BOULDER — In the moments fans can’t see, Jaylyn Sherrod is pushing Kindyll Wetta to her defensive brink.
Case-in-point: Last year, Wetta and Sherrod were fiercely competing against each other in one of the staple practice drills for CU women’s basketball — a game called “50 Passes” where fouls are hardly called and an emphasis is put on being able to dish under pressure.
“We almost broke out into a fight,” Wetta recalled with a laugh. “We love each other to death, but we both want to win so badly. We’re both handsy on defense, disruptive, annoying. So I’m getting mad because she’s fouling me, and I’m fouling her, and nothing’s getting called.
“Afterwards at the lockers, she was like, ‘We good?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re fine.’ It’s never an issue — we both know the other is coming from a good place. We’ve established that relationship to where competitiveness in practice doesn’t negatively affect our relationship on the floor in games. It (drives) it, and certainly on the defensive end for me.”
Buffs head coach JR Payne declared Wetta the “best defender in America” after CU’s win over USC, a label directly tied to Wetta’s relationship with Sherrod over the last few years. Last year’s tension in the “50 Passes” drill epitomizes the competitive bond between the two point guards and locker-room neighbors, even as Sherrod admits the two get scrappy in practice “all the time.”
The duo’s grown close since Wetta stepped on campus from Valor Christian three years ago. Wetta found Sherrod intimidating at first, but a breakfast invitation from the Alabama native helped break the ice and was the first step toward what’s grown into a close friendship.
“I just wanted to bridge that connection initially, because I saw a lot of myself in Kindyll, and vice-versa,” Sherrod said. “I knew we both had the same mentality towards basketball and towards life, and I wanted her to see me with the walls down. We’ve really made an effort to get to know each other on a personal level, which helps when we do butt heads on the court in practice. It’s all fun and games and we can laugh about it after, and keep pushing each other, especially on defense.”
Together, Sherrod and Wetta have fueled the Buffs’ stingy defense amid their 16-2 start and No. 3 national ranking.
CU is averaging 10.8 steals per game and is 13th in the NCAA in steal differential at plus-4.56. Sherrod, the four-year incumbent starter, leads the team with 42 steals. Wetta, CU’s sparkplug off the bench who plays starters’ minutes and is often on the floor with Sherrod in crunch time, is right behind her with 37 steals.
“The majority of jump balls we have is one of us is on the ball, and the other one comes up to double and tie it up,” Wetta said. “Especially in our zone, we’ve learned together to recognize those specific opportunities to make big plays, to get steals and to feed off each other.”
Wetta drew Payne’s praise after the USC game because of her effort on standout freshman guard Juju Watkins, who scored 20 points on an inefficient 8-of-22 shooting with Wetta hounding her. Wetta finished plus-10 over 28 minutes, with a pair of key steals and a block.
That performance helped the Buffs bounce back from their first Pac-12 defeat last Friday in front of a record crowd of 11,338 at the CU Events Center, when then-No. 5 UCLA pulled away in the second half for a 76-68 win. Grandview alum Lauren Betts and the Bruins dominated the glass with 18 offensive rebounds in the game, while CU was uncharacteristically sloppy with 16 turnovers.
“We knew we had a choice that we could either spiral downhill, or we could turn the page and leave UCLA behind us,” Sherrod said. “We knew we could start to build again off USC, so we took a mature approach to that.”
Payne said a film study of the UCLA game revealed: “there was a lot of things we were doing that had nothing to do with UCLA, and everything to do with us.”
“When we’re running the incorrect lanes in transition, when we’re not correctly reading the reads we’re supposed to make defensively, that’s on us,” Payne said. “We really weren’t doing our jobs collectively, and it was still a one-possession game with a couple minutes to go. That’s frustrating, but it also indicates we don’t need a total overhaul to win these (high-stakes) games.”
After the 63-59 win over then-No. 6 USC — marking the first time CU’s beaten three top-10 teams in the same season — the Buffs blew off some steam with a team outing at the Grizzly Rose that night. Wetta line-danced for hours. Sherrod rode the mechanical bull, but couldn’t last eight seconds.
Forward Quay Miller, who’s recorded double-doubles in four of her last five games, was one of the players who organized the outing.
“I just wanted everyone to let loose and have fun,” Miller said. “It was good to take everybody out and just have fun and relax. Kindyll, she’s pretty good at line dancing.”
It’s been back to business this week as the Buffs head northwest for games against Oregon State on Friday and then Oregon on Sunday.
While the Buffs have circled the rematch with the Bruins on Feb. 26 in Los Angeles — “We’ll be ready,” Wetta said — they can’t look past Friday. The 25th-ranked Beavers have the advantage in size. OSU has three players who check in at 6-foot-4 or taller, including ex-Valor Christian star Raegan Beers, who was the Pac-12 freshman of the year last season.
Payne noted that for all of Wetta’s dominance on the defensive end, she wants more out of the scrappy point guard on offense, too. Wetta is currently averaging 6.5 points per game and she believes her best asset is as a shot creator, but Payne says she should be more aggressive with the ball in her hands.
Perhaps if Wetta imagined it was Sherrod defending her, she might have a bit more offensive spark. For now, she’s okay with deferring to Sherrod and Miller, as well as feeding center Aaronette Vonleh (the team’s leading scorer at 14.4 points per game) in the post.
“Kindyll can look to score more,” Payne said. “She loves to pass — she and Jaylyn are both like that, they love to create for other people — but sometimes Kindyll will pass up her own open shot to give someone else an open shot. We’ve talked about it every year she’s been here, because she has a beautiful pull-up jumper, and she’s put a lot of time into her three. She just has to have that (offensive mindset) in her arsenal, and being ready to score. We want that from her.”
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