Freshmen make highly-anticipated debuts for No. 1 Huskies

Storrs — The trip to Italy was eye-opening in more ways than one for the freshmen on the UConn women's basketball team.

Mikayla Coombs, Andra Espinoza-Hunter, Lexi Gordon and Megan Walker had the chance to be tourists along with the rest of UConn's travel party, but when it came time to take the court for four exhibition games and endure some challenging practices both at UConn and in Italy, they got a crash course on life as a Husky.

Geno Auriemma didn't coach UConn to a record 11 national titles by being easy to please, and it didn't take long for the newcomers to realize that his standards won't be changing, so theirs will need to if they want to log extensive minutes .

“He is not going to play you if you are not ready, if you are not playing defense,' Gordon said.

“Now I am focusing on getting better defensively, staying in condition and being able to keep up with the pace. For us, defense is probably the biggest thing. If we aren't going to play defense, we aren't going to play.”

Walker, who won most of the national high school player of the year awards, averaged 7.8 points and 7.3 rebounds playing in the four games, but minutes were tougher to come by for the other freshmen.

“Our freshmen look a little different,” Auriemma said. “The reason they look different is they realize, man we went to Europe when the games don't mean anything and coach said you guys ain't playing because you are horrible at practice, your work ethic is horrible, so you aren't playing. If he's not going to play us when the games are meaningless in Europe, what's going to happen when the games mean something? You can see that the way they operate is a little different than in August, so that trip was really good for us.”

Minutes shouldn't be that hard to come by when UConn hosts Division II Fort Hays State on Wednesday (7 p.m., XL Center). However, the Huskies play five of their first seven regular-season games against teams ranked in the first Division I coaches poll of the season so this is the time where they need to be showing their coaches and teammates that they are ready to go.

“Even in practice you saw six or seven people got in, I was on the sideline, too,” Espinoza-Hunter said after a recent practice. “The only way you are going to play here is if you work on defense. If you don't do that you will be a cheerleader

“Giving effort is one of the big things for myself, if I am able to give it my all that means I am ready to give it my all on defense, being on a constant level, not having a good day and a bad day, being (consistent) and meeting up to his expectations.”

Senior All-American forward Gabby Williams missed some practice time recently due to migraine headaches but practiced Tuesday and is expected to be in the lineup. However, a knee injury is expected to sideline Batouly Camara, a transfer from Kentucky who sat out last season.

Fort Hays is coming off a 22-8 season. Junior Tatyana Legette is the top returning scoring averaging 9.6 points and 7.6 rebounds as a sophomore.

UConn will wrap up preseason play on Sunday hosting defending Division II national champion Ashland at 1 p.m. at a refurbished Gampel Pavilion.