The difference between yours and LVOCD's post illustrates that "quickness" is an ephemeral concept, with a lot components.
Jordan H. is a unicorn in terms of her speed and quickness for a player her size but a quick guard with a lower center of gravity, like Annie Hayes, can get by her if the angle is right (and Jordan is going to play in the WNBA, Hayes probably not).
Jillian H is a 6'5 player. As post players goes, she is quite quick relative to other posts but again match her up against an athletic 5-8 guard on the perimeter and the odds are not in her favor.
When you look at the top 10, you have #2 Indiana, #5 Iowa, #7 Utah, #11 VA Tech, #13 Ohio State, and #23 Colorado. Tennessee has better athletes across the board. Their starter line-ups are filled with players who physically look a lot like Puckett and Darby and yet they are defending and winning.
A good defensive team works as a unit, anticipates positions and denies passing lanes, forces teams out of their normal modes, has good court awareness so that players don't get lost on screens and cuts, and boxes out. Of course, if you have speed demon matched up one on one with less quick defender, you will get a blow by but good defensive teams make such events a rarity in games rather than a regular occurrence. Kaiya for example, has a rep for being a good defender, With her we are talking about small samples but she gets burned routinely when she is on the court due poor positioning and missed assignments,.
The problems with out offense catch all the attention but our defensive sets are just as bad. The team plays solid defense for about half a game but then they fall into bad habits. I do think some of the disjointedness comes from the continual mixing and matching of players that goes on. Its is a strange world when one minute you have Franklin, Hollinsghead, Jackson, Puckett, Walker on the floor and on the next sub, you have Powell, Walker, Horston, Striplin, and Darby. What is the defensive scheme across those two line-ups?
