The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Geno reminds everyone this isn’t a typical UConn team
STORRS — Geno Auriemma said it last year and he’s saying it again this year: this isn’t a typical UConn team.
Right now, two games into the 201920 season, the 11time national champions look rather ordinary.
“Now, we look like every other team in the country that’s played two games, except a couple teams that are blowing people out,” he said.
The Huskies are still winning, but not as comfortably as they normally do. They slogged through victories over Power 5 pushovers California and Vanderbilt. Their record says 20, but it feels to some players like they’re 02.
“UConn, we’re held to a standard,” sophomore Christyn Williams said. “If we don’t play up to that standard, it’s like, ‘Oh.’ ”
This team looks different because it is different — at least on paper. There are no returning national champions or AllAmericans. The last two — Napheesa Collier and Katie Lou Samuelson — are now both in the WNBA.
“This ain’t my past teams,” Auriemma said Friday before practice at the Werth Center. “So you’re going to have to stop all the comparisons between past teams and this team. This isn’t anything close to past teams. What we’ve seen in the past is not what we’re seeing right now.”
The Huskies — ranked No. 4 in the country — have been uncharacteristically out of sync and out of sorts offensively, outside of a few stretches. They’ve essentially been a fourplayer team, with Williams, Crystal Dangerfield, Megan Walker and Olivia NelsonOdoda accounting for 130 of the team’s 136 points so far. Both freshmen — Anna Makurat and Aubrey Griffin — have been more down than up.
Auriemma said the Huskies played eight “really good minutes” in Wednesday’s 6451 victory over Vanderbilt. What stood out, he said, was his team’s transition defense. The
Huskies outscored the Commodores 218 off turnovers.
“It got us into a nice flow, but not enough of it, obviously, not enough of it,” Auriemma said.
Added Williams: “We definitely have flashes where … we’ve got everything together.”
Auriemma knows the Huskies need to be more consistent, starting with Sunday’s American Athletic Conference opener at Temple (1 p.m.), but there’s also a challenge in making a team into something it’s not.
“There no rush into trying to make Liv into Napheesa or (Breanna Stewart). She’s going to go from where she was last year to that? It’s not going to happen. There’s no rush in making Christyn Williams into Katie Lou Samuelson as a junior or a senior, or a Kia Nurse. It’s not going to happen. You’re not going to rush Anna or Aubrey into being what Crystal was last year. It’s not going to happen. It’s going to take a lot of time.”
How much time? Auriemma doesn’t know. What he does know is that it’s only November, meaning the Huskies don’t need to be a finished product just yet.
Auriemma said a friend at the University of Virginia recently sent him a quote from men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett, and he relayed it to his players: “It’s not always going to look pretty, but it always has to be gritty.”
“Maybe that’s our motto this year,” Auriemma said.