If you played basketball growing up — or any team sport for that matter — you’ve heard some version of the old adage: Defense wins championships.
It’s the kind of thing that would be met with eye rolls and sighs, because the phrase is almost always followed by some sort of agonizingly awful defensive drill.
But it’s true. Offense, even on the best teams, comes and goes. It’s easy to have an off night shooting, but defense can be controlled. I can’t remember the last time I saw a team win a title that didn’t play tough defense. Last season’s UConn squad, every South Carolina championship team, LSU in 2023, Stanford in 2021 — they all played lockdown defense.
Which is why, in a week of highly-anticipated games ending in lopsided fashion, I was transfixed by Iowa State, Oklahoma, UConn and Texas. Other than Iowa State, each team ran away with a double-digit victory. And each team did it with defense.
Let’s start with Iowa State. The Cyclones were challenged by Iowa, and while Audi Crooks put on a scoring clinic and Jada Williams passed like she invented the act (check out last week’s newsletter on the duo if you missed it), it was ultimately defense that secured the victory.
The defensive effort started with the Cyclone bigs. Crooks and forward Addy Brown were able to hold Iowa’s two leading scorers, Ava Heiden and Hannah Stuelke under their season averages. Heiden, who averages 15.2 points per game, finished with 8 points, while Stuelke, who averages 13.1 points per game, finished with 10. Crooks helped herself out by getting Heiden in foul trouble, which led to her playing just 16 minutes, but Brown made things difficult for Stuelke. She went 5-14 from the field.
With the bigs in check, Chit-Chat Wright was Iowa’s driving force on offense. She was 5-9 in the first half, heading into the locker room with 13 points, even going uncontested on several of her attempts. With the game tied at 25 apiece, two things became clear: 1. Audi Crooks was going to get hers on offense. 2. Something had to give, defensively.
So the Cyclones called on Arianna Jackson to up the intensity on Wright. It was subtle, but it worked. Wright still scored 8 more points in the second half, but she only got 5 shot attempts, and Jackson made every possession a grind for the sophomore guard. Iowa needed Wright to ignite a second-half run, but Jackson made certain that didn’t happen. She finished with 0 points, but her impact cannot be understated.
Then we have Oklahoma, a team known for putting up tons of points. In fact, the Sooners are third in the country with 93.9, LSU is first with 111.5 – but with their cakewalk schedule, that hardly counts – and guess who is second?
If you said Oklahoma State, congrats! You don’t get a prize, but you do know ball (or maybe just how to look up stats online). But, here’s where our old adage really proves itself. Oklahoma State is a great offensive team, averaging 96.4 points per game. But that offense didn’t show up on Saturday. The Cowgirls shot 38% from the field and 28% from beyond the arc, while committing 22 turnovers. Those miscues turned into 27 points for Oklahoma on the other end, which was essentially the difference in the game.
Defense > Offense.
As for UConn, the stats really tell the story in its 79-51 win over USC. The Trojans are not a bad team by any stretch, but they looked it against UConn thanks to – say it with me! – defense. The Huskies held USC to 30% shooting and 21% from the 3-point line. Freshman star Jazzy Davidson had just 10 points on 3-13 shooting, and Kennedy Smith struggled to her team-high 16 points, going 5-15 from the field.
UConn is dominant because the Huskies play defense as a unit, but I want to shout out Azzi Fudd, whose development has been crucial. She was named Final Four MOP last season, largely because of her 19 points against UCLA and 24 points against South Carolina. But Fudd also had three steals in each of those games, and her ability to defend has only gotten better this year. Fudd was the primary defender on Davidson, never giving her an open look and finding a way to neutralize her length.
And of course, we can’t talk defense without bringing up the Texas Longhorns. They hold their opponents to 53.5 points per game, while forcing 23.9 turnovers. But more than that, Texas makes every possession a challenge. It’s hard to establish an offense when Rori Harmon is guarding you full-court and Jordan Lee is jumping passing lanes.
Baylor learned that in an 89-54 loss to the Longhorns on Sunday. Texas forced 30 turnovers while holding every Bears’ scorer to single digits. Those 30 turnovers led to a whopping 42 points for Texas.
During halftime, analyst and former Tennessee player Andraya Carter spoke about the way Schaefer runs practices. She sat in on a few when he coached at Mississippi State and said they were the “most intense” defensive practices she had ever seen.
Now, he’s doing the same at Texas, and it’s easy to see the commitment to defense when the Longhorns take the court.
And I bet the Longhorns don’t roll their eyes when he tells them that defense wins championships. None of these teams do.