Colorado University Athletics
Brooks: At 3-4, Lappe's Buffs Searching For A Winning Identity
December 08, 2015 | Women's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
BOULDER – If a basketball team is undergoing an identity crises, it's better to hit the shrink's couch and get things sorted out in November-December rather than January-February.
The psychiatric visit aside, that's what's going on now with Linda Lappe's Colorado Buffaloes. In a word, they're struggling – which Lappe readily admits.
“We need some home games,” she said Tuesday in her office, eagerly looking ahead to an upcoming schedule that does indeed offer three consecutive games in the Coors Events Center. “We haven't been playing particularly well and this is a chance for us to get back on the right track.”
If the Buffs haven't exactly come off the rails, they've most certainly endured a sub-par stretch that has seen them lose four of five games, including three straight. After opening 2-0, they're now 3-4, with Lappe pinpointing “composure and execution” as her team's two biggest shortcomings since an 86-71 loss at then-No. 13/now-No. 8 Kentucky on Nov. 22.
“We're trying to find our identity right now and the good thing is we've got a lot of basketball to be played,” she continued. “And being a young team, our ceiling is going to be really high and our amount of growth is going to be high. We've just got to take a step back and be able to be us. I feel like we haven't been us. We're far better than how we're playing on game day. I see us do better things in practice.”
Unfortunately, energetic and well-executed practices can't be added to the win column. Oh, they can (and usually do) lend themselves to W's, but only if there is game-night carryover. The youthful Buffs – the roster includes one senior, four juniors, the rest underclasswomen – haven't been able to consistently make that happen. But Lappe isn't pulling the too-green-to-win card to explain her team's frequently frayed psyches and nearly 20 turnovers (19.1) a game.
“No, I don't think it's because we're young,” she said. “We've got some really talented young players, got some talented players in our veteran group. We need different players to emerge a little bigger as leaders. I think we're struggling with that as much as anything.
“Your leaders have to be the hardest workers; they have to be able to light a fire and have a fire themselves and be able to ignite their team (and) make sure everybody is doing the right thing at all times, whether it's on the floor, off the floor . . .”
SOME – MAYBE TOO MUCH – OF THE BUFFS' leadership is coming from first-year guards Kennedy Leonard and Alexis Robinson, half of a highly touted freshman class. The other two members are 6-2 forwards Monica Burich and Makenzie Ellis, although Burich suffered a preseason knee injury and underwent season-ending surgery.
Her presence would be helping now. Burich showed strong early leadership ability, huddling the Buffs up at the free throw line in their first scrimmage, being positive and generally good teammate. “It was pretty amazing to see because she hadn't been in it but she knew that's what we needed,” Lappe said. “We do miss her.”
Ellis isn't a true post, but that's where she's working in drills. Generally, first-year front-court players' learning curves are steeper than first-year backcourt players' – and that's what Lappe has seen with Ellis. “She's had to learn at a high rate, but she's starting to figure it out,” Lappe noted, adding that Ellis' help-side defense already is among the Buffs' best, she's becoming more aggressive on offense and her rebounding has improved greatly.
But the jewels of this freshman class (at least through seven games) have been Leonard and Robinson. Leonard trails only senior Jamee Swan in scoring – and that's by a tenth of a point, 12.7 to 12.6. Plus, Leonard ranks fourth in the Pac-12 at 5.4 assists a game.
Leonard scored 21 points in a last-second, one-point loss at Colorado State, with Robinson matching that total two games earlier against UMass. Only Swan (23 vs. UMass) has had a higher total this season. Robinson also is No. 2 on the team in assists (2.4 a game) and No. 4 in rebounding (4.9).
Leonard and Robinson, said Lappe, “have been huge bright spots for us. They've both had great games, they've both had average games, which is typical for freshmen. They've got to be more consistent as we go along.
“But we're putting a lot on their shoulders, and that's where some of our older players have to really step up. There's no need for those two to have to carry everything. We've got plenty of veterans – Haley Smith, Jamee Swan, Lauren Huggins, Brecca Thomas, Zoe Correal, Zoe Beard-Fails . . . plenty of players who can do their jobs at a high level.”
Beard-Fails has played in only one of the past four games, returning against Long Beach State last weekend after finally clearing concussion protocol. Encountering early foul problems, she played only four minutes in the 59-42 loss and didn't score. Beard-Fails had had only one full practice prior to the trip, and Lappe expects her “to be back to her old self . . . she had been playing with a lot of confidence and doing everything we'd asked her to do.”
NOT SO COINCIDENTALLY OVER THE NEXT three games – or while an identity is being reestablished – Lappe is not going to ask her players to do as much. Or, in her words, “Don't give players very many focal points . . . be who we are and do what we do. It doesn't necessarily matter who we're playing. We have to be us, and that's part of understanding our identity. We're getting out-hustled and outplayed. I think that's a result of overthinking. We've got to stop thinking so much and be able to just play.”
The Buffs are 10th in scoring offense (67.4), 11th in scoring defense (68.1) in the Pac-12, and 10th in assist-turnover ratio (minus-4.43). Neither have they been blistering from the field (10th in FG percentage at .412), and Lappe's reason for the inaccuracy returns to the root of the team's early problems.
Better marksmanship, she said, “is composure and execution . . . we have some great shooters but we're not taking the right shots at the right times with the right mindset. We're putting too much pressure on ourselves. We need to make sure we just play the way we know how.”
Although it didn't produce a win, the Buffs did that in the second half of their 64-63 loss at CSU. Lappe called those two quarters her team's “best half of execution” of the season. Leonard did a stellar job of getting the Buffs into their offense, after which came better overall execution, screening and finding open players.
But that half hasn't been CU's norm. “For us, we have to make the game simple,” Lappe said. “Right now the game feels really complex to everybody. It's our jobs as coaches to really simplify the game, especially for a young team. And that's what we're going to do.”
Those three consecutive home games should help. Northern Arizona visits the CEC on Wednesday night (7 p.m.), followed by Missouri on Saturday afternoon (1:30 p.m.) in the first game of a women's-men's doubleheader.
A week later – Saturday, Dec. 19 – Presbyterian is in town. It's the next-to-last non-conference game, with only a trip to Wyoming (Monday, Dec. 21) remaining before Christmas break and the opening of Pac-12 play on Saturday, Jan. 2 against Washington.
By then, Lappe is hoping that the composure and execution ills of the past two weeks will have been addressed if not completely cured.
“Ultimately, non-conference is to get you ready for conference,” she said. “As long as you understand it's about getting better every day and not putting too much stock in some of our games that we wish we would have had back. But every game is a learning process and we want to continue to get better and better and better.”
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
