The Next Step for Nina Davis
After the sophomore season from Baylor sophomore Nina Davis—an All-American, the Big 12 Player of the Year and an effective field goal rate of 58.4% despite making all 291 of her field goals from two-point range—it may seem counterintuitive that she spent the summer evolving her game.
But a pair of factors drove her to do so. One is the makeup of Baylor’s team this season, with a pair of freshmen, 6’7″ Kalani Brown and 6’4″ Beatrice Mompremier allowing Davis, 5’11”, to slide away from the post she played, partly of necessity, partly due to skill set that belies her size.
The other reason? She’s getting ready for the WNBA.
“I think it’s an equal balance between this year, my next two years in college and the higher level,” Davis said at NCAA Women’s Basketball Media Day earlier this month. “I know shooting threes is great—but really, it’s about my mid-range jumpshot. Make the defenders play me more honest, because I know driving to the goal, I can get there against pretty much anyone. I play for the drive and they start taking charges, but I make the mid-range and they’ll have to respect me for it. Once they play up I can drive or I can take the shot. When you can shoot and drive, it’ll be harder to stop me.”
Few stopped her at all last season, when her 26.2 points/40 minutes rated her eighth in the country, even as her height usually placed her at a potential disadvantage playing her inside-first game in the post against taller defenders.
But there are signs beyond the surface—that a more diversified game means better opportunities—which point to the import of Davis adding a perimeter component to her game.
Her rebounding last season led Baylor, and the 8.4 total rebounds per game speaks to a player who held her own against the taller opponents she faced all season. But a significant number of her rebounds—130 of 308, or 42.2 percent of them—came on the offensive end. To put that in perspective, her 308 total rebounds tied her for 102nd in the country. But only three players between spots 47-101 had more offensive rebounds than she did. And her 130 offensive rebounds topped the totals of seven of the top 11 rebounders in the country.
Put another way, a good deal of her rebounding prowess comes from her on-court intellect, an ability to know where to get those boards from her shots or those of her teammates.
“That may have a little bit to do with it,” Davis said. “I also think maybe half of the offensive rebounds come from my own shot. And it’s like they say—who knows better where that shot is going from how I release it, so I can know better almost exactly where that rebound is going. On the defensive side, it’s harder to gauge, especially when they’re shooting threes. But on the offensive side, you kind of know where it’s headed.”
Hence, the need to diversify—though elite offensive rebounding and an unstoppable post game is a good place to start. Really, Davis says, it’s about the direction the game is going, a positionless future she’s ready to embrace.
“I think that’s definitely changing,” Davis said of positional definition. “I’ll hear freshman say things like ‘I’m a 4 player, I’m only going to play the 4’, and I don’t think they realize yet that it’s really changed. The 4 and 5 are pretty much the same thing, and 1, 2 and 3 are as well. Wings are really tall, maybe 6’3”, so they can play the 4, maybe post their defenders. And that’s just the opposite with me—I’m 5’11”, but I’m able to play the wings, I can post, I’m able to drive. It’s not a lot of players yet, but more and more have the capability. And I believe in playing many different positions, it makes me that much harder to guard.”
So she spent the summer on it. The three-pointer can wait, at least for now. One step at a time. But Davis added the skill the way she has so many others throughout her career—through subterfuge.
“I really like to find time, Sundays usually, to do it when nobody is around,” Davis said of her shooting sessions. “I’ve been big about that since I was a kid. When I worked out with my trainer, I didn’t want to work out with anybody else around. So I find time when nobody is around, then I work on my jump shots, my free throws. I think it’s—people see me at the game, they say, ‘How is she this good? We never see her at the gym when we’re there, putting in extra work.’ But what you do in the dark shows up in the light. And I like having that edge, where nobody knows what I’m doing, until I want you to know. Until I’m ready to tell you.”
She’s ready to reveal it, starting Friday night against University of Texas-Arlington. But she won’t put a number on how many mid-range looks she wants per game. It all comes down to feeling good when she shoots it, and Davis says she’s achieved that, though she’s still aiming to improve.
“I have goals in my head about where I want it to be,” Davis said. “It’s basically when I come down the floor and I’m comfortable shooting it. I’m not really big on statistical goals, points per game, rebounds or anything like that. I average 25 points per game, but we get stopped at the Elite Eight again, it really doesn’t matter. But if I average 15 points per game, and it takes us to the Final Four, that’s really all that needs to be done. So it isn’t making five jump shots a game. It’s just being comfortable.”