While most of campus was buzzing with the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate, the BJU women’s basketball team fell to the Southern Wesleyan University Warriors 63-72 on Tuesday, Feb. 4.

The Warriors were fast and penetrated to the basket, but the Bruins’ outstanding defense was able to slow them down. At the half, BJU was down by three points.

The Bruins women’s team has relied on its defense for wins this season, but that wasn’t enough this time. Coach Mike LeViere said, “We’ve used the saying ‘defense determines if you win, and offense determines how much.’” Although ranked among the top in its division, the Bruins’ defense couldn’t come up with a win.

“When we played Clearwater, they didn’t get 19 points in the first half, and it’s because of our defense. That’s the only thing that kept us in,” said senior Trisha Irving.

Junior Kourtney Hoefler said the defense has dramatically improved since last year. “[The defense] has changed entirely. We can win games because of our defense.”

Playing good defense is something that a team can control. Hoefler added, “You can’t lose if you have a good defense. If you don’t let them score, there’s no way that you can lose. Coach just says we need to focus on what we can control, and we can control what we have on defense.”

Deciding what type of zone to play is crucial for a game. When deciding on a defense, Coach LeViere said, “If they don’t have really good outside shooters, that factors into the zone. If they’re really good off the dribble and it’s hard to handle a man-to-man, you’re going to go to zone.”

The Bruins will look to shut down Tennessee Temple on Tuesday, Feb. 11, at the Davis Field House.