Devos Conquers the Court a Little Bit at a Time
Reliable. Versatile. And the Rams need it all from the senior
Mike Brohard
Lore Devos has no idea of the concept of a Swiss Army Knife.
She’s never heard of one, and Ryun Williams has never told her she serves just that purpose on the Colorado State women’s basketball team. He just tells the media she’s the Rams’ version of the device, which is a great tool to have heading into a contest.
With 10 games remaining in the Mountain West season, the Rams sit at 10-2 overall, 6-2 in conference play, tying them for the top spot in the standings with defending champ Fresno State (a 6-2 team the Rams split with to open the season) and New Mexico (3-1). Obviously, this is a team in the thick of the race, and on any given night, the flow of a game will change and determine the outcome.
In Devos, Colorado State has a competitor who can give them a little bit of everything when it is needed most.
She leads the team in scoring at 14.0 points per game, eighth in the conference. She leads the team in rebounding at 7.7 per clip, sixth in the conference. She’s also sixth in field-goal percentage (46.2) and fourth in blocked shots at 1.58 per night.
She’s scored in double figures in 10 of 12 games, including 10 of the past 11. Five times she’s reached double-digit rebounds, each time producing a double-double. She has seven games with multiple assists, six with multiple blocked shots. In one slot against Utah State this past game, she posted back-to-back steals and turned them into layups.
Versatile is what Williams wanted when he recruited Devos, and that’s exactly what she’s given the program.
“If you go all the way back to her very first collegiate game, she was our starting point guard,” Williams said. “Then maybe five games later, she was our starting 5. She’s played all over for us.
“There’s some things she doesn’t do very flashy, but extremely effective. The fact she can guard numerous positions and she can score from different areas on the floor makes her an incredibly difficult matchup. You look at how the game of basketball is played today, it’s about spacing, driving shooting, playmaking at all five positions. There have been a number of games where we play her at the 5, and it just makes us more difficult to defend.”
Since her first game, she’s started at every spot on the floor with the exception of shooting guard. For Williams and his staff, often a game plan starts with what to do with Devos, because she can fill in so many spots when the Rams have the ball or when they’re defending it.
In essence, she’s their problem solver. The answer to the fill-in-the-blank question. And her teammates appreciate all she can do for them in any given situation.
“It’s so important. It’s like your base, the pillars your team stands on,” said guard Jamie Bonnarens. “You count on people to be there every night, to show up. If it’s not scoring, they can be there in other ways, and you know they’re going to catch fire pretty soon, because they’ve put in the work and you see her do it night in and night out.”
I feel like I’ve always kind of been like that. I want to be in the background and just be me.Lore Devos
Devos has always been this player. It was the way she was taught the game growing up in Belgium, and Williams thinks the international players were ahead of the curve. They have always been developed in multiple facets, where as a decade ago, if a player was 6-foot or taller in the States, they were immediately tagged a post player.
Devos was taught to shoot from the perimeter and how do drive, to play with her back to the basket. And she can defend every spot on the floor. The only off year was last season, and that was due to a knee injury the first night out.
She missed a substantial portion of the season, and when she came back, try as she might, it just wasn’t the same. Mentally, she knew what she wanted to do. Physically, she wasn’t always capable.
“It feels so much better, to be honest. I’m back to being the former me,” Devos said. “Just having my legs underneath me, and also the conditioning part; that was lagging last year. It helps on defense, especially, and also being more explosive in what I do. I feel like I was not trusting the knee all the way last year, and now everything is fine.”
With so much going on, not much stands out. Williams likes she plays the game without flash and in a very unassuming way. He doesn’t see her facial expressions change during a game, and her body language is always positive.
Yet, at the end of 40 minutes, she’s filled the stat sheet with a little bit of this, a touch of that and the Rams are in the hunt for a title because of her multiple contributions as they head to Boise State this week for a pair.
It’s the same at practice, which Bonnarens said is maybe the most important time to be focused and intense. They all saw it in the offseason, when the pandemic sent them to find creative ways to stay in shape. Back home, Devos posted video of her using filled water jugs attached them to a broom handle so she could do squats.
As Bonnarens said: “Lore is just Lore.”
“I think she just plays her game. It’s always steady, but some games you can see it in her actions, she’s ready to take over and nobody is going to stop her,” Bonnarens said. “If she wants to get to her spot and rise up, it’s going in every time. It’s pretty cool to watch.”
Naturally, Devos does not like to talk much about her game, or her contributions. She admits she doesn’t like to be the focus of anything, just a part of the grander scheme. Yet, now she’s a senior, Williams said she’s earned the right to take over a game when the opportunity arrives, such as it did in a two-game sweep of San Diego State.
She was fantastic in both, scoring 48 points and pulling down 23 rebounds combined in earning conference player of the week honors.
“I feel like I’ve always kind of been like that. I want to be in the background and just be me,” Devos said. “I know where we want to go with this team, and I think it’s important to get out there every night and play. There are just those nights that maybe, hey, let’s be a senior like coach tells me all the time. Sometimes that might be a moment where you still don’t force anything and still play like a team.”
Devos doesn’t understand the comparison of her game to pocket tool, but she fully comprehends what her coach also calls her at practice (Miss Versatility) or her teammate’s favorite adjective (Reliable).
Williams also calls her Lore of the Rings, because, well, he can be cheesy at times. Then he notes himself she doesn’t have one yet.
“But I want one,” she said.
There’s still time. And she’s doing her part.