The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
UConn women’s basketball team scores a first
Collier, Samuelson, Williams named AP preseason All-Americans; first team to have 3 players selected
STORRS — One year after having no players named to the Associated Press preseason team, UConn became the first women’s basketball team to have three players selected. Napheesa Collier, Katie Lou Samuelson and Gabby Williams joined South Carolina’s A’ja Wilson and Kelsey Mitchell of Ohio State on the squad.
The voting was hardly a surprise, considering all five players were among 10 selected to the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association All-America team announced during the Final Four. The only other players with remaining eligibility on that squad were Baylor’s Kalani Brown and Brianna Turner of Notre Dame, who will be sidelined this season as she continues to recover from the knee injury she suffered in the 2017 NCAA tournament.
“They are a perfect example of what it means because none of them were (selected) last year and yet at the end of the season they were, so somebody who was picked at the beginning of the season weren’t (All-Americans),” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “I think they understand that a lot of things are done on their reputation and you have to earn it again that year and I think they will.”
Collier was UConn’s leading scorer last season, averaging 20.4 points, and contributed a team-best 9.1 rebounds per game. She also led the Huskies (36-1) with 77 blocked shots. Samuelson averaged 20.2 points, and her 119 3-pointers were two shy of UConn’s single-season record set by Kaleena MosquedaLewis in the 2014-15 season. Williams averaged 14.3 points, 8.4 rebounds and led UConn with 190 assists and 100 steals.
Duke transfer Azurá Stevens, eligible this season after sitting out
the 2016-17 campaign, was among the other players to receive at least one vote from the national panel.
While the honors are nice, Williams said neither she nor her teammates are resting on their laurels.
“I don’t think anybody came back and said, ‘I was good enough last year,’ ” Williams said. “Nobody said that. We all came in, and in that game (the season-ending loss to Mississippi State in the Final Four), we saw something we didn’t do, or just the whole season in general, we saw things that we could have done better that put us in a better position. I think everybody is adding as much as they can to prevent that from happening again.”
Mississippi State coach Vic Schaefer devised a game plan that accomplished what nobody had been able to do in the previous 111 games — hand UConn a loss.
He’s not sure whether other teams will study that game tape.
“There’s not enough time in the day to go through all the options that they have in that offense,” Schaefer said.
“Geno does such a great job; their team does such a great job. Their IQ is so good, so you just can’t let them get the wheel going, you have to break a spoke somewhere. We really tried early to take away some things, or the rest of it doesn’t happen.”