Three questions UConn women’s basketball has to answer to reach championship goal in NCAA Tournament
The UConn women’s basketball team is riding the momentum of a 10-game win streak into March Madness, crowned by a dominant run to win a fifth consecutive Big East Tournament title last week.
The conference tournament went off without a hitch for the Huskies, who won all three of their games by 20-plus points, capped by a 70-50 rout of No. 22 Creighton in the championship. Superstar Paige Bueckers ended her Big East career by becoming the first player in conference history to win the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award three times.
The No. 3 Huskies weren’t able to strengthen their resume much against the underwhelming competition in the Big East, so they remain all but guaranteed a 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament. They’ll get the first look at their path to the Final Four on this weekend’s Selection Sunday show (8 p.m., ESPN), but after 40 seasons and 11 national titles, Auriemma doesn’t worry anymore about where his team will land on the bracket.
“The big thing is just to be prepared for anything, and I think that’s what this week coming up is going to be about,” Auriemma said. “That’s all you can do … They put you up on the screen, and you go ‘Hmm.’ Sometimes they get it right, sometimes you think they got it wrong, but when it’s all over, you’ve got to go where they tell you to go. You’ve got to play who they tell you to play.”
Can post players reach potential?
Auriemma has spent most of the season demanding more from his young forwards, and the group looked to be rounding into form during the Big East Tournament. Redshirt sophomore Ice Brady missed seven games with a shoulder injury and has seen limited minutes in four games back, but Auriemma has seen her play some of her best basketball since returning.
Redshirt freshman Jana El Alfy had a strong showing in the conference tournament logging 5.6 points shooting 80% from the field plus 5.6 rebounds averaging just 16 minutes per game.
“(El Alfy) has gotten better, but there are some things that we’ve got to definitely address,” Auriemma said. “She needs to be more physically engaged, and on the offensive end I think she gets pushed around a little bit, and there’s not reason for that … I also think she’s shooting the ball in practice pretty well from that 15-foot, 16-foot are, so I want to try to give her some confidence in doing that.”
But even if the bigs maintain their positive progress, Auriemma will likely continue leaning heavily on his small lineup with freshman phenom Sarah Strong playing the five. Sixth-year forward Aubrey Griffin is also set to return after resting the Big East Tournament due to knee soreness, so the Auriemma hopes to have multiple options down the stretch.
“We need (Brady) to be a little more consistent now, and hopefully we can do that because if we can get Jana, Ice and Sarah, that gives us a lot of different ways we can mix and match,” Auriemma said. “Some teams you’re going to need a bigger lineup, but also some of those teams a small lineup is even better. The biggest challenge for us will be, can we defend some of those teams this year that are very post heavy?”
Is Sarah Strong ready for first tournament?
There are plenty of differences between this year’s UConn team and the one that was eliminated in the 2024 Final Four, but the most significant might be the singular addition of Strong. After signing with the Huskies as the No. 1 overall recruit in the Class of 2024, she immediately embraced the rising superstar role alongside Bueckers in her freshman campaign averaging 16 points, 8.4 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 2.4 steals and 1.6 blocks per game. She is the first UConn freshman since Maya Moore to record 500 points and 200 rebounds in a season, and she is poised to become just the third freshman All-American in program history.
“The coaches talk about it all the time on the bench that whenever we get a little bit stale on offense, we’re going to go to that two-man game with Paige and Sarah, and something is going to click,” Auriemma said. “Something is going to happen.”
Strong has seemed unflappable in every situation throughout her first collegiate season, logging nine double-doubles including five against current top-25 opponents. She put up three straight in the Big East Tournament averaging 14.3 points and 13.6 rebounds plus 3.3 assists, 3.3 steals and 2.7 blocks to land on the all-tournament team. But March Madness is a different beast entirely, and it will be the biggest test that Strong’s iron nerves have faced yet.
“I thought the third period today … you saw something you haven’t seen yet this year,” Auriemma said after the Big East championship. “If we can get that mindset, that feeling, in the next tournament that we play in — actually we’re going to need that if we want to win the games that I think we need to win. We’re going to need Sarah to be exactly like she was this weekend.”
Can guards keep consistency under pressure?
The Huskies never had a need to play things safe against Creighton after they opened an 11-0 lead in the first minute of the game, but the team was uncharacteristically turnover-prone in the Big East championship. UConn gave up 11 turnovers combined over its first two wins at the tournament, but it had 17 against the Bluejays led by a combined 10 from point guards KK Arnold and Kaitlyn Chen. The pair also had a single assist between them, though they still contributed seven points apiece.
Turnovers cost UConn dearly in regular-season losses to No. 8 Notre Dame and No. 20 Tennessee, and the NCAA Tournament leaves little room for error. But Arnold and Chen are X-factors at their best, and both seemed to have shaken early-season inconsistencies prior to the Big East Tournament, so Auriemma didn’t seem concerned by the minor slump.
“Sometimes when the games mean as much as they meant today, players get a little bit anxious to do some things and get a little bit ahead of themselves, get a little careless,” Auriemma said. “Those are things that we can fix for sure. I didn’t like the fact that we had 17 turnovers, but I do think Creighton’s defense is a little bit underrated … Both Kaitlyn and KK were under a lot of pressure the entire game.”
Along with Arnold and Chen, sophomore guard Ashlynn Shade has been a game-changer in some of the biggest moments. Her nine points shooting 3-for-6 from 3-point range helped power the Huskies to victory at South Carolina, and a good shooting night for Shade consistently unlocks the rest of UConn’s offense. The team averages almost 84 points per game when Shade hits multiple 3-pointers, which plummets to 72.8 points in games when she makes one or fewer, and the sophomore shot a combined 1-for-8 beyond the arc across the Huskies’ three losses.
“Our best teams ever are the teams that have people like Ash coming off the bench,” Auriemma said ahead of the conference tournament. “When she and KK come in the game, they change the way the game is being played … Whatever the other team is dealing with before those two guys come in, they have to deal with something completely different, and that’s what coaches hope for.”
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