Finding its footing
Auriemma not optimistic UConn can make a March run
STORRS — Hours before blizzard conditions blanketed campus Monday night and sent cars spinning down Route 195 with as much traction as the UConn women’s basketball team has on its dissolving season, Azzi Fudd snapped off jump shots and darted through the layup line with great energy.
This is where the incremental progress of recovery from a knee injury had brought Fudd, to the heart of pre-game warm-ups, seemingly to the brink of a return that should and would signal more than a flicker of hope for March …
If the Huskies, on the whole, weren’t so discombobulated.
Ninth-ranked UConn, its national standing having taken a hit with the struggles of a wildly uncomfortable month, wrapped up the regular season and the February portion of its schedule with a 60-51 victory over lowly Xavier — another uninspiring and disconcerting performance, this one a bridge to the postseason.
Rarely has the calendar flipped to March with such bleak assessments and forecasts coming out of Gampel Pavilion.
“The players ain’t what they used to be,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “And the coaching ain’t what it used to be, either. I don’t think we’ve coached these guys as well as we coached some of the other guys, and that’s evident when you watch us play on the floor, that we look like a poorly coached team. And that’s me, my staff.”
Auriemma was asked about his injury-plagued team preparing for the possibility of three games in three days at the Big East Tournament.
“If we don’t get some things fixed,” he said, “I don’t think we’ll be playing three games.”
Minutes later Auriemma was asked about the possibility of a 15th consecutive Final Four.
“The way we are right now, this team, as it is right now, don’t add anybody, who we are right now, that ain’t happening,” he said, shaking his head. “They could fool me. They’ve been fooling me