What's behind the hot start for Lindsay Whalen's Gophers? Hint: it starts with D

Gophers are holding foes to 50.4 points per game.

By Kent Young­blood, Star Tribune

December 6, 2018 at 1:07PM

To no­bod­y's sur­prise, the Go­phers rolled over winless In­car­nate Word in a Wednes­day mat­i­nee at Wil­liams Arena.

The crowd of 7,835 — aug­ment­ed by thou­sands of el­e­men­ta­ry school stu­dents for the annu­al Field Trip Day — saw all 11 heal­thy Go­phers play in a 75-39 route that pushed the 14th-ranked Go­phers to 8-0. With three non­con­fer­ence games left — in­clud­ing what prom­is­es to be a chal­lenge at Bos­ton College on Sun­day — the Go­phers are in a good po­si­tion to head into Big Ten play with con­fi­dence.

And that's main­ly be­cause of the de­fense.

In Lind­say Whalen's first year as coach, the Go­phers have trans­formed them­selves into a de­fen­sive team fea­tur­ing a tight play­er-to-play­er scheme. In re­cent seas­ons, the Go­phers played a lot of zone, want­ing to out­score op­po­nents rath­er than shut them down.

This season? The Go­phers en­tered Wednes­day's game ranked seventh a­mong Division I teams in points al­lowed per game (50.4), sev­enth in points al­lowed per 100 pos­ses­sions (93.3) and 24th in op­po­nent field-goal per­cent­age (33.8). And those fig­ures will im­prove af­ter In­car­nate Word scored 39 points on 22.7 percent shoot­ing.

Com­pare that to last season, when the Go­phers ranked 333rd (out of 349 teams) in points al­lowed (74.8), 263rd in points per 100 pos­ses­sions (97.2) and 285th in op­po­nent field-goal per­cent­age (42.4).

"The de­fense has been there," Whalen said. "We fo­cused a lot on de­fense through­out the sum­mer and fall. So it's not shocking that may­be a little of our of­fense is try­ing to catch up with our de­fense. But we feel [de­fense] can be a cor­ner­stone of our team and our pro­gram going for­ward."

The of­fense has been up and down. But Wednes­day the Go­phers start­ed the game with a 12-0 run that fea­tured cen­ter Annalese Lamke with seven early points. For­cing the Cardinals (0-9) to double down low op­ened up the pe­rim­e­ter, re­sul­ting in Des­ti­ny Pitts break­ing out a bit, hit­ting five of nine three-point­ers for a game-high 15 points. Lamke fin­ished with 13. Fresh­man guard Mercedes Sta­ples add­ed 11 points and four as­sists.

Angelica Wiggins — the sister of Wolves forward Andrew Wiggins — led Incarnate Word with 13 points.

Up 32-11 at half­time, the Go­phers scored 32 third-quar­ter points on 10-for-14 shoot­ing be­fore Whalen played most­ly re­serves in the fourth.

It's hard to tell ex­act­ly where the Go­phers are at this point, con­sid­er­ing the rel­a­tive strength of the sched­ule. The Go­phers got a big win over then-No. 12 Syracuse last week, and quality vic­to­ries over Xa­vi­er and San Diego, too.

But the one con­stant has been the de­fense. And Lamke isn't sur­prised.

"We re­al­ly saw the defi­cits in our de­fense from last year," she said. "I think we were re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fo­cus a lot on de­fense."

Whalen said she's most pleased by the de­fense, and how well the team has fol­lowed game plans. She also likes the way her team has re­spond­ed to points of em­pha­sis com­ing out of games. For ex­am­ple, Whalen wasn't pleased with her team's as­sist total (eight) and free-throw shoot­ing (20-for-39) in Sun­day's vic­to­ry over Air Force. Wednes­day the Go­phers had 22 as­sists on 29 field goals and were 9-for-9 from the line.

"That's the sign of a good team and smart play­ers," Whalen said, "that we ad­dressed some­thing, worked on it in prac­tice and saw it in a game."

The Go­phers game Sun­day at Bos­ton College (7-1) will be per­haps the best test be­fore the con­fer­ence o­pen­er. It will be on the road against an ACC team off to a strong start. Af­ter that the Go­phers host Cop­pin State (0-6) and Rhode Island (5-2) be­fore the Big Ten o­pen­er vs. Wis­con­sin (7-2) on Dec. 28, also at home.

Jasmine Brunson(21) drives for the open court past Angelica Wiggins(12) of Incarnate Word.
Jasmine Brunson(21) drives for the open court past Angelica Wiggins(12) of Incarnate Word. (Minneapolis Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Imani Robinson(11) defends against Annalese Lamke(41) of the Gophers .]Gophers vs. Incarnate Word at Williams Arena.Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Richard•Tsong-Taatarii@startribune.com
Imani Robinson(11) defends against Annalese Lamke(41) of the Gophers .]Gophers vs. Incarnate Word at Williams Arena.Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Richard•Tsong-Taatarii@startribune.com (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Head coach Lindsay Whalen took her victim to an easy victory over Incarnate Word.]Gophers vs. Incarnate Word at Williams Arena.] Richard Tsong-Taatarii Richard Tsong- • taatarii@startribune.com
Gophers coach Lindsay Whalen yelled to her players during Wednesday’s rout of winless Incarnate Word. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
about the writer

about the writer

Kent Young­blood, Star Tribune