Numbers often paint a good picture of how a team is performing, but not always.
With the fifth-ranked Colorado women’s basketball team, the numbers aren’t exactly the best indicator of the quality of the Buffaloes’ defense.
Under the direction of head coach JR Payne, now in her eighth season, the Buffs (13-1, 3-0 Pac-12) have built a reputation for being tough defensively.
Statistically, however, this year’s team ranks 11th in the Pac-12 in points allowed (64.4 per game), 11th in 3-point percentage defense (33.9%) and last in field goal percentage defense (41.6%). Yet, the Buffs really aren’t that bad on defense.
“I think we can always be better,” guard Kindyll Wetta said. “I feel like we’re still aggressive and still a very hard team to play against, regardless of what maybe the statistics are saying. But, we’re working hard in practice on certain things that we feel like we’re not doing as well and trying to improve.”
A year ago, when the Buffs made a run to the Sweet 16, they were top-five in the conference in all three of those categories. But, it was a very different CU team.
“I think last year we were more built on the defensive side of the floor,” said associate head coach Toriano Towns, who coordinates the Buffs’ defense . “When you look at our personnel, I think we were certainly more defensive minded. … We’re probably built more offensively minded now than we were last year.”
While the Buffs returned most of the core from last year, the one starter they lost to graduation was 6-foot-1 Tayanna Jones, a long, athletic wing who was a disruptive perimeter defender.
The staff replaced Jones with Missouri transfer Sara-Rose Smith, also a 6-foot-1 athletic wing who plays good defense, but she’s been limited at times with injuries.
The biggest difference with this year’s team, however, is on offense.
So far, CU has been significantly better on offense (82.6 points per game, compared to 69.2 last year), which means it doesn’t have to rely on its defense so much to win games.
“Itap hard to have teams that are elite on both sides of the ball,” Towns said. “What we’ve shown in our time here is just that there’s so many different ways to win games. And I think right now we are a much more potent offensive team. We’ve got more weapons offensively than we’ve probably had here in a long time.”
During NCAA Tournament runs the past two years, the Buffs often had to win lower-scoring games because the offense wasn’t built to outscore teams in shootouts. If the defense didn’t show up for 40 minutes, the Buffs might have struggled to win.
Now, the Buffs have the ability to pull away behind their offense and defensive lapses aren’t as detrimental.
“In years past, it was like, if we couldn’t string stops together, it was just impossible for us to keep up,” guard Frida Formann said. “I don’t think thatap something we’re thinking about obviously (this year), we’ve been able to pull some victories where we didn’t play great defense, because our offense was good.”
CU’s defense hasn’t been as consistent this year, but there’s been dominant moments on that end of the court. And, the Buffs are still impressive at generating steals, ranking 17th nationally with 11.7 per game.
“I’ve noticed like sometimes when we get into crunch time, usually thatap like late third quarter, fourth quarter, then we really lock in and itap like, ‘OK, that looks like last year’s team,’” Wetta said. “When we’re playing defense like we did last year, thatap what we feed off of and then look like we’re completely unstoppable on both sides of the court.”
At Arizona State on Sunday, CU trailed 18-17 late in the first quarter. But over the next 12 ½ minutes, the Buffs locked in, held ASU to 1-for-16 shooting with eight turnovers and changed the game by taking a 25-point lead into halftime.
A dominant fourth-quarter stretch was key at Arizona two days earlier. And on Dec. 30, the Buffs flipped the switch defensively with 8 minutes to play, down by eight points, and outscored then-No. 12 Utah 23-4 down the stretch. The No. 8 scoring offense in the country, Utah went 1-for-10 with five turnovers in those eight minutes.
“I honestly don’t think any of us are ever worried if we’re ever down,” Wetta said. “(Against Utah) I think we’re all just like, ‘OK, we’re gonna go get a few stops and get right back in the game.’”
CU had had so many of those stretches this season that it isn’t really worried about the numbers. Certainly, they’re aiming to improve their defense, but the Buffs still have confidence that when it matters most, they’ll lock in defensively.
“Itap one of those things that we’re constantly harping on and we’re still getting back to basics in terms of certain things, but itap not anything that we’re overly concerned about,” Towns said. “Even last year when we were so good, we didn’t really look at the numbers. … We just kind of knew who we were and what we needed to do.”
