You can stop a midlevel shoot with a hip thrust, it's just not as reliable as a sprawl. It's the first thing that happens in this video, and its similar in theory to what you're talking about (Brian). You can see that it works, and also why "knowing the counter" has very little to do with what it takes to execute it in context.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOS2u...h=genki%20sudo
Genki rules.