There is a bit of Houdini that can be found in the DePaul women’s basketball team this season.Double-digit halftime leads have nearly disappeared as opponents go on big second-half runs, and DePaul’s shooting touch hits a brick wall.
Often times, they escape with the win anyway. But it is a concerning trend they have struggled to overcome much of the season.
“If it was easily fixable you wouldn’t need coaches,” said Head Coach Doug Bruno. “We teach our players every game has a life of its own.so within the life that is the game, you have to really be able to focus every possession.
“So there’s not a real magic or trick to it. It’s just a matter of creating a mindset.”
That mindset is simple: Maintaining focus for the entire game. Which can be a struggle when the scale tips in DePaul’s favor quickly.
“I think when we play such a good first half, we come out in the second half, we’re thinking we kind of won the game already,” said senior Deirdre Naughton. “It’s definitely kind of a focus issue that we’ve been having this year.”
The team’s tendency to let up has led to a number of teams making late-game runs.
There was Rutgers, when DePaul led by 15 at halftime only to sneak out a six-point win. Or against Seton Hall earlier in the season, when DePaul shot only 10-30 and got outscored 37-27 points in the second half, yet still won by 18.
And with the postseason now less than a week away, the team needs to find some consistency if they want to advance.
“You can’t get away with playing 25 minutes of basketball against these better teams,” Bruno said. “Against Georgetown we played 40 minutes, we won by 25. Earlier that same week we played Rutgers, we played 20 minutes and we went from 19 up to two up.
“So you can’t get away with it. You might get lucky-I think Rutgers we got lucky in the second half.But you can’t put yourself in that position. You have to be focused for 40.”
Senior Sam Quigley said the team can sometimes get caught up in the game and let emotions hinder their performance.
“You know, we’ll get excited when someone gets a three-point play and we get up 15, and then before you know it we’re only up eight,” Quigley said. “So I think the excitement of things that are happening in the game, we tend to maybe relax a little bit on the defensive end.”
Not only is the team aware of the trend, but Bruno has addressed it both during practice and between game periods in the locker room.
“[At halftime], just knowing that even if we have a 12-point lead, it’s a 0-0 game now,” Quigley said of their halftime discussions. “We have to start from here and I think be just as intense as we were three minutes ago.I think that’s something that is hard to do, and something that every team is trying to do.”
Naughton echoed that mantra, and said it helps keep them focused.
“That’s every single halftime, whether we’re up 20, whether we’re down 20, it’s always a 0-0 game,” she said. “I think that always kind of puts us in perspective. We always come in the locker room before the coaches come in, and we’re all kind of happy usually. Because rarely are we down at halftime, which is kind of nice.”
All things considered, playing poorly with big leads is not the worst issue to have.
But as the tournament begins and the number of quality teams increases, the margin for error shrinks.
“Don’t forget, this ‘problem’ that we have is the result of our team getting off to great starts and being up 19 or 20 points, so I certainly don’t want them to lose the ability to be ready to play when the game starts,” Bruno said. “Once they get up though, they have to really grasp the concept of playing possession by possession, and not to the score. And you sometimes start playing to the score and you take possession off, and one possession off gives up an easy basket, leads to maybe a sloppy play offensively and then all of a sudden it’s a four-point swing and then all of a sudden it’s another four-point swing.”
Not to say the team has not had any success. Games against Stanford, Georgetown, West Virginia and St. John’s-all ranked at the time -demonstrated what the team can do.
“I guess Georgetown last Sunday, we got it together for two halves, and the result was a 25-point victory over the 18th ranked team in the nation,” Bruno said. “We also did it against West Virginia pretty well earlier in the season. So there’s some signs that we can do this. It’s just a mater of understanding that the game is played for 40 minutes, and you can’t let up.”
But if the team wants to reach their goal of a high tournament finish, they know that their lack of focus will have to be addressed.
“I think if you’ve been in our practices and our locker rooms, sometimes you don’t realize that we did win a game by 20, because we’ve been focusing so much on stuff that we need to take care of,” Naughton said. “In March, we’re not gonna be able to get away with it.
“We’re not gonna be playing at home in March, and hitting six out of seven 3s all the time. So I think those little things, we’re really gonna have to fix them in March.