The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Huskies break scoring record with 140 points
STORRS — More than a few underdog teams must have thought, “why not us” after the UMBC men’s basketball team finished off a historic March Madness upset late Friday night.
The members of the top-seeded UConn women’s basketball team, however, had a much different take after seeing UMBC become the first No. 16 seed to topple a No. 1 seed in the history of the NCAA men’s Division I tournament.
“Of course it came up and it just shows that anything can happen,” UConn senior forward Gabby Williams said. “It says a lot about what UMBC did and we didn’t want to be Virginia. We wanted to make a statement that we aren’t that team that it can happen to.”
It didn’t take long for those in attendance at Gampel Pavilion to realize that the only history being made was going to be done by the mighty Huskies who rolled to a record-breaking 140-52 victory to set up a matchup with Quinnipi-
ac, an 86-72 winner over Miami, in Monday’s second round game.
UConn set NCAA Division I women’s basketball single-game records with 140 points scored, 69 rebounds and 38 assists to remain the only team to advance to the second round in each of the 25 years that the women’s tournament has been a 64-team field. Even more staggering might have been the fact that UConn had a record 55 points in the first quarter and the 94 first-half points were not only a tournament record but broke the NCAA Division I women’s basketball record for points in a half by 14.
“It makes no sense,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “I went into the locker room and said, ‘are you kidding me?’ I have never seen anything like it in my life.”
Azurá Stevens came off the bench to finish with 26 points and 10 rebounds to lead six Huskies in double figures. Napheesa Collier had a career-high nine assists to go with 25 points, five rebounds, nine assists, four steals and two blocked shots. Katie Lou Samuelson (18 points, 10 assists) and Kia Nurse (15 points, 10 rebounds) also posted double-doubles. Williams added 16 points and six assists. She also became the fifth Husky with 300 career steals, while Megan Walker came off the bench to finish with 19 points and eight rebounds.
Saint Francis came out pushing the pace offensively and set a tournament record by attempting 57 3-pointers but only connected on 10 of them. Defensively, the Red Flash also tried to play aggressively, but with UConn only committing two turnovers in the first half, it led to one uncontested layup after another for the Huskies.
“When they are playing like that, it is playing more to our strengths so that was really fun for us today,” Collier said.
UConn (33-0) made its first nine shots and by the time the Huskies missed back-to-back field goal attempts, they were already leading by 41.
The Red Flash almost went two entire quarters without making a shot inside the 3-point line while the Huskies could barely miss. Lost in the recordsetting effort was the fact that UConn’s defense limited Jessica Kovatch, the nation’s 3-point leader, without a field goal until 5:24 remained in the third quarter.
“We wanted to show how we play and how we could compete at Saint Francis and and not worry about the end result and I think we did that today,” Saint Francis coach Joe Haigh said. “The way we play is unconventional, obviously, but that’s how we play. The margin of loss doesn’t matter as much as how you play. There was only one chance we had to come close in this game and that was going to be to shoot a million threes and hope they go in.”
Haley Thomas had 12 points and Caitlyn Kroll 11 for Saint Francis (24-10), which fell to 0-12 in its NCAA tournament history.
“I don’t think it’s bad for women’s basketball at all,” Haigh said. “They scored a lot of points, but we competed. Everyone knows difference between the best team in America and the teams at the smaller level of Division I. But we didn’t play scared, we did the best we could. The people who want to say it’s bad for women’s basketball don’t care about women’s basketball much anyway. UConn is really good and played really good basketball. We tried something different. I don’t think it’s bad at all. This is the result today. Some other time, we may play them again make more and it could be a different result.”