Huskies a unanimous favorite, Williams selected preseason top player

New year. New conference. Same old story.

UConn was selected as the unanimous favorite in the Big East women’s basketball poll released Thursday morning at the league’s virtual media day. The Huskies, back in the conference for the first time since 2012-13, earned 10 first-place votes and a total of 100 points (coaches are not allowed to vote for their own team). DePaul, the three-time defending league champion, received the other first-place vote.

Meanwhile, UConn guard Christyn Williams was named Big East Preseason Player of the Year and Huskies guard Paige Bueckers was unanimously voted Freshman of the Year.

DePaul earned 90 points. Marquette was third with 83 points followed by St. John’s (69) and Creighton (60). Rounding out the rest of the poll were Seton Hall, Villanova, Butler, Xavier, Providence and Georgetown.

UConn, the sport’s preeminent power, has won 19 Big East regular season titles and 18 tournament titles. The Huskies spent the last seven seasons in the American Athletic Conference, where they went unbeaten in league play (139-0).

Williams, a junior guard, averaged 14.6 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.3 assists across 31 starts for the Huskies in 2019-20. She was a first-team All-AAC selection. Bueckers, one of six freshmen on this year’s UConn team, comes in with plenty of hype. Ranked as the nation’s No. 1 recruit out of Hopkins High School in Minnesota, Bueckers was the first basketball player since 2014 to win the Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year.

In addition to the two major award-winners, UConn also placed junior forward Olivia NelsonOdoda and junior guard Evina Westbrook on the preseason all-conference team.

The Big East schedule will begin Dec. 4 and every school will play four conference games before the holidays. Play will resume Dec. 30. The league plans to release its full schedule shortly.

CHEMISTRY CLASS

UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma sees the chemistry between his players blossoming off the court.

He’s still waiting, though, for it to translate to practice.

“When we’ve got it going in practice, we look really, really good,” Auriemma said Thursday at Big East virtual media day. “When it goes the other way, we look god awful. We’re still trying to find that middle ground.”

This year’s UConn team is younger than most. Six of the 11 players are freshmen. They’ve been in Storrs since late July, split into apartments called “pods.”

The new normal of COVID-19 protocols has meant spending more time in the gym. There isn’t much else to do given all the health and safety restrictions on campus.

“Off the court, the closeness of this team is quite remarkable, given how many young players we have,” Auriemma said. “Maybe the pandemic has forced that upon them, but there’s a tremendous chemistry with our team off the court in the way they spend time doing things that really close teams do and how they look after each other and care for each other.

“They’ve hit a home run with that, a grand slam. The frustrating thing for me, that stuff doesn’t carry over to the court really well.”

IS UCONN DONE SCHEDULING?

UConn was able to keep most of its nonconference schedule intact amid the pandemic — including marquee matchups against Baylor, Tennessee and South Carolina — while adding a game against Louisville. All of those now have dates too, except for the matchup with the Gamecocks.

Though the Huskies have the opportunity to add one more opponent to the mix, it doesn’t sound like they will. In fact, Auriemma joked that he would only schedule another game under the following conditions: “If somebody’s out there and wants to play, preferably at our place on the day that I say, and if you’re willing to make the score what I need to make it because I need my young guys to play a lot of minutes.”

MORE BUBBLE TALK

Big East commissioner Val Ackerman and Mohegan Sun vice president Amber Cox discussed the conference’s decision to stage its women’s postseason tournament in Uncasville. Also discussed? The possibility of a regular season bubble format, which could be required later in the season.

The challenge is financing such an event.

“Financial consideration are in fact something that has to be evaluated when considering what we’re calling single-venue formats,” Ackerman said.“I don’t know that college sports could exactly replicate this really contained, super contained environment that we saw in the summer in the pro leagues. But I do think there could be a modification of that in college world that needs to be considered by every conference. That’s certainly on the board for us.”

Ackerman said revenue is derived from ticket sales, sponsorships, and television deals. With few or no fans expected at games, revenue from tickets and sponsors will be limited.

But the format remains under consideration and the Big East is watching bubble events closely to see how they play out.

“It’s very interesting to us to see what is happening in ‘bubble-ville,’ ” Ackerman said. “We have a sense of it.”

MARQUETTE’S QUARANTINE

Megan Duffy won 24 games in her first season Marquette coach, so expectations are high around the program and the team was picked to finish third in the preseason poll.

But preparation for Season 2 is stalled — the Marquette men’s and women’s teams are in the middle of two-week quarantine after one positive COVID-19 test in each program.

“We’re doing everything we can,” Duffy said. “It’s a tricky balance because if you ask any of us, coaches and players, we want to be out there. But we’re also not going to jeopardize the health and safety of what’s going on around us in our communities.”

Duffy, the 2019-20 Big East Coach of the Year, said her staff — like coaching staffs all over the country — has been adapting to the forced isolation and coronavirus protocols.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always a negative thing,” said Duffy, who play at Notre Dame. “We’ve had to go day-to-day, we’ve had to be patient. We’ve had to really be better in tune with our student-athletes and their needs both on and off the floor. … We’re obviously going through (a challenge) right now. We’re trying to find a unique way to keep our kids positive.

“At the end of the day, our team and our coaches, want to be out there on the floor. We will ultimately try to do that best way, the most creative way possible to keep these student-athletes in a position where they all obviously signed up for, the play at the highest level possible.”

ELMORE’S HONOR

Hartford native and Capital Prep graduate Desiree Elmore, the 2015-16 New Haven Register state player of the year, was named to the All-Big East preseason team. The Seton Hall senior averaged 13 points last season.

“She’s been very dedicated,” Seton Hall coach Tony Bozzella said. “This is the most I’ve seen Des put into her game. I’m really proud of her. We need her to play really well. We need her to play like a first-team AllConference player for us to hopefully be successful.”

Elmore transferred to Seton Hall from Syracuse in 2018. Bozzella recalled watching Elmore in high school and seeing a player who seemed to coast on her talent alone — “She wasn’t in great shape, she took plays off.”