UConn heads to DePaul with chip on their shoulders
STORRS — UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma called up DePaul’s coach Doug Bruno earlier this week to catch up.
The two have become good friends through leading their respective programs for the past 30-plus years.
The coaches compared seasons. UConn’s up-and-down year featuring more gutting injuries and historic losses. DePaul’s roller coaster of a year also with injuries and inconsistencies on the court.
“We get an opportunity to describe our situations to each other in a way that we can’t describe it to anybody else,” Auriemma told media member Friday morning inside the lobby of Werth Champions Center. “Just for laughs you know, just so we can laugh a lot.”
The Huskies were set to travel to Chicago Friday afternoon to face the Blue Demons on Saturday at 2 p.m. (FOX) for their final road trip before next weekend’s Big East Tournament. UConn blew out DePaul in the teams’ first meeting 94-51 in Storrs on Jan. 23.
However, Auriemma knows playing in Chicago on the Blue Demons’ home court during their Senior Day could likely be a different story — especially given how the Huskies only won last year at DePaul thanks to Caroline Ducharme’s last-second shot.
“Going out there and playing them is hard because you never know which DePaul team you’re going to get,” Auriemma said. “I don’t even mean that night. I mean, like, which DePaul team are you going to get each quarter or after each timeout, right? … We ain’t getting the same DePaul team (from January) when we go out there and they may not be getting the same UConn team. Who the hell knows?”
UConn is looking to end the regular season on a high note after losing three of its last six games, including Tuesday to St. John’s. The Huskies are only one win ahead of Villanova atop the Big East standings and need to win their last two games to secure the regular season title.
Tuesday’s upset loss to the Red Storm not only dropped the Huskies in
the latest NCAA Top-16 reveal from the No. 4 to the No. 7 overall seed but also moved them to the Greenville Regional instead of originally being placed in the Seattle Regional.
Yet, that only creates motivation for UConn.
“It’s been a tough stretch for us,” Lou Lopez Sénéchal said. “But I think that we always try to respond the best way and just take that as a type of motivation, that it’s not going to happen again. We have a chip on our shoulders and you know, we always want to represent ourselves the best way. And I think that we always know that we have to bounce back whenever we have a loss and that’s what we’re gonna do tomorrow.”
Nothing was working for UConn against St. John’s. The Huskies shot a season-low 35.5 percent from the field and allowed St. John’s to score 21 points in the first quarter — the most from UConn opponent this season in an opening quarter.
UConn was able to fight back in the third and lead by as much as eight before it ran out of gas — an issue the team has yet to find an answer to this season because of its lack of depth and constant injuries.
“Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint any particular thing or any particular person or any particular part of the game,” Auriemma said. “And we’ve had a couple of those this year where everything’s disjointed, everything’s out of sync.”
The lack of depth creates unbeatable fatigue when the Huskies are already playing a tight schedule.
“When it’s flight, game, practice, flight, game, practice, it’s just you don’t have the time,” Auriemma said. “And that’s really when it catches up to you because to think that players aren’t going to struggle as the season goes on, for whatever reason, it’s just crazy. Of course, players are going to struggle. … Sometimes they struggle for a game. Sometimes they struggle for a week. Sometimes they struggle for a month. And ideally, you can work with those players to bring them back. But when there’s no relief, ‘Sorry you’re gonna have to play through all this.’ That’s a tough one. .. It’s just hard to keep it together for five months.”
It also didn’t help that Ducharme, in her third game back after missing 13 due to a concussion, was 1 of 11 in 24 minutes and Aubrey Griffin went 0 of 4 in 27 minutes. Both teams used three subs, yet the Red Storm’s bench outscored UConn’s 29-3.
The Huskies still remain without their biggest offensive threat with a little over three weeks left until the NCAA Tournament.
As of Friday morning, Auriemma still didn’t have a return timeline update for Azzi Fudd. The sophomore has missed 12 games after re-injuring her right knee against Georgetown on Jan. 15. She missed eight games earlier in the winter after initially injuring her knee at Notre Dame.
Auriemma said Fudd had a good workout with assistant coach Morgan Valley earlier this week in which Valley said she looked the best she’s looked since before getting reinjured. Auriemma also clarified that Fudd’s most recent knee injury is not related to the one she suffered earlier this season.
“You gotta remember that there was a long time in high school where Azzi didn’t play because she had a knee injury and this one wasn’t related to any of the ones that she’s had since she’s been here,” he said. “You can’t even pinpoint that it was related to anything that happened in high school. It was just one of those things that you get hit in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could have been anybody on the team, whether you have a history or no history.”
UConn has never lost to DePaul in the Auriemma and Bruno-eras. The Blue Demons’ lone win came on Dec. 28, 1983, in the Masonic Classic in Florida (UConn, under Jean Balthaser, lost 70-64).
After Saturday, the Huskies have just one more game: Monday’s regular-season finale against Xavier (Senior Night). UConn needs to win both to secure their 10thstraight conference regular-season title (seven in the American Athletic and the past two in Big East). If the Huskies split their last two games and Villanova wins its last two, then the teams will share the regular-season crown.
“You want to win the Big East championship. That’s goal number one, right?” Auriemma said. “... Will we do anything and everything possible to do that? Remains to be seen what that may look like. But you know, we’re gonna prepare and we’re gonna go play and we’re gonna do everything we’ve done and hope that it’s good enough.”
The Huskies understand what’s on the line this weekend and they’re ready to turn things around.
“We’re at the point right now when there’s no more time of talking things out. It’s now or never,” said Dorka Juhász.