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Defense,
not offense has been key in TCU's success The Lady Frogs won their second straight conference championship Sunday with a 72-57 win over Marquette. The win earned the Frogs a No. 1 seed in the Conference USA Tournament in Chicago beginning Friday and an important first-round bye. Winning conference titles are not a new thing to this team, but for the women’s basketball program this is as unfamiliar as it gets. Last year TCU won the Western Athletic Conference regular season title, which was the first ever conference title in program history for the Frogs. They later went on to win the WAC postseason tournament and received their first ever NCAA Tournament bid. Before last year the Lady Frogs could not put “a 20-win season” and “TCU” in the same sentence. In a three-year stretch (1993-1996) TCU only won eight games. That is less than half the team’s output this year. This season continues the success left off by a first round NCAA tournament win in 2001. Capturing the regular season C-USA title puts the Frogs as almost a shoe-in for a NCAA bid, despite what happens in Chicago. There are only three graduating seniors for the Frogs, which makes TCU a relatively young, yet potent team. TCU also has a freshman All-America candidate in center Sandora Irvin. On top of that the anchor of all this success was head coach Jeff Mittie who earlier this season agreed on a contract extension to stay at TCU. Bearing all of this mind it looks as though the Lady Frogs will continue to pile up the win column. Mittie credits all those wins to tough team defense. TCU is currently ranked second C-USA and 14th in the nation in points allowed in a game (57.7 per game), first in blocked shots (6.89 per game), third in steals (11.04 per game) and second in defensive rebounds (27.85 per game). “We have played great defense all season long,” said Mittie. Defense, not offense, has been traditionally known to win championships. The thing about the Frogs is they like to play defense, and they play it well; opposing teams average only 57.7 points per game, while TCU scores 72 points a game. Sophomore guard Ebony Shaw said she would rather play defense than offense any day of the week. “I don’t want someone to score 20 points on me,” said Shaw. Mittie has used Shaw frequently this season to contain and stop the opposing team’s best player. In response, Shaw has shown that not many people can score that 20-point mark on her. The Lady Frogs’
defense has kept them in some games when the offense was struggling. With the defense, young talent and a head coach dedicated to winning, the Lady Frogs’ success and national recognition is piling up like the win column has this past season. Nathan
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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