Once the college basketball season starts, there aren’t many opportunities to step back and refocus on the basics.
The Colorado women’s basketball team is getting that chance, however, and hoping to take full advantage of it.
CU (9-1), which remained at No. 8 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 rankings on Monday, rolled past UT-Arlington Dec. 5 and won’t play again until Dec. 21 when Northern Colorado visits Boulder.
Rest was first on the agenda. Following the UTA game, CU took four of the next five days off. Coaches are using the time to recruit and players had chances to go home for a few days.
On the court, however, there is a need to re-embrace the fundamentals of the game.
“I just think we need to sort of reset back to the basics, especially on the defensive end of the floor,” CU head coach JR Payne said. “I’m watching possessions and we’re doing things that we don’t (normally) do, and we’re not doing things that we do – or we should be doing. I don’t know that any of it is really schematic. It’s more like we just need to get back to the basics and things like that. I think would really help us.”
The first 10 games were played in a four-week period, leaving little time for the basics. The Buffs were either playing or preparing for the next opponent.
Sometimes working on the fundamentals can be boring, but Payne paraphrased a quote she saw with the message about “elite players know that working on fundamentals is the key to success.”
As good as the season has been for CU to this point, there are times when the basics have been forgotten. With Pac-12 Conference play set to begin on Dec. 30, Payne and the staff want more focus on those areas.
“Ultimately, those are the things that help you win games,” she said.
Under Payne, CU has typically been good at focusing on itself in getting better, and that will certainly be emphasized during a stretch where the Buffs will play just once in 24 days.
“It’s very important,” she said. “It’s also very exciting for us, because we love to scout and we think we do a great job of that but I think we need to prioritize ourselves. Because like I said, when we were watching the film, we’re doing things that we shouldn’t be doing and we’re not doing things we should be doing. That means that we need more practice time to revisit fundamentals, revisit our jobs on the floor and make sure that we’re more disciplined in that.”
Individually, there are players who need to spend some time in the gym to get more shooting practice, Payne said, but “individual ownership” of what’s happening on the floor is the main priority.
Notable
The top 12 teams in the AP poll remained unchanged from last week. South Carolina is still at No. 1, receiving all 36 first-place votes. UCLA (No. 2), North Carolina State (No. 3), Iowa (No. 4) and Texas (No. 5) round out the top five, followed by USC, LSU, Colorado, Stanford and Baylor. In addition to the four teams in the top 10, the Pac-12 also has Utah at No. 11. Washington and Washington State are the top two teams among “others receiving votes,” while Oregon State also received a vote. … Utah’s Alissa Pili was named Pac-12 player of the week, while USC’s JuJu Watkins was the freshman of the week. Watkins has been the freshman of the week all five weeks of the season so far.
