At first glance at all the unoccupied chairs on the Nebraska women’s basketball team’s bench, you could think Connie Yori has had a couple of rough years of recruiting.

What you’ve likely witnessed instead is the phenomenon that’s keyed the Huskers to their 14-4 record and 3-1 start in the Big 12 entering tonight’s televised contest against 21st-ranked and preseason conference favorite Texas A&M.

Allow you eyes to scan down to the scorer’s table and you’ll see at least a few bodies, sometimes even five, waiting for the next dead ball so they can enter NU’s lineup.

“I think it’s fun for her every game to be able to say, ‘We’re deeper than these guys,’” sophomore guard Kala Kuhlmann said of her coach.

Yori’s sixth NU team has definitely developed into her deepest, and the collective effort is producing a lot of numbers that lead to success.

With every Big 12 club having played four league games, Nebraska ranked among the top four in eight key team statistical categories: Scoring, scoring defense, field-goal and free-throw percentage, three-point percentage, field-goal percentage defense, assists and steals.

But NU has just five players among the top 10 individuals in any of those areas. And free-throw percentage is the only one where more than one Husker is on the top-10 list.

Consider that junior forward Kelsey Griffin leads Nebraska in scoring at 12.8 points per game, but ranks just 19th leaguewide.

“You don’t have that stud that you need to be ‘on’ every single night in order to be successful,” said Griffin, an All-Big 12 player last season. “That makes us better. (Opposing coaches) have to give that much more attention to every single person. The scout (report) has to be at least 10 people deep, and so for them to have to focus on all that, plus with our motion style that we run, I think that makes us a hard team to (face).”

Last season in Big 12 play, six Huskers averaged between 21 and 29 minutes. Another averaged 19 and another 12.

This year, Nebraska has 10 players averaging double-digit minutes, including nine between 17 and 28.

“Some years, we’ll have good guard depth and some years we’ll have good post depth, but this year we have it well spread around,” said forward Danielle Page, the team’s lone senior.

Losing four starters from last year left Page unsure of what to expect this season in regard to roles and depth. But Yori said it became clear during fall workouts that her club could function efficiently out of numerous combinations, so utilizing that depth became a major focus.

Not only has that given her more options during games, it’s created a better practice setting.

“Being a ninth or 10th person, you can say ‘Well, I’m going to have a chance to do something in every game, because people are going to be getting tired and I’m going to be in sometime,’ so that motivates you to step it up,” said Kuhlmann, who is averaging nearly 16 more minutes in Big 12 action than the 4.4 she got last season.

In Yori’s demanding up-tempo system, though, there’s such a thing as too many minutes. But with the numbers she has this season, there’s less worry of someone wearing out.

Through four conference games, Page was the only Husker to have logged 30 minutes, and she did that twice. But elsewhere around the league, there were 154 other cases of players seeing that much time.

“It’s better to coach a team that more players are playing,” Yori said when asked if she enjoys her current setup or having a club that has to rely more heavily on a couple of stars. “Last year, we wanted to play more kids, but some of them weren’t ready. Now, there’s not a significant dropoff. I’d rather do this.”

On that, she’d get no argument from at least one among her deep fleet.

“Kelsey, one day were were talking about a lot of our opponents’ (players) were playing 35 minutes,” Yori recalled, “and Kelsey’s like, ‘Playing the style we play, there’s no way I could play 35 minutes.’ ”

Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.