UC Women Focus on Defense
March 1, 2005
By Michael Dailey
Sports writer, Charleston Daily Mail
Imagine a basketball practice with no offense.
Just defense, defense and more defense.
In the NBA, such a tactic undoubtedly would lead to discontent and bruised egos.
In South Ruffner, however, that ploy has helped lead the University of Charleston's women's hoops squad to the quarterfinals of the West Virginia Conference tournament.
"We're known for our defense," said third-year UC Coach Sherry Winn. "I'm a defensive coach and I've actually had to change our practices so that we have one day as a defensive day and one day as an offensive day.
"I had to separate them because I discovered in practice I spent all my time on defense and none on offense. I just want to work on defense all the time.
"I think it's such a huge key. We get a lot of points off of our defense in our transition game. I like to get easy baskets."
There were certainly plenty of easy baskets on Monday evening as the No. 2 seeded Golden Eagles dismantled No. 15 Bluefield State, 78-36, in an opening round tournament game in front of 172 fans at Eddie King Gym.
The win propels Charleston (25-3) to a quarterfinal tournament matchup with West Virginia State at 6:30 p.m.Wednesday at the Charleston Civic Center.
Former Capital standout Lisa Lee led UC with 14 points and nine rebounds, while freshman Emily Jones added 13 and Courtney Thomas 11.
Mandy Ebel added 10 points off the bench for UC, while Meg Scureman chipped in with nine boards.
"Right now we're in a really good flow offensively," said Thomas, 5-foot-8 sophomore guard. "We're playing together well as a unit. We struggled a little bit early on, but right now we're just mixing our inside, outside game.
"With that mixture, it's really hard to beat us."
It also will be hard to beat the Golden Eagles' defensive effort against Bluefield, after limiting the Big Blues to only 18.8 percent from the floor on just 12-of-64 shooting.
"We just tried to mix things up tonight and work on a lot of different things," said Thomas, who celebrated her 20th birthday Monday. "We tried to confuse them a little bit and work on things that we needed to work on."
Meagan Repass led Bluefield, losers of 13 straight, with 19 points and eight rebounds.
"We don't match up with them in a lot of ways," said Bluefield State Coach Gary Brown, whose team lost by 40 or more points to UC three times this season.
"Their transition game is really what gets them started. So, we tried to slow the pace down, but with that you've got to hit shots. And we couldn't.
"When you get down 20 or 25 points, you're forced to come out of that style of play and, then, their speed and quickness takes over. We just couldn't match them."