Heading into a top-10 nonconference battle with South Carolina on Sunday, UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma knew that returning to the grind of Big East play after the high-octane matchup would be a challenging task, win or lose.
UConn exceeded every expectation in Columbia with a stunning 87-58 rout of the Gamecocks, led by 28 points on six made 3-pointers from star guard Azzi Fudd. It was the signature victory of the season for the Huskies and a major confidence boost entering the home stretch of the regular season, but even in the joyful aftermath, Auriemma was bracing for a possible letdown ahead.
“We could go down to Seton Hall on Wednesday night and get out-rebounded, and it won’t surprise me one bit,” Auriemma quipped after Sunday’s win. “It’s especially hard to put a performance like this, all of it, into one bottle. How do we take some bits and pieces from a lot of those things and start to build momentum with that? … This is in them, and it came out today. Can it come out every day? I don’t know.”
It’s easy to forget that No. 5 UConn (24-3, 14-0 Big East) has an overwhelmingly inexperienced roster behind Fudd and redshirt senior star Paige Bueckers. Sixth-year forward Aubrey Griffin is the only other active player who was on the team the last time it pulled off a top-5 win in the regular season in Nov. 2022, so the Huskies are in somewhat uncharted territory as they resume conference play at Seton Hall (18-7, 10-4). It will be UConn’s sixth road game in the last three weeks with another trip, to Indianapolis to face Butler, coming up this weekend.
“The majority of teams don’t really necessarily like playing these games … in February when every other team is getting a bye,” Auriemma said ahead of the South Carolina game last week. “But we play them because I believe that they’re necessary for a lot of reasons, and they’re helpful for a lot of reasons, and there’s a bunch of games after that. The only games that really, really matter is when if you lose you have no games left. Everything else, I mean who doesn’t want to play great? Who doesn’t want to win? … But the object is to try to try to do both: Play really well, win the game and move on.”
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The Huskies have their sights set firmly on March, chasing the program’s long-awaited 12th NCAA championship in 2025, and Fudd said the team was quick to reset after Sunday’s statement win. Bueckers reminded the team before they left the Gamecocks’ arena: Now that they’ve proven their ceiling, maintaining it is the next step towards postseason success.
“I think we all knew that we were capable of this, but it does mean a lot,” Fudd said. “It definitely does boost our confidence actually seeing ourselves do it, and Paige said it best in the locker room: Now that we’ve done it, we can’t get complacent. This has to be kind of our standard here. We can only get better from here. We can’t let this win be the best thing we do for the rest of the season.”
Seton Hall is a promising matchup for the Huskies to continue their hot streak after they blew out the Pirates 96-36 in their first meeting on Jan. 19 at Gampel Pavilion. That victory was also headlined by a lights-out 3-point shooting performance: Fudd and Bueckers made four apiece, while freshman phenom Sarah Strong went 3-for-3 and classmate Allie Ziebell hit 3-for-6 off the bench. The team finished 17-for-32 from beyond the arc and shot 56.5% from the field led by 23 points from Strong, and Bueckers and Fudd each finished with 18.
UConn was equally dominant defensively on top of the scoring onslaught, holding Seton Hall to a season-worst 22.6% shooting from the field. Pirates star forward Faith Masonius, who averages 15.7 points per game, scored just eight going 3-for-15, and she gave up nine of the team’s 19 turnovers. The Huskies finished with 27 points off Seton Hall turnovers and 21 on fast breaks.
“All January and February I think we’ve been pretty good defensively, and our offense has been unbelievably good, and been average, and been okay,” Auriemma said last week. “In games that are played against really good teams, especially on the road, you have to be able to get your offense where you need it to be … People talk about defensive pressure, but the offensive pressure (of) you have to score because you know we’re going to keep scoring, that’s hard for teams to put up with.”
How to watch
Site: Walsh Gymnasium, South Orange, N.J.
Time/date: 7 p.m., Wednesday
Series record: UConn leads 60-10
Last meeting: 96-36 UConn, Jan. 19 in Storrs
TV: SNY
Streaming: SNY.tv, FOXSports.com
Radio: UConn Sports Network on Fox Sports 97.9
