Could be fair or foul
What Geno told Williams after misses
SAN ANTONIO — In the UConn women’s basketball team’s Elite Eight game against Baylor, Christyn Williams went from having a disappointing first half to helping propel the Huskies from down 10 late in the third quarter to up nine early in the fourth. The junior guard from Arkansas accounted for seven of UConn’s 19 unanswered points in the game-deciding run that swung the momentum back in the Huskies’ favor and gave them the lead for good in a 69-67 win.
Though for a moment, it looked as if Williams could have potentially cost UConnthe game.
With 18 seconds remaining and the Huskies up one, Williams was fouled on an inbounding play by Baylor’s Moon Ursin, sending her to the line for a pair of free throws and a chance to put UConn up by three. She missed both shots, much to the delight of the mostly pro-Baylor crowd at
the Alamodome — the first rattling around the rim before bouncing out, the second clanking off the front of the rim.
Williams’ missed shots would not prove fatal for their season, and UConn coach Geno Auriemma didn’t want Williams to dwell too much on her miscues. Almost immediately after the buzzer sounded, Auriemma found Williams and had a long conversation with her.
“You know what he’s doing?” ESPN analyst and former Husky Rebecca Lobo said on the TV broadcast. “He’s coaching her for the Final Four. She missed two devastating free throws near the end of the game. Right now, he gave her a big hug, he’s getting her ready for the Final Four.”
“I was devastated that I missed those two free throws. Those were big. They could have very well went down there and scored and we could have easily lost the game,” Williams said, who was 2-2 from the line before missing that pair and is a 67 percent free-throw shooter on the season. “As a junior on the team, I’m supposed to step up and knock those in, but I didn’t it, and my teammates had my back, and they constantly encouraged me.”
Williams didn’t have much of an opportunity to sulk, though, as the Bears would just need one basket on the ensuing play to win the game. After UConn got a defensive stop on a controversial no-call, Williams grabbed the rebound and once more was sent to the line with 0.8 seconds on the clock. She missed the first but, as Auriemma instructed her, sank the second to put UConn up two. Baylor’s inbounding attempt was intercepted by Bueckers, securing the Huskies win.
When Auriemma and Williams spoke after the game, he seemed more concern about her quiet first half.
“He just basically told me that I can’t start off how I started, because I wasn’t really there in the first half,” Williams said. She went into the locker room, with the Huskies down 39-37 after starting the game on a 16-4 run, with seven points on 3-for-8 shooting. There was no doubt that for UConn to advance to its 13th consecutive Final Four, it would need more from Williams. She was one of the team’s two players who had been to the Elite Eight, and who’d made great strides over the last few months in becoming a top scorer and lockdown defender.
Williams would finish the game with 21 points (8-for-18 shooting, 2 of 5 on 3s) and seven rebounds. Without her 14 secondhalf points and aggressiveness during UConn’s late run, there was no telling whether UConn would’ve been able to complete its comeback. Her fast-break layup following a great defensive play from Aaliyah Edwards late in the game gave UConn a slightly more comfortable fivepoint lead with 59 seconds to go.
“Hewasvery proud of methat I switched things around and said that a year ago, I would have just let the whole game go bad for me, but that’s growth in my game,” Williams said. “Basically, he said that I control my destiny.”
The pep talk seemed to work. As the team crashed Auriemma’s postgame TV interview with Holly Rowe to throw confetti on him, Williams hung back a little longer to drizzle a little more on his head and give him another big hug.
Auriemma is right, Williams controls her own destiny. After her confidence-instilling 27-point game against Iowa in the Sweet 16 and her big second-half against Baylor, UConn will need her confidence to remain robust. And, to be sure, for her to make her free throws down the stretch, should UConn’s season come down to that.
“Everyone does huge things for this team,” Paige Bueckers said. “You can’t take one person away and think you’re going to win because we have multiple people that can get a bucket at any time. I think that’s really huge for us going into the Final Four is just making sure we have that balanced scoring and everybody’s playing with confidence, everybody is playing their best basketball.”