Huskies battle in loss to No. 1 SC
HARTFORD — Geno Auriemma looked at his players and asked a question, knowing full well what the answer would be. The looks on their faces showed fatigue, frustration, all of the things the loss of a hardfought and physically-played game should be.
“Half empty, or half full?” he asked.
No surprise, the pugnacious point guard, Nika Mühl, spoke up: “Empty. It sucks. We lost.”
All of those feelings will subside as the Uconn women’s basketball team puts distance between itself and this 81-77 loss to top-ranked South Carolina in a marquee game that lived up to the hype, and gave the national TV audience and the 15,564 at the XL Center all they could have asked for. But another feeling is bound to emerge.
“Going to this game, we didn’t really think ‘what if we had this person or if we were healthy,’” Aaliyah Edwards said. “No doubts. But for us to kind of put up what we did and compete and stay with them today just shows our caliber. Mentally, toughing out and almost getting the win, we only lost by four, we know we’re going to match up with them again, we’ve just got to clean up some of the things that were in our control.”
On his way out of the locker room, Auriemma had two more questions. He asked Paige Bueckers if she was going to play in March. She said yes. Then he asked Azzi Fudd. “A lot sooner than that,” she said.
“I think Azzi was being truthful, Paige was lying her butt off,” Auriemma said.
Bueckers is out for the season as she recovers from her torn ACL. Fudd, who has missed most of the season with her knee injury, is expected back at some point, and on this day she was the force that was missing, that could make the difference if the Huskies get another chance at South Carolina in March.
There was much to unpack after this game, Uconn’s third loss in two seasons to South Carolina, which got 25 offensive rebounds and finished with an overall 42-30 edge on the boards. Aliyah Boston, held in check in the first half, cut loose with 11 points in a row in one stretch in the fourth quarter to finish with 26 and 11 rebounds.
Auriemma, frustrated at the
way the officials were calling the game, in particular at the way Lou Lopezsénéchal was getting pushed and shoved, boiled over and threw down a water bottle, drawing an ill-timed technical foul with 3:57 left that allowed the Gamecocks stretch their lead to double digits. “Dumb mistake by me,” he said.
“The way the game is called is going to impact how the game is played,” Auriemma said. “And you as a player and you as a coach have to make some adjustments as to how the game is being called that day. I just thought there were a lot of things going on that were being overlooked and it was very, very difficult for some of our guys to move out on the floor. I just couldn’t keep quiet any longer.”
Edwards stood up against South Carolina’s front court and the game’s physical nature and, despite foul trouble, scored 25 points. Aubrey Griffin scored 17.
But the most prevalent thing in this prideful effort and painful loss was Uconn’s shooting. Lopezsénéchal scored 19, but got off only two 3-point shots and the Huskies, though they shot 51.9 percent, got off only six threes, making two. If Fudd, with her elite perimeter shooting, and Caroline Ducharme, who is still recovering from a concussion, were on the court, South Carolina would have had much more to try to stop, and a few more threes would’ve offset the advantage on the offensive boards.
“Today, we couldn’t get stops when we needed them, but it was encouraging we got scored that much with that many points on the bench,” Auriemma said. “We needed to trade some three for their twos, and we just couldn’t do that today.”
And, of course, just having two more players would help immensely against an opponent like this. Auriemma used only one bench player, freshman Ayanna Patterson, who subbed in when Edwards had to sit, for more than one minute. South Carolina used nine players for significant minutes and its bench, led by Kamilla Cardoso with 17 points and 11 rebounds, outscored Uconn’s reserves 37-0.
Still, the Huskies fought their tails off start to finish, even getting it back to a one-possession game in the final seconds. They began the game with a haymaker and took a 25-14 lead when Lopez-sénéchal beat the first-quarter buzzer with an off-balance three. Then the Gamecocks (23-0) slowly wore them down, tying the game at the half and controlling most of the second half. Boston’s relentless, and her dominance was inevitable.
“The way the game was played, the way we responded, the way we controlled the tempo of he game for long stretches,” Auriemma said. “Yeah, we didn’t go hide and let it become 15 or 20 points and feel sorry for ourselves.. In that respect, they have a lot to feel good about once they get over how bad it feels to lose. I told them, I feel better at 2 or 3 o’clock today than I did at 12 o’clock, because at 12 o’clock I really didn’t know how we would respond. I knew we would play hard, knew we would compete like hell, but I didn’t know who was going to make a big play and who was going to make a big shot, and I know more now than I did at noon. And I feel better about my team. I feel really good about them right now.”
Now the game everyone has been talking about all season is done and the sky did not fall. The Huskies (21-3), ranked fifth, continue shorthanded, having to get through the rest of the Big East season unblemished to claim a No. 1 seed and possibly earn another shot. When they lost the national championship game to Carolina last April, they did not have Griffin or Dorka Juhász. Now they do. Add the perimeter firepower and bench strength to make themselves whole, and you figure the Huskies would take their chances with a rematch.
“This team has tremendous belief in themselves,” Auriemma said. “And even under the circumstances they were in, that hasn’t wavered. Maybe it’s gotten even stronger.”