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collective mood of the team going out there was probably, ‘We don’t have to get up for this game. They’re really depleted.’ Which is a sign of immaturity.”

So UConn needs to grow up just like Katie Lou Samuelson, Napheesa Collier, Crystal Dangerfield, Megan Walker and Christyn Williams needed to take a seat to the shock and awe — and, ultimately, approval and amusement — of a crowd of 9,534. It was fun and perhaps important wrinkle to a victory that was, on paper only, another ho-hum AAC affair, one lined with lesson and opportunity.

Bent, Camara, Mikayla Coombs, Olivia NelsonOdoda and Kyla Irwin showed the limitations we knew they had all along, but at least were invested enough to help change the tone of a game that UConn needed three quarters to take control of.

The Bulls had no choice but to play reserves, with three of their top four scorers out for the season or indefinitely.

The Huskies had a choice to show up prepared and engaged. They did not.

“We should have had a better look on our face, everything, from head to toe,” said Samuelson, who surpassed 2,000 career points with a layup late in the third. “We got taken out because we didn’t look like we needed or wanted to be on that court. He made that clear to us.”

The best teams learn from days like this and don’t let it happen a second time.

“You have to take pride in what you put out on the floor, starting with me and the coaching staff,” Auriemma said. “So you end up winning a game by 17, and you know that you actually lost a little bit of yourself, so it doesn’t feel as good.

“I’ve always said right around this time, it sucks. Because they’ve been sitting around for a long time in hotels, in their apartments, not going to school [between semesters], not doing anything. It catches up to you after a while. That’s partly it. But again, I think you’ve got to be a little more mature than that.”

UConn is now 104-0 in league play and, one would hope, past the stinker it tends to stumble through each season. Last year, it was a 78-60 victory over Tulsa, a game in which starters built a 15-point lead in the first quarter that reserves nearly lost in the second.

Auriemma called that the most disgraceful effort he’d seen in 33 years. Sitting in the same seat Sunday for a postgame press conference, he didn’t go that far. Auriemma did, however, coach a team that he didn’t recognize until starters were able to recalibrate and return to overwhelm the Bulls.

Bench players usually relegated to cheerleading and mop-up actually played with a game in the balance. Perhaps Bent (six points and three assists in a season-high 21 minutes) showed she can be trusted to spell a starter for longer stretches. Maybe Irwin (six points) or Camara (four) can enter a meaningful March game and hold it down.

Depth is a real issue, of course.

“That was a lot of fun … getting in there earlier, a more intense part of the game,” Bent said.

“I think all of us needed to work on our intensity and how hard we worked. It wasn’t just the starters. It’s unacceptable if we’re ever out-worked. It just looked like we didn’t want to be there, and that can never happen. That’s never OK.”

“It was an opportunity, and I’m glad we made the most of it,” Irwin said. “You have a sense of urgency and realize the first five weren’t getting something done that Coach needed. We just had to go out there and play as hard as we could and show Coach we can do this.”

Auriemma spent a lot of time in animated discussion with his starters after he sat them with the Huskies trailing, 6-4. Starters re-entered for the second quarter, a period in which UConn outscored the Bulls, 14-6.

“I think that second group, probably everybody was shocked they went in that early, so they may not have been emotionally ready, but I thought they handled themselves pretty well,” Auriemma said. “Everybody makes a big deal about the substitution but, realistically, do you think Lou and those guys were sitting there going ‘Oh, boy, we’re not going to get in the rest of the game’? They know they’re getting back in. So what did they learn from coming out and watching the other guys play? I don’t know.

“The crowd loved it. But you know what’s funny? The crowd was like, ‘Uhhhh,’ when I took all those guys out. Like, they were pissed at me, like it was my fault. They should have been booing the guys who weren’t good enough.”