This Adia Barnes team has shooters; defense remains a work in progress

Playing tenacious, swarming defense leads to steals, deflections and forcing the opposition to take bad shots and make mistakes.This season, for the first time in Coach Adia Barnes’ tenure, she’s had more shooters and fewer defensive-minded players at her disposal.

People are also reading… “We're also not as athletic as we've been in the past. I recognize that we're getting better. But I don't think there's anybody on the team that has been focused on defense, and so that's very different.” Barnes even said that McDonald grew up defense-first before she evolved into the “slasher to the basket.”

The lack of discipline and focus on the defensive side showed up against Colorado and Utah last weekend. It included a few missed defensive rebounds early on against Utah that led to second-chance 3-pointers and a missed assignment that allowed Frida Formann to knock down a wide-open 3-pointer with around 1:30 left against Colorado.

"Let's say they're not the best at closing out. Then you're work on them closing out a little bit shorter or their technique or staying lower; you're trying to improve on some things that can help, or focusing on boxing out more. That's an attention thing. That's not really athleticism thing. When Barnes was playing at Arizona, she never thought about leaving. Not even during that rough freshman year when she was late to her classes and had to run and run — and watch her teammates run — before she made sure she was on time.“Any complaint I my parents would say, ‘Well, you can't dribble with your left hand. You're not a good shooter yet. You can't dribble, so maybe we should start working on that before you start complaining.

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