Defensive wins ate not adding to the total wins. Is this by design?
Yes. It’s to prevent people abusing the system by intentionally bringing super weak teams and losing in order to inflate win count.
The defensive win notification does show a “+1” for win count, though, which appears to be something they considered doing in development and didn’t fully remove from display when they decided against it.
So if you do win while in defense…does that count as one win toward your victory rewards?
No, it does not.