The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Williams turns in the defining performance of her Husky career
Christyn Williams raced through the defining performance of her UConn career Saturday with the energy of a rubber band pulled back for a year, and the efficiency of a player with true appreciation for thriving in every aspect of basketball.
The way Williams played in UConn’s 92-72 Sweet 16 victory over Iowa was backwards, in a way, or just the product of a long personal turnaround. She parlayed her suffocating defensive effort into confidence at the offensive end, handcuffing Iowa’s Caitlin Clark from the tip and going on to score a game-high 27 points.
Which is interesting and even ironic in that, for so long, Williams figured her first, second and third jobs were to score — and whenever that didn’t work she became rather disengaged, questioned her value.
If those issues haven’t been put to rest for good, they were at least non-existent Saturday. Williams played 40 minutes — no one else did — and pushed the Huskies to within one victory of another Final Four with an exertion that would wear out the batteries of a Fitbit and spike the needle on any metric that measures overall impact.
“This was the best game that Christyn Williams has probably played in her career,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “No question about that.”
Williams made 12 of 23 shots and was 3-for-9 on 3-pointers, calmly knocking down jump shots, twisting through the lane, aggressively driving to the basket, getting ahead of a fastbreak fueled by Iowa’s missed shots — many of which she helped create.
Clark had 21 points, just fiveplus below scoring average, but she needed that many shots. With Williams hounding her and others helping, she finished 7-for-21.
“Honestly, I’ve seen tough de
fenses all year,” Clark said. “I’ve been denied [the ball] all year long. I don’t think it was anything new.”
It was just executed by the Huskies better than most teams, starting with Williams getting in Clark’s face and staying there. Clark could not beat her off the dribble. The long 3-pointers she is comfortable taking were attempted with a Williams hand in her face.
While the Huskies clearly spent considerable time in San Antonio developing a plan specific to defending Clark, the nation’s leading scorer, Williams’ breakthrough was about much more than a few days of prep.
The nation’s No. 1 recruit out of Little Rock, Ark., she thrived in a support role from the get-go as a freshman, pouring in 28 points in her first high-profile game early at Notre Dame. She remained a scoring threat behind Napheesa Collier and Katie Lou Samuelson that season and, as a sophomore, failed to meet expectations of her own and others.
Williams has called it “the worst season of basketball that I’ve ever played in my life.” On Saturday, she recalled Auriemma at one point telling her she was “un-coachable.”
“What player wants to be uncoachable?” Williams said. “I really just tried my best to listen to every little thing he was saying. … And look where I am now.”
She was in living rooms across America, standing out on an ABC telecast where many expected Clark, or UConn freshman Paige Bueckers, to. She was smiling through a halftime interview with Holly Rowe. She was, before and after that moment, all over Clark — and all over the court.
Shooting comes and goes. The right approach doesn’t have to. Defining moments can, and usually are, based on something really specific — a winning basket, a particularly high-scoring performance, a lockdown defensive effort. Williams’ was about everything she did for an entire game, how she went about it, the way she reached this moment through a tough climb of education and self-discovery.
“I’ve had my ups and downs,” Williams said. “Everybody knows it. So it just feels really good to be able to play this basketball game as well as I did, just to show the Christyn Williams I am. Because I am a complete player. And I feel like people have forgotten that.”
She had, too.
“If the ball didn’t go in the basket, she didn’t really know how to contribute to us winning,” Auriemma said. “That put way too much pressure on her. Every shot, every possession, for her was life and death. There’s been a huge change [since January] when, defensively, Christyn started to understand how [she] can impact this team in so many other ways.
“[Saturday], she looked like the Christyn Williams that we saw when we were recruiting her, a kid that can make shots from everywhere, can make shots at the basket, can make shots from the 3-point line, can attack you in transition — and she was guarding one of the toughest players in America to guard.”
Clark started 1-for-9 from the field and the UConn fastbreak was off and running.
One stretch of the second quarter was particularly telling. Williams made consecutive shots — a 3-pointer and a basket in transition — and a couple possessions later she forced Clark into a wild miss on a deep 3 as the shot clock expired. A Williams 3 made it 45-33 and the lead was 14 at halftime.
Iowa hung around through the third quarter, but Clark was 1-for-5 in the fourth.
“Caitlin Clark is an amazing player, especially being a freshman,” said Williams, averaging 16 points after averaging 11.7 as a freshman and 14.6 as a sophomore. “I have embraced my role on this team as a defensive stopper. That hasn’t always been the case in my years here. Coach has always been on me about being a more complete player at both ends of the floor. A lot of hard work has been put into this … and I’m just happy that you guys can see the progress that I’ve made.”
The work isn’t done. This particular project isn’t over for a team or a player. But UConn is halfway through an NCAA Tournament it hopes to complete and Saturday afternoon was a nice moment to reflect.
“We all like to coach for the same reasons that teachers like to teach, because we are teachers at heart,” Auriemma said. “We all love when our students get something and the light goes on and they feel like there’s a sense of accomplishment of, wow, this was really hard for me, it took me a while to get this, but I feel so good about myself that I finally got it. And, as a coach, you just feel so good for them.”