Defense Is Crusaders’ Difference : Basketball: Point Loma Nazarene women ride new scheme into NAIA playoffs.

It has been a record-setting season for the Point Loma Nazarene women’s basketball team. School records have been established for victories (22), points per game (75.45) and scoring margin (13.07). A Golden State Athletic Conference championship banner will appear in the Crusaders’ gym for the first time.

An inaugural trip to the NAIA National Tournament in Jackson, Tenn. is only two victories away, although no one is talking about much past tonight’s first-round District III game at Biola College (8 p.m.).

And who do the Crusaders (22-7) have to thank for their success?

Would you believe Portland Trail Blazer guard Terry Porter?

Well, Porter hasn’t personally turned around the Crusaders’ fortunes, but, in a strange way, he can be given some of the credit.

Porter’s 1984 Wisconsin-Stevens Point team made PLNC Coach Bill Olin take notice of a new style of defense.

Olin, who was PLNC’s sports information director at the time, watched the Crusader men get manhandled by this intense, swarming man-to-man pressure defense.

“That game really made me think,” Olin said. “I thought some day, maybe I could use that.”

A couple years later, Olin got hold of an instructional film of the Wisconsin-Stevens Point defense. During previous seasons, Olin adopted certain philosophies of the defense, but he was afraid to use all its principles.

Until this year.

“This year was ideal,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of quickness, but I knew I had the depth to do it. I’ve stuck with it this year and we have not played a minute of zone.”

What did Shannon Abrams, PLNC’s returning leading scorer, think when Olin told the team it would be playing pressure defense for 40 minutes?

“It was like, ‘really.’ I didn’t think we could do it,” said Abrams, who came to PLNC from Ohlone Junior College in Fremont.

Senior Lisa Miller said the defensive breakdowns in the first few games made the team wonder if Olin was losing it just a little.

“Some days,” she said, “we were thinking, ‘This is not going to work.’ ”

Some of the system’s basic rules could almost come from a How Not to Play Defense guide: Force your man to the baseline. Front the post. Pressure your man aggressively and gamble if you have to. If your man beats you, it’s not a major catastrophe.

The rules also say: There is always a teammate waiting to give help on the baseline. There is always a player ready to leave her man and help when a teammate is beaten off the dribble.

It took a while, but eventually the players started buying into the system. By the eighth game, the Crusaders had scored 100 points against a good Occidental team, thanks to defensive pressure and turnovers.

Even against teams which gave them serious size problems, the Crusaders were competitive. Because so much pressure was being put on the ball, teams rarely could get clear passing angles in the lane.

“I told them if we execute it right, the other team will throw passes away,” Olin said. “If we don’t, they’ll get layups.”

Layups have been hard to come by lately for PLNC opponents, but turnovers haven’t. The all-out pressure has forced opponents into 727 turnovers in 29 games--an average of more than 25 a game.

It also allows Olin the opportunity to play 11 or 12 people. Although the bench hasn’t added much offensive firepower, Olin said it has given him some great defense.

“We’ve just worn some teams down this year with our pressure,” Olin said.

The added depth also came in handy when Abrams, who averages 20.5 points and 11.3 rebounds, went down with a broken hand for seven games. In her absence, point guard Christy Stevens and backup forward Alicia Harasty picked up the slack and led the Crusaders to a 6-1 record.

In years past, an injury to a star player would have crippled the Crusaders. But this season is different--thanks in part to Terry Porter.