u/freakflag16

For those who are a little more tactically minded than myself, I'm curious as to how Cheryl Reeve has maintained Minnesota's status as the league's best defense while having a below average defender at point guard in Olivia Miles. Their defense has weirdly gotten better since she joined the team.

Part of it has definitely been covered. Cheryl Reeve preaches defensive accountability and Olivia certainly has gotten better as a defender. She's definitely not the traffic cone people feared she'd be coming out of college. She's got really quick hands and is strong for her size... it's hard to out muscle her even in a post up. That being said... she's still a pretty below average defender and this is a big weakness in her game, especially when you consider how talented she is on offense.

Obviously she's also surrounded by really good defenders. Kmac, Howard and Coffey in particular are absolutely phenomenal.

But even when teams attack her or try and switch her onto an unfavorable match up the Lynx have mostly still been really solid defensively.

Is it really just as simple as her improving on defense and being surrounded by good defenders or is there anything special Cheryl's doing to make this happen?

Can’t believe we get to watch her every game…

Hey everyone, wanted to share some thoughts on the LAFC game and start a discussion on what might have gone wrong.

It certainly was a tough watch and I think one of the reasons why we struggled so much to break down LAFC's low block back 5 was the tactical shift Cam made with his rotated squad.

This is more or less what our shape looked like in attack against LAFC yesterday.

Shape vs LAFC

Of particular note is the fact that Cam is using 2 strikers (Yeboah and Dieng) and is using James as a central playmaker. The rest of the shape is fairly similar to how we've been playing though (albeit with some rotated players). The plan here was pretty simple. Try and get the ball to James and see if he can break down that back 5. It's not a terrible plan because James is very good at doing this, but also look at how tight and condense LAFC can be against this. It's a tough ask even for someone as good as James. Combine that with a few bad misses from Yeboah and Dieng and we ended up with a goose egg.

This is what our shape would have looked like if we had played like we've been playing the last couple of weeks.

Shape if Cam had kept things consistent

As you can see the main difference is that Yeboah is playing as a lone striker and Pereyra and Chancalay are tucked in on the right and left touchlines respectively. What's nice about this shape is that it puts Chancalay and Pereyra in really dangerous spots and stretches the field creating more space to attack into. Pereyra and Chancalay can hit a really good pass so the LAFC wings have to respect that and pressure them. If Chancalay cuts in on his preferred right Tillman has to come over and help creating even more space for the rest of the team. If Pereyra cuts in on his preferred left then Eustaquio has to come over and help (again creating space to attack into. It's an effective shape for us because it puts two really good players in consistently good positions to create chances for the rest of the team.

Obviously Cam was right to rotate the team because of the midweek game, but I don't think it made sense to change the shape like he did. He could have easily had Gonzalez play the Chancalay role and James play the Pereyra role and move Dieng to the bench. James was able to find some space and create a few chances, but I wonder if things might have turned out differently if Cam just kept things consistent.

Anyway... curious to here everyone's thoughts on this.