The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
UCLA part of challenging early schedule
LOS ANGELES — Putting together challenges for his squads is nothing new to UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma, as the Huskies’ 126-14 record against teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll over the previous 11 seasons perfectly illustrates.
However, even Auriemma admitted opening the season with four games against ranked opponents for the first time in program history — including the current stretch of three games versus Top 25 teams in three different locations, culminating with Tuesday night’s game at No. 5 UCLA — is a little out of the ordinary.
“It’s going to be a good test: There’s going to be a time difference, we’ll be tired. We just played two games in four days,” UConn senior forward Gabby Williams said. “It’s a huge mental test.”
The UCLA game marked the third Pac-12 opponent the Huskies faced in the first four games of the season.
“It is odd, especially with a conference that far away from us,” Auriemma said.
After rolling past No. 15 Maryland on Sunday, the only team not from the Pac-12 UConn has faced to date, the Huskies headed to the airport. After a couple of days in Los Angeles, UConn will remain in Pac-12 country for its next trip. The Huskies will be in Oregon in preparation for Saturday’s game against Michigan State on the University of Oregon home court in the PK80-Phil Knight Invitational before embarking for Reno, Nev., for a Nov. 28 game at the University of Nevada.
“This isn’t normal; this isn’t something I’d do on a regular basis but it kind of evolved and we had to scramble around to fill some things and here we are,” Auriemma said. “Adding the game in Reno (so Williams can play a game in front of family and friends) was after all that stuff, so it wasn’t like For game coverage of Tuesday night’s UConn-UCLA basketball game, go to www.registercitizen.com
a planned event.”
Before the team left for California, the Huskies played No. 21 California and Maryland in a span of three days.
“We like that FridaySunday, Saturday-Monday deal for the NCAA Tournament preview kind of stuff, so now we’re throwing a whole other layer on it,” Auriemma said. “I like the fact that we’re going to be tested, that we’re going to be on the road a long time, and I want to see how we handle it.”
For those scoring at home, that is a little more than 7,000 miles of traveling in a 10-day span.
“We wanted it to be a
little more spread out but circumstances fell ...” Auriemma said. “The Oregon trip became a little more involved, so we had to play UCLA probably a day earlier than we probably would have wanted to play, but
it’s early in the season and we have to figure out a way to manage it. It’s a good test for our guys: three games in three different places, 3,000 miles (to UCLA’s campus), three pretty good teams. I’m sure things will happen that we’ll have to deal with that are challenges; I hope that we do. Just the travel itself is a challenge, from here to LA to Portland to Reno, it’s not easy.”