beers as the cutter, then backdoor cut from another player straight at the Beers marker and that overloads the zone for a layup. That was good.
0.44. Oh that could be trouble. Ja gets the 4-point play on a NON NON OUI TROIS and then lands on a foot to turn her ankle.
0:12. CON tries something different to attack the zone. They still want to get a post-up on LA, but this time they have two shooters in each corner. That, in theory, occupies both of the helpers, and then they have them cutting to lift up from the corner to get the helpers moving away. (This is what I was talking about at 2.57.) Kaila Charles decides to ignore the shooter in order to help, and Beers does not punish with a kick out to the open three. She powers up for a contested layup but Beers gets bailed out with a foul.
OK, I wrote some pretty extensive notes for Q1 in hopes that the Valkyries can make this game not Always Close Enough To Hurt™ and therefore I won’t have to write any more notes for the rest of the game. It would be excellent to get this win for so many reasons, but particularly because tomorrow is practically a schedule loss at New York, so this is the game to cash in. Hopefully, goodbye for today.
Coach Nakase postgame
The zoom audio didn’t work so I am not sure who this is about, but I like to think this is about Juste.
Update: Marisa Ingemi says this was indeed about Juste.
“... Great communication. She was out there calling all the plays, um, yeah, and I had to yell that way to her, and then so she was able to communicate it right back. I think it was on point. You could tell every play we called, uh, she knew how to navigate everyone. So just really proud of Juste’s [?] response. And then I think she’s taking a level with her defense. Like, she is doing a better job keeping the ball in front of her, being physical. I think she’s taking a big step that way, yeah.”
If I didn’t include your favorite player, sorry! There are only 5 slots available. Write a tribute comment at Valkyrie Nation instead.
If you don’t know what Discord is, you can ignore this. If you like how the site is now, then don’t worry. This site will still work the same and I’ll still post game previews and wraps over email and the web, etc.
However, if you are wondering where everyone is during game day, it’s the Discord server. For instance, for the IND live game chat, there were 880 messages (that’s a lot, even if 150 of them were Kaitlyn Chen puns).
Basically Discord is a group chat where you can engage with me and other readers. It’s good for conversation that’s a bit more casual than leaving a web site comment. You can also respond with emojis and multimedia.
I have been posting my live game notes in the Discord chat as I write them. I even live-commented the media-coaches game over Discord and answered questions. Questions and comments sometimes turn into things I write about for the newsletter.
For now, I’ll keep it open to everyone, but I reserve the right in the future to restrict it to paying subscribers.
Many thanks to Marisa Emi and Tac0maAr0ma for volunteering to moderate the Discord and generally reorganizing it intelligently.
The invitation link for August: https://discord.gg/3P5XTuwAd
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