The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Challenges come with the territory for UConn stars
Playing at UConn is never easy
ALBANY, N.Y. — The video of UConn signee Olivia Nelson-Ododa throwing down a dunk at the Powerade Jam Fest in Atlanta made its way onto Twitter while her future team was dispatching the defending national champion with relative ease. It didn’t take long for the predictable comments to follow about how NelsonOdoda, who was competing alongside some of the most dynamic high school boys basketball players in the country, was taking the easy way out by committing to UConn.
Make no mistake, the Huskies get more than their share of elite high school prospects. Christyn Williams won every major national player of the year award and next season she will be sharing the court with fellow former No. 1 national recruits Katie Lou Samuelson and Megan Walker. However, there’s absolutely nothing easy or routine about playing for coach Geno Auriemma.
Nobody typifies what it takes to play and to thrive at UConn more than current All-American forward Gabby Williams.
Eager to play after knee issues shortened her final two seasons at Reed High School in Nevada, Williams arrived at UConn to discover she was being moved into the frontcourt and matched against players significantly taller than her. And in her second collegiate game, Williams was never summoned by Auriemma to check into a game against Stanford.
In an age when unhappy players can often transfer at the first sign of stress, nobody would have been stunned if Williams opted to return closer to home.
Instead, she looked at her non-participation as her own doing. She admitted she wasn’t mentally prepared to play against Stanford, and vowed it would never happen again. She challenged herself physically, tested herself emotionally.
Fast forward to Sunday afternoon, a day before what could have been Williams’ final collegiate game. She knew another test was coming, with the defensive assignment on 6-foot-5 South Carolina All-American A’ja Wilson.
“I love the challenge and I wish I could have it every night just because it makes me a better player. It’s more rewarding to know that I had to step up and maybe play out of my comfort zone,” Williams said. .
Williams — who was talented enough to have a legitimate run at making the 2012 U.S. Olympic team in the high jump as a 15-yearold — came across the country because she wanted coaches to help her realize her potential in basketball. Now she is headed to her fourth Final Four, with a matchup set for Friday against Notre Dame.
Just three rebounds shy of becoming the seventh player at UConn with 1,000 career rebounds. she is being touted as a possible lottery selection in next month’s WNBA draft. .
“It’s been a lot of fun to watch her play,” said ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo, who is third on UConn’s career rebounding list. “It’s been a lot of fun to see how she’s improved over her career. I was talking about it with Coach Auriemma a few weeks ago and they didn’t know exactly what they were getting because she’d been hurt her junior and senior years. They remember what she was like as a sophomore, but didn’t know exactly what they were getting. They figured out how to run an offense and do things that they could take advantage of her skill sets. She’s been remarkable, she’s one of the most fun players for me to watch that I can remember for a lot of years.”
With three rebounds, Williams will become the first Division I women’s player with at least 1,500 career points, 1,000 rebounds, 400 assists and 300 steals and 100 career blocked shots since UConn legend Maya Moore in 2011.
Like the rest of UConn’s starting five, Williams had options to play closer to home and in less pressurepacked environments. California native Katie Lou Samuelson had a similar decision to make, as did Napheesa Collier (Missouri), Crystal Dangerfield (Tennessee) and Kia Nurse (Hamilton, Ontario).
“Coming here, you know it’s not going to be easy and there are going to be challenges,” Samuelson said. “That’s one of the reasons you come here is that for me personally, and I know for Gabby and some other people, we felt like the coaching staff could turn us into players we didn’t necessarily know (we could become). We didn’t know how hard it would be until you come here, but when you embrace that challenge, it’s when you become great players and become even better than you thought you could be.”
No player has escaped Auriemma’s wrath during their career. The more talented the player, the harder Auriemma pushes them. It’s no accident that 12 WNBA first-round picks came out of UConn from 2008-16, or that 16 years have passed since a WNBA championship series was held without at least one former Husky.
“You can’t survive at a place like this if you don’t like challenges, because they’re going to be thrown at you left, right and center, whether you want them to or not,” Nurse said. “I think it’s something that (Williams has) embraced since she’s got here, understanding that it’s not going to be easy. When you have people who all feel that same energy, they can embrace that and bring it into their own games, their own lives. It only makes us a better team.
“Some people learn it, some people have it. It’s just the way they come through their own basketball systems, their own background, so you learn and figure it out as it goes.”
Nurse and Williams have helped each other fight through the challenging practices. Collier and Samuelson have done the same thing in their three seasons.
“We all kind of feed off of each other and have a pretty strong bond,” Samuelson said. “It helps to have somebody you can go to at all times. Kia and Gabby are pretty close, Phee and I are pretty close, Gabby and I are also pretty close, too, so you always have somebody you can always count on. The chemistry is the biggest thing for all of us, we know exactly how each other thinks on the court and we’re close off the court, so it works.”
MAGBEGOR STAYING IN AUSTRALIA
UConn’s incoming freshman class appeared to be complete with the news that 6-foot-4 Australian Ezi Magbegor has signed with the WNBL’s Melbourne Boomers, passing on the chance to play at either UConn or UCLA, according to a report by the Herald Sun.
UConn’s incoming freshman class will include Williams and Nelson-Ododa, who are playing in Wednesday’s McDonald’s All American Game and the Jordan Brand Classic on April 8.