Colorado University Athletics
Brooks: As LA Schools Visit, Buffs Seek To Cure Offensive Ills
January 28, 2016 | Women's Basketball
BOULDER – When your basketball team is close to the bottom of its league in most offensive categories, finding things to fix isn't difficult. The difficulty is where to start, but Colorado women's coach Linda Lappe believes she has pared it down.
“We're so much better when everybody gets a touch in the offense and everybody has a piece of the offense,” Lappe said. “When everybody is touching the ball you move harder, you screen better, you pass better – you're just more engaged and you're ready when it's your time to score. That's what we need to fix first.”
The to-do list is lengthy. CU is last in the Pac-12 in field goal percentage (34.5, conference games), No. 11 in scoring (51.6 ppg), and No. 12 in scoring margin (minus-14.9). The Buffs' nine-game losing streak is partly traceable to those meager offensive stats, which Lappe insists can be improved by taking better shots, having patience within the shot clock and sharing the ball.
“We haven't had great shot selection,” she said. “The shots we're taking are those we can get at any point in the shot clock . . . continuing to work ball around and getting the one we want is really important.”
Lappe also pointed to the Buffs' transition offense and their ability to “move into our half-court offense” as being “pretty discombobulated lately . . . so we're trying to fix that.”
But this week, she added, has brought change for the better in those areas and she hopes they are evident this weekend in home games against the LA schools. The Buffs (5-14, 0-8) play host to No. 15 UCLA (14-5, 6-2) on Friday night and USC on Sunday night. Both tips at the Coors Events Center are at 7 p.m., with Sunday's game following the CU men's 3 p.m. contest against Cal.
Junior wing Haley Smith said she and her teammates need to be aware that everyone handling the ball on every possession keeps them in the game's flow and more prepared to take a shot when it's there.
“People are more ready when they touch the ball,” noted Smith, who led the Buffs in scoring (16 points) and rebounding (8) in their 61-47 loss last weekend to No. 8 Oregon State. “Sometimes when the ball just comes to you, you're not exactly ready to take the shot, you're not in the mindset of scoring the ball at that moment. The ball being moved around gets the defense moving around. It'll get us more open shots and make that person more ready to take a shot as well.”
The Bruins have won three straight, the last a 56-36 rout of Stanford that ended a 21-game losing streak to the Cardinal. Lappe called UCLA “one of the best teams in the league. They're kind of in our shoes last year of being really, really young and having freshmen playing a lot of minutes.
“But they've been able to grow up a lot, which makes them a veteran team. They're killing teams at home. They're very athletic and have one of best guards in the league in (Jordin) Canada.”
Canada and USC's Temi Fagbenle are tied for fourth in scoring in Pac-12 play, each averaging 16.3 points. Plus, the 6-4 Fagbenle – a Harvard graduate and 2012 Olympian who is in grad school at USC, is averaging 10.5 rebounds. That ties her for second in the league.
CU hasn't won since before Christmas – 72-60 over Presbyterian on Dec. 19 – but Lappe contends resolve remains strong: “Yeah, this is a resilient group. They continue to stick with it.”
“Maximizing potential” has been a familiar theme over the past month, not only in games but in every phase of practice. “That's the only way to get better,” Lappe said, “and I feel like they're committed to getting better.”
Smith believes a breakthrough is looming if the Buffs fashion a 40-minute game and finish strong. Plus, she added, “We're really working to keep positive mindsets and realize it's not always about the final score, it's about how you play the game, having energy and playing with heart. The fact that we're doing that in our games has given us a lot of encouragement and hope for the future. So we're trying not to get so caught up in the final number.”
BUFFS HONORED AT HALFTIME SUNDAY: CU's 1995-96 team, which won the Big Eight Tournament and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, will be honored at halftime of Sunday's game against Cal.
The '95-'96 Buffs finished 26-9 overall, 9-5 in the Big Eight, and were Nos. 17/18 in that season's final rankings. The team's tri-captains were Amy Palmer, Alex Slokar, and DeCelle Thomas. The squad also featured Erin Scholz and Raegan Scott.
Also scheduled to be recognized at Sunday's game is Lisa Van Goor. She will receive the Jane Wahl Award, which is presented to “a member of the CU women's basketball community, who through their achievements bring honor and recognition to the university and CU athletics.”
Wahl, CU's first women's athletics director (1974-79), was presented the inaugural award in 2014, with long-time KOA radio analyst/USA Women's Basketball Director Carol Callan receiving the 2015 award.
With 2,067 points, Van Goor (1980-83, 85) held the title of CU's career scoring leader for almost three decades. She became the first Buffs women's player to surpass 2,000 career points, and her record total stood until Brittany Spears (2007-11) surpassed her with 2,185 points.
Van Goor and Spears remain CU's only 2,000-point scorers. Van Goor became the fastest Buffs player ever to reach 1,000 points, needing just 55 games to hit that plateau during her sophomore season. Spears scored her 1,000th point in her 63rd game – the final one of her sophomore season.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
