NU hopes defense is key to success
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BY BRIAN ROSENTHAL / Lincoln Journal Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Danielle Page still goes through the “what ifs?” when she reflects on her team’s NCAA Tournament game last season.
What if Nebraska steals one more pass? What if Nebraska gets one more defensive rebound? Makes one more stop?
“We’re playing Duke in the second round,” Page concludes.
Instead, the Nebraska women’s basketball team, making its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2000, dropped a see-saw 64-61 opening-round game to Temple.
“I wish I could have it back,” Page said at Tuesday’s Big 12 Conference women’s basketball media day. “That game seemed like it lasted five minutes. It was gone. Like that.”
Page, the only senior on this year’s team, keeps that game in mind as she prepares to lead a relatively inexperienced group this season.
She said the Huskers’ trademark will be effort … that, and hopefully defense.
“We’re really working hard at it,” said Page, a 6-foot-2 forward. “Last year, we could get away with letting a team score 65, 70 points, and then we could have Kiera drop 30 and it wasn’t that big of deal.”
Alas, Kiera Hardy, the schools No. 4 all-time leading scorer, is gone. That, Page said, means Nebraska must be especially defensive-minded to succeed.
Nebraska coach Connie Yori agrees. She flatly said the Huskers weren’t a very good defensive team last season.
In fact, Yori points to defensive problems as a factor in a late-season swoon. Nebraska lost six of its last seven games after beginning the season 21-4.
“In the latter part of the year, we just did not have a defensive confidence to get stops,” Yori said. “Our opponents were able to score on us in the last 4 or 5 minutes of the game last year when the game was on the line.
“You can say, ‘Well, you’ve got to execute, you’ve got to score,’ but you also have to stop, and we weren’t able to stop anybody.”
Nebraska allowed an average of 62.6 points per game, a mark that ranked ninth in the Big 12. Opponents’ shooting percentage of 38.9 also ranked in the lower tier.
“I don’t know if we were fully committed to playing defense on every possession,” Yori said. “I think we have more of a mentality this year that we’re committed to playing better defense. I think we have more players in our program now who are defensive-minded and have that mentality.”
It starts with Page, who’s been voted the team’s defensive player of the year each of the last two seasons.
Page, who’s never started a game in her Nebraska career, has 129 career blocked shots, including a career-high 60 last season.
“She has a good feel for how to play against bigger kids,” Yori said. “She plays with quickness. Everybody has 20 to 80 pounds on her. But she plays quick and she uses her quickness well to be a good defender.”
Defense is usually one of the last concepts newcomers are able to fully grasp on the college level — and Nebraska welcomes five freshmen to go with five sophomores.
But Yori said two young players — Lincoln native Dominique Kelley, a freshman, and Bellevue native Yvonne Turner, a sophomore — can help Nebraska defensively.
“(Turner) changed our team defensively when she was on the floor, in a positive way,” Yori said. “She was able to ball pressure. We think between her and Dominique, we have two outstanding players in that area that can do that.
“They have the mentality to be a great defender. There are several things that go into being a great defender. But number one, you have to have the mentality. You have to want to defend. That’s where it starts.”
Reach Brian Rosenthal at 473-7436 or brosenthal@journalstar.com.
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