The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Auriemma adjusts messages awaiting return of Bueckers, Fudd
HARTFORD — Every UConn women’s basketball season since current players were at the age of Play-Doh, if not playpens, has been a road to the Final Four. The Huskies have reached a national semifinal and played in the final weekend of the NCAA Tournament every year since 2007.
Games like Saturday’s 78-41 victory over Xavier and stretches like the one the Huskies will now embark on are usually just necessary steps toward the regular, taken-for-granted destination, not necessarily events that shed light on whether the team is actually capable.
Geno Auriemma usually knows and the Huskies always go, 13 tournaments in a row now.
This year, for many reasons, is different.
“My goals for the team are much simpler than, ‘Hey, we’re trying to win a national championship,’” Auriemma said. “I don’t know that they can see that far ahead. Or, ‘We have 13 straight Final Fours. We need to go to the Final Four or it’s a bad year.’ I don’t think they can process that. So for me, the goals I’ve laid out are … I showed them a graph.”
Auriemma illustrated with his right forefinger to the air, simulating a line graph to mark the progress — or lack thereof — for two different kinds of teams, either of which could wind up representing the 2021-22 Huskies.
Through 12 games, several significant injuries and a threeweek absence due to COVID-19 issues, UConn has been a team more prone to letting struggles become prolonged drops in productivity instead of minor bumps in the road.
The Huskies now dribble into a stretch of five road games in 17
days and toward high-profile nonconference games Monday at Oregon, Jan. 27 at South Carolina and Feb. 6 at home against Tennessee. This is a formative stretch, one during which UConn will either harness its potential in advance of the return of Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd, or run out of time with March fast approaching.
The time when teams generally get a feel for what they’re capable of is almost upon us. UConn last season lost at Arkansas on Jan. 28 and cruised from there, largely because of that eyeopening experience.
This season is unique, of course. Bueckers won’t play for another three weeks or so. Fudd has only just started running and there is no timetable on her. The Huskies don’t have to win every game. But they have to grow and improve. There have been encouraging signs in three victories over the past seven days.
Bueckers, just days off crutches, was shooting on the XL Center court before the game. She sat next to Fudd during it.
“They’re going to have a tough time cracking the lineup,” Auriemma said. He was kidding.
“I can’t wait to get her back,” he said of Bueckers. He was not kidding. This team can be judged when it is whole.
It could be by mid-February. The Big East Tournament starts March 4. The NCAA Tournament, the 40th in women’s history, begins March 16. The Final Four is April 1-3 in Minneapolis. Getting there means getting the most out of this strange, and increasingly challenging, phase.
Oregon, having struggled with its own injuries, is certainly not the Ducks team of Sabrina Ionescu and it would be unfair to expect the Huskies to defeat Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks, considering they already lost that matchup in November on a neutral Bahamas court with Bueckers and a limited Fudd available.
Still, February goes by in the snap of a finger, and right when Auriemma is reintegrating his best player and maybe another with potential to be his secondbest, postseason potential tends to become well understood.
The goal for now, Auriemma said, is for UConn to avoid following a trend of up-and-down inconsistency. He loved how the Huskies played Saturday in the first quarter, for instance; hated how they played in the third.
“You’re not a good team, then — for March, for the big games coming up,” Auriemma said. “You’re not going to win those games. So for me, that’s the goal. That’s what I have to fix and that’s where I have to get them. … I think if we do get there, we’re going to be really hard to play against. I think we’re going to be a really good 4 seed. I don’t think anybody would want to be in our bracket if we’re a 4 seed.”
UConn is 9-3, ranked No. 10, in foreign territory as it relates to that 13-year track record, analyzed and judged — fairly or not — differently than any team in America. But track records boost reputation, not a team. And a team that lost four players to injury is not going to just hum along like many of its predecessors.
The Huskies have struggled only by a certain standard. They’ve looked vulnerable, yes. Auriemma has been frustrated. Seniors have been inconsistent. COVID has been a great disrupter. When the team seems to gain traction, it then sometimes slips.
Since the Huskies won a fourth consecutive title and 11th overall in 2016 — yesterday in most places, another lifetime here — other programs have closed the gap between UConn and the rest of the college basketball world. That’s a flex for the sport that has, somehow, become a knock on UConn.
The Huskies still win almost all of their games. They haven’t exited a season less than two victories from a national championship since George W. Bush was president.
They still recruit as well as anyone. UConn has landed the consensus No. 1 overall recruit four of the past five years: Megan Walker in 2017, Christyn Williams in 2018, Bueckers in 2020, Fudd in 2021. Some topranked players, Auriemma was saying recently, don’t turn out to be the sure-fire standouts like a coach’s eyes or scouting services suggest they will be, and the talent pool continues to get deeper. That’s another flex for the sport that leads to all eyes being on UConn, which has work to do.
“We take great pride over the last 37 years; we play the same way every day,” Auriemma said. “That’s kind of been a struggle to find that the last couple years. Today’s player is maybe a little more laid back. I don’t know that they feel the urgency to put it out there every single minute that they’re out there. So it’s on us to teach them how to do that.”