New defensive style pays off for UCLA women’s basketball

Senior guard Thea Lemberger and sophomore guard Nirra Fields converged on a Utah women’s basketball player dribbling near half-court. They reached in with their arms and shut the gaps with their lean frames, trapping the Utes’ ball handler.

The end result? A Utah turnover and an easy score for UCLA.

It happened over and over as the Bruins full-court pressed the Utes for much of their 55-38 win over Utah on Friday.

“It’s been a very big thing for us, our press,” said UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close. “We’ve started zone pressing more, as well as player-to-player, and these two are our starting points of it.”

In 40 minutes against a spry Bruins defense equipped with a new mentality, the Utes only managed a meager 38 points, but there’s more to that story.

The full-court press typically requires players to be involved from the start to the finish of their opponent’s possession. With players marking either key zones or players, including the inbounder, this style of defense is tailored to create pressure on the opponents with the end result of forcing turnovers.

And force turnovers the Bruins did.

The Utes ended Friday night’s competition with a total of 25 turnovers, compared to the Bruins’ 10. Those turnovers were key in the UCLA win, setting up 24 of UCLA’s points to earn the W.

Close said that the full-court press highlights the strengths of two of her starters, Fields and sixth-year senior forward Atonye Nyingifa.

“Really I use (Fields’) ability to pressure the basketball and turn the basketball, and I use Atonye’s ability to read the trap opportunities and to read the angles,” Close said. “(Nyingifa’s) just got an uncanny ability to read the seams and force the difficult next pass so that’s really become a great weapon for us.”

But just a few weeks ago, Close nearly shut down the idea of implementing this new weapon to the Bruins’ arsenal, and she had well-founded concerns to back that up.

After her assistant coach first brought up the idea, Close was hesitant to add the full-court press into the Bruins’ playbook, knowing that the propensity for players engaged in such a scheme to commit fouls might leave some players in foul trouble – something a team with only eight players in rotation would want to avoid at all costs.

The limited pool of available players comes into play once again, considering the physical demands of playing a full-court press. And if the saying that defense is mostly about effort holds true, then playing in a full-court press takes it to a whole new level.

To remedy this, Close said she knows that she will only have limited availability to use her new weapon, and she’ll have to deploy it tactically – using it in situations that best exploit a mismatch against the Bruins’ opponents.

But ultimately, Close said that her players’ intangibles have made implementing the scheme all the more easier despite the obstacles that the team’s lack of depth brings.

“It really has become a great weapon, and it’s a compliment to the work they’ve done in their conditioning, their mental toughness and just their fight to want to win,” Close said.

But while the new tactics have proven useful in a short sample of games, only time will tell if the Bruins’ depleted squad will be able to sustain this for the remaining 15 games in the regular season.

Compiled by Aubrey Yeo, Bruin Sports reporter.