Colorado University Athletics
Brooks: Spears, Smith Refocused At Right Time
February 26, 2010 | Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
Junior Brittany Spears, CU's leading scorer and unassuming team leader, slipped into an uncharacteristic three-game funk and took the Buffs with her.
During the same span, senior Bianca Smith, the team's three-point sharpshooter, encountered a drought where hitting the side of the Coors Events Center might have been difficult.
Talk about a February freeze out . . . In losses to then-Nos. 6 Nebraska, 15 Baylor and 14 Texas - a trio of defeats absorbed two games into an eight-game losing streak - Spears and Smith combined to shoot 23 percent from the field (14-of-61). Spears hit eight of 30 field goal attempts and Smith six of 31.
To bring Spears back to form, McConnell-Miller and her top player "had a nice little heart-to-heart." To help Smith rediscover her shooting touch, McConnell-Miller did, well, practically nothing.
After CU's 74-50 loss to Texas on Feb. 10, the "nice little heart-to-heart" with her coach included McConnell-Miller showing Spears the cumulative stat sheet, analyzing her performance and reiterating to Spears what her scoring means to the team.
McConnell-Miller also emphasized the need to dismiss a bad possession and move on - "not allowing one play to affect the next play . . . . The fact that she's not a vocal leader, she leads through performance and we needed our leader to step up and be more efficient."
But, added McConnell-Miller, "Even during those bad (scoring) stretches, she was defending, she was rebounding and being productive."
Some players might have balked or sulked after a similar one-on-one with their coach. Spears, said McConnell-Miller, never "takes anything the wrong way. She wants to be that go-to player.
"She just needed some help figuring out what was keeping her from being that go-to player. She's a face-value type girl; you don't beat around the bush with her."
Spears' take on her soul-session with McConnell-Miller: "She just told me, 'I believe in you . . . every time you shoot the ball, I think it's going to go in. You have to have confidence that it's going in; I think I have more confidence in you than you do in yourself. Play your game - don't worry about the officiating or anything else. Even if you're having a bad game, just keep playing basketball, don't get angry or anything like that.'"
Spears claimed she wasn't in a confidence crisis. Rather, it was one involving all-out effort: "No, I just think I wasn't playing as hard as I could play. She was basically just telling me to go out and play basketball, and I felt I wasn't helping my teammates out because I wasn't scoring. I feel like I came out of it."
Indeed, she has. In her two most recent games, Spears has totaled 60 points and 17 rebounds - 26 points, 7 boards in an 89-73 loss at now-No. 3 Nebraska and 34 points, 10 boards in an 80-79 overtime win at Missouri.
Two more factors helped in Spears' emergence from her slump. She increased her personal "gym time" to about 21/2 hours of shooting and dribbling. And a tweak in the Buffs' offense has allowed her "a little more freedom and some more touches" while making the offense "a little less predictable," McConnell-Miller said.
Spears, averaging 18.2 points a game, said she has "felt a lot more comfortable" in recent games. "And I started feeling like my shot was going to start falling. Everybody goes through slumps."
That brings us to Smith, who has been reinserted into the starting lineup to offer the Buffs more early firepower and theoretically avoid disastrous starts.
At Baylor - a 76-42 CU loss - McConnell-Miller recalls Smith missing shot after shot, running by the Buffs bench and offering her coach a bewildered look, "Like, 'What am I doing?'"
Smith took and missed 13 shots in that game. But with pure shooters (and Smith easily qualifies) the most effective prescription to snap out of a slump calls for more shots.
"We let her shoot her way out of it . . . that's the way you've got to let shooters do it," McConnell-Miller said. "With shooters, the more you put in their head, the worse they get. And she's been able to shoot herself out of it."
At Nebraska, Smith produced 18 points, then hit 26 on the following trip to Missouri. Her six three-pointers against the Tigers moved her to within one of tying Shelley Sheetz's CU record (252) for career treys. Plus, Smith is four away from her seasonal-high and school-record (80 in 2007-08)) for three-pointers.
In a best-case scenario, both of those marks would fall Saturday when CU plays No. 12 Texas A&M (2 p.m.) at the Events Center. In an even better-case scenario, said Smith, the Buffs would win and improve their chances to make a postseason tournament: "The big thing for us now is to make it to the postseason. Breaking Shelley Sheetz's record would be great but you have to put it in perspective. I haven't been to the NCAA tournament and only once to the postseason."
Smith admitted it was difficult for her to completely blot out thoughts of setting a milestone mark in her final season at CU.
"From my family to reporters and everyone on campus to keep reminding me, it's hard to say it's not in the back of my mind," she said. "But I try not to let it get to me because I'm big into not jinxing myself . . . I try to keep it in the back of my mind as much as possible."
In shaking out of her shooting slump, Smith got advice from her stepfather, her coach and herself. "The big thing," she said, "was just to keep shooting. I was down for a while, but everybody told me to keep shooting. I think I focused on (that) and kept telling myself the next shot was going to fall."
Finally, the next one did.
CU MEN vs. IOWA STATE: The Buffs lost by a point (64-63) at Ames, Iowa on Jan. 30. Freshman Alec Burks played only 2 minutes after suffering a knee injury.
Burks, who averages 16.7 points a game and has been in double figures in every game he's finished, is eager to play Saturday against the Cyclones at the Events Center (11:30 a.m., Altitude).
"Yeah, I really needed to be with my teammates in that game," Burks said of watching the one-point loss in Ames. "I got hurt and feel like we let one slip away."
Asked he believed his absence might have been the difference in that outcome, Burks said, "It's neither here nor there . . . we'll never know, but I feel like I could have helped my teammates to a win."
The Buffs (12-15, 3-10) are coming off their worst loss of the season - 93-62 on Wednesday night at Missouri. Wanting to immediately move forward, coach Jeff Bzdelik didn't show his team the game tape, and Burks doesn't believe there will be any ill-effects: "A loss is hard to bounce back from no matter how (lopsided) it is. It's a loss. But I feel like we're going to bounce back strong because we always do."
In winning its most recent home game (77-67 against Oklahoma on Feb. 17), CU turned in one of its best overall efforts of the season. The Buffs are a different team in Boulder (11-3 this season) and Bzdelik said he is "not going to overreact" about the last three road losses in a Big 12 Conference streak that has reached 36.
"Look at last three road games - at Kansas State, Kansas and Missouri," he said. "I don't take any team in the country - Duke, anybody - and ask them to play at Kansas State, Kansas and Missouri.
"You see where I'm going with that? We're not playing the Little Sisters of the Poor. I'm not going to overreact at all (after those three road losses). The most important thing is the next thing we do."
CU's remaining games are against Iowa State, at Nebraska (March 2) and Texas Tech (March 6). Winning two of the three would put the Buffs at 5-11 in the Big 12 and improve their seeding in the conference's postseason tournament (March 10-13, Kansas City).
The Buffs currently are tied with the Cyclones (3-10) while the Cornhuskers are in last place (1-12). A game ahead of CU and Iowa State are Oklahoma and Texas Tech (each at 4-9).
CU already has defeated OU and gets Texas Tech in the regular-season finale.
The Buffs have been the Big 12 tournament's No. 12 seed in each of Bzdelik's first two seasons.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
