Welcome to the debut edition of Inbox-and-One, a twice weekly women’s basketball newsletter written by me, Eden Laase, a longtime WBB reporter who is dedicated to telling stories about the people who make this sport great. Before we get to the official content, let’s address the name, which was cleverly coined by my oldest sister.
To understand why it was an instant and obvious choice for my newsletter, we are going to have to get into some personal lore. From middle school through high school, I played basketball with a girl, who though talented, had one of the lowest basketball IQs I’ve ever come across. To put it simply, she did not know ball. Once — and I cannot stress that word enough —- once in seventh grade, we were playing in an AAU Tournament. She was having a particularly good scoring game, so our opponent switched into a box-and-one defense. She had never come across such a defense before, nor did she come across it again, but that did not stop her from thinking that every defense for the next five years was a box-and-one. If she couldn’t get open or if she couldn’t score, this girl would loudly proclaim: “They are box-and-one-ing me! Someone set a screen!” She would say this in a man-to-man defense, in a 2-3 zone, in a 1-3-1 zone, and once, she even said it when one of our other teammates was in fact the subject of a box-and-one defense.
There was no arguing with this girl, so I would just agree with her and then proceed to run our offense depending on whatever defense was actually being played. It’s been over a decade since I’ve seen this girl and I have no idea what she’s doing now, but I have no doubt that she still doesn’t know what a box-and-one defense is.
The good news is, I do know what a box-and-one defense is, because I cover women‘s basketball for a living. The better news? I also understand that women’s basketball is so much more than what is happening on the court – the personalities, the history, the insanity of the transfer portal, the outfits, the rivalries and so, so (dare I say another so?) much more.
If you enjoyed that peek into my short-lived basketball career, there is plenty more where that came from (though I promise I won’t be talking about myself all the time. There are more exciting things to discuss!), simply subscribe to Inbox-and-One, to get more personal musings and a whole lot of women’s basketball content. From anonymous stories about recruiting, NIL and AAU and off-the-court Q-and-A’s with your favorite players, to history lessons and other fun anecdotes straight from my reporter’s notebook, Inbox-and-One has it all. And if you have content suggestions, my inbox is always open.