UConn sets its sights forward after loss to Gamecocks
STORRS — Christyn Williams tries to avoid the outside noise, the scrutiny that comes with being a heralded recruit and playing at UConn. But at times, it’s impossible to ignore.
“I’ve gotten off social media,” Williams said Friday, two days before a trip to South Florida. “I haven’t had time. But I know people are talking because we have really high expectations here.”
The Huskies are losing, and the players who should be making shots aren’t. Williams and Megan Walker shot 6-for-22 in a 70-52 setback at No. 1 South Carolina and are a combined 11-for-47 in the last two losses.
With that said, they aren’t panicking. Neither is Geno Auriemma, who sees Williams’ and Walker’s struggles as ill-timed slumps, and nothing more.
“I always say shooting is like hitting in baseball,” the coach said. “How does a team go two weeks without scoring more than two runs? They just do, they just do. It just happens. There’s no explaining it. It’s not like you’re doing anything different in practice, all of a sudden you’re doing less than you were doing before. It just happens. It just happens.”
Against South Carolina, the Huskies’ shooting woes negated much of the positive work they did do. They beat the nation’s top rebounding team on the glass, 40-38, and limited them to nine second-chance points, but it ultimately didn’t matter because the
Huskies shot only 36 percent, including 4-of-17 from beyond the arc.
“You can do everything right and if the ball doesn’t go in, you’re going to lose,” Auriemma said. “We did a lot of things right and the ball didn’t go in. You’re not going to win, it’s as simple as that.”
The Huskies are 20-3 and ranked fifth in the country, but have all but lost their chance for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. They’ve lost three games by at least 15 points in a season for the first time since 1992-93, raising doubts about their chances of making a 13th straight Final Four.
Williams is frustrated, but said the Huskies haven’t lost hope because they believe their prob
lems are fixable. This week’s practices, she said, have been as intense as they’ve been all season.
“We still have work to do. We’ve been learning from those games just by watching film and working on things we need to work on,” said Williams, referring to losses to South Carolina, Baylor and Oregon, the Nos. 1 through 3 teams in the country. “We get energy from ourselves and from losing. It motivates us.”
The Huskies have already lost more games this season than they have in any of the previous six regular seasons. Next week, they could fall out of the top-5 of the Associated Press poll for the first time since February 2007.
With six games remaining until the American Athletic Conference tournament, Auriemma plans to spend the next few weeks building his team’s confidence and fine-tuning things. They spent time Friday working on lategame situations.
“Practices have been really good. We got a lot done, a lot of positive stuff, a lot of energy from guys,” Auriemma said. “There isn’t anything that I would’ve complained about in our practices. It has to translate over to games.”
Trading places: On Friday, former UConn star Katie Lou Samuelson was traded by the Chicago Sky to Dallas Wings, along with a 2021 first-round pick, for fellow ex-Husky Azura
Stevens. Auriemma, who learned about the deal late in practice, called it a “great move” for both players.
“This trade’s going to work out really, really good for both people,” Auriemma said. “It’s fortuitous that Skylar (Diggins-Smith) decided to leave Dallas and go to Phoenix so there is an opening in the backcourt somehow, someway.”
In Dallas, Samuelson is joining a team that includes college teammate Moriah Jefferson and former Notre Dame star Arike Ogunbowale.
“I always knew that all those Notre Dame guys and all those UConn guys would eventually become best buds,” Auriemma joked.