Sports: Arkansas hands No. 3 UConn women first loss of season, 90-87
Senior’s 37 points help No. 19 Arkansas hand No. 3 UConn its first loss of the season
Arkansas 90 UConnw 87
Upon finding out his team was scheduled to play Arkansas, UConn coach Geno Auriemma joked earlier this month that the guard-oriented Razorbacks, a rare team that averages more points than the Huskies, would be trying to find a way to score 120.
Or maybe he wasn't joking.
In a pulsating game where each urgent possession looked almost like the fast-forward feature had been enacted on a television remote, No. 19 Arkansas got 37 points from unstoppable redshirt senior guard Chelsea Dungee in a 9087 victory over third-ranked and previously unbeaten UConn on Thursday night before a sold-out crowd of 4,200 in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
“I thought both teams played at a really quick pace,” Auriemma said. “I mean, that's the way we like to play. We like to play quickly and certainly that's the way they like to play. Again, no surprise at all that the game was played at that pace.
“They're gonna force you to play a little bit quicker and we're really not a sit there, play D, walk the ball up the floor, then run 30 seconds of halfcourt offense. We're not good enough to do that … we were going to play
quickly as well. They just played it better than we did tonight.”
Dungee finished 13-for-21 shooting to record the 11th 30-point game of her career. She played the spoiler to the homecoming game of UConn's Christyn Williams, a native of Little Rock, and the return of UConn freshman Paige Bueckers from an ankle injury.
Bueckers scored a career-high 27 points to lead UConn (10-1), Evina Westbrook had 19 points and seven assists and Williams had 16 points. The Huskies also got valuable contributions off the bench from freshmen Aaliyah Edwards (6 points, 6 rebounds), Mir McLean (3 points, 3 rebounds, drew a charging foul on defense) and Nika Muhl (8 points, 2 3-pointers).
UConn trailed by as many as 13 points in the third quarter, in which Arkansas scored 31 points, the most by any opponent against the Huskies this season.
Bueckers, however, responded with 15 points in the fourth quarter and UConn took a 79-77 lead on a 3-pointer by Westbrook with 5 minutes, 25 seconds left to play.
Arkansas then had 10 straight points to lead 87-79, the game's decisive run, but trailing 90-82, UConn scored the game's final five points to give itself a chance at a game-tying 3 by Westbrook at the buzzer.
“I think that one spurt in the third quarter was the big difference,” Auriemma said. “… Paige took over the game for a long stretch, but when you're trying to come back like that you need more from people and we just didn't have enough.”
Amber Ramirez added 22 points for Arkansas (12-6), which finished 13-for-23 from 3-point range (56.5%). The Razorbacks had lost games at the buzzer previously this season against No. 8 Texas A&M (74-73) on Jan. 10 and against No. 22 Georgia (75-73) on Monday.
“I think really it starts in practice,” said UConn's Westbrook, asked what she'll take away from the loss. “A lot of the things we messed up on and really didn't execute well are the same things that happened in practice, so that's really where it has to start. We just have to be able to guard people, especially as guards, and contain the other team and we just didn't get it done.
“Kudos to them. They were fighting us the whole game. For us we just didn't do what we needed to do on the defensive end … defensively we just kind of crumbled at the end.”
The top-25 matchup was not originally on the teams' schedule, but was added when UConn and Arkansas both had postponements due to COVID-19 which would have left UConn without a game at all this week. Arkansas was missing six reserve players due to COVID-19 protocol.
Arkansas, coached by Mike Neighbors, came into the game averaging 85.4 points per game to UConn's 85.1, with Auriemma emphasizing that his team couldn't show up and just try to outscore the experienced Razorbacks, who start three fifth-year seniors at guard.
Aubrey Griffin's second 3-pointer of the season came from the righthand corner with 4 seconds left in the second quarter to give the Huskies a 43-41 lead at halftime. Ramirez gave Arkansas the 41-40 lead just prior to that.