The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Valuable lessons
Plenty of positive takeaways for Huskies in loss to Team USA
HARTFORD — At one point during Monday’s exhibition against the U.S. national team, UConn guard Crystal Dangerfield turned to Geno Auriemma to offer a simple suggestion. Trap the ball screens. “Sure, go ahead,” Auriemma told her. “After the second or third one, I looked at her and I said, ‘How’s that going? How’s that working out for you?’ ”
Point being, what’s worked against most college teams wasn’t sufficient against the greatest collection of talent in the world.
UConn didn’t win, of course, but the game wasn’t a total wash. Simply by competing, the Huskies saw signs of the team they could become.
“If you could do that against them, you could do that against anybody in the country,” Dangerfield said following a 79-64 loss at the XL Center. “Now, it’s our job to create that every day, not even when it’s just big games, but when we have our conference games.”
Going into the game, Auriemma knew his team had little to no chance of winning. He pictured a scenario where the Huskies could play a perfect game and still lose because their opponent was far superior to his. He didn’t obsess over game-planning.
After the ball tipped off, Auriemma continued with the relaxed approach, spilling his unheralded bench in the first half against the likes of Sue Bird, Tina Charles, Breanna Stewart and Sylvia Fowles.
And yet, at halftime, the Huskies found themselves tied 31-31. Auriemma later said that was half a win in itself. The Huskies even grabbed leads on separate occasions in the third and fourth quarter, but tired physically and emotionally.
“For 35 minutes, whatever it was, however long we held in there, we hung in there,” Auriemma said. “And then we just wore out. They were just too big and too talented and too smart.”
The challenge will be parlay
ing that into a better, more consistent brand of basketball over the next month and into the NCAA tournament. UConn returns to American Athletic Conference play on Thursday against Cincinnati, after which bigger tests against national title contenders Oregon (Feb. 3) and South Carolina (Feb. 10) await.
Despite their 18-1 record and No. 4 ranking, the Huskies know they’ve yet to play their best.
“In all our big games, I’ve seen that our team can fight, it’s just being able to continue that,” Dangerfield said. “We haven’t been able to sustain it for a full 40 minutes except for the Tennessee game (a 60-45 win). Against a team that’s bigger than us, more experienced than us, we’re going to have to be on the same page, which we were.”
Auriemma was also encouraged by a few individual efforts, including that of Megan Walker, who had a game-high 22 points. Walker scored from all points of the floor, shooting an efficient 9-of-16, including 3-of-7 from 3-point range.
“It’s a great sign when you can get things done in a game like this,” Auriemma said. “That should give you a ton of confidence no matter who you play against. Getting buckets against these guys is not easy. For you to be able to score and be able to get to the rim and be able to make some big 3s, Meg’s been getting better every week. Today was just another step in that process.”
The key will be taking more steps forward, not backward, as March nears. Their effort against Team USA represented progress.
“Overall, it doesn’t feel good to lose, but it was a successful day for them,” said Team USA coach Cheryl Reeve.