Struggles in second quarters continue
Huskies’ sluggish play early in games has hurt them in close matchups
The Uconn women’s basketball team set the tone early and held a nine-point lead over No. 1 South Carolina at the end of the first quarter of Sunday’s top-five showdown. But then things took a complete swing.
The Huskies were outscored 20-9 in the second quarter and the Gamecocks made it a tie game entering the halftime break.
There were a lot of positive things to take away as a shorthanded Uconn squad gave the best team in the country a close battle in the 81-77 loss, providing optimism that once the Huskies get a few players back they could find a way to come out on top when it matters most. But it also exposed an issue that’s been a crux for them throughout the season: second quarters.
“Some of it is the fatigue factor,” Uconn head coach Geno Auriemma said when asked about the second-quarter struggles postgame. “Some of it is for some unexplained, inexplicable reason we just stopped moving. So I don’t know what the cause of that is right now, and it happened a lot today. We just stopped moving and guys resort to put the ball on the floor and try to play one on one, dribble to different spots where they can’t do anything with it. So it’s just a lot of bad decision making that we have to correct, most of all.”
Fourth-ranked Uconn will face another team that it had a slow second quarter against when it resumes Big East play at Marquette on Wednesday night. Though they would end up defeating the Golden Eagles 61-48 on Dec. 31 at Gampel Pavilion, the Huskies were outscored 12-9 in the second period.
The Huskies opened that game on a 9-0 run and led 19-10 at the end of the first quarter. But then they turned the ball over five times and couldn’t get a shot to fall to start the second until Lou Lopez Sénéchal made a layup five minutes in.
Lopez Sénéchal and Dorka Juhász were the only players to score in the second quarter as the team shot 4 of 13 (30.8%) from the field. Uconn still led 28-22 at halftime behind its defense, which carried the team to the win by holding Marquette to 34.5% shooting from the field and 27.8% from long range. It was quite the ugly game where neither team could get much going offensively, but the Huskies had the edge in each of the final two quarters.
While the second-quarter struggles didn’t hurt Uconn against a team like Marquette, they have been an issue against better competition. In each of its three losses this season — all to teams currently ranked in the top 10 of the Associated Press poll — Uconn was outscored by the largest margin (11.3 points on average), shot its worst percentage (33.6% on average) and made the fewest field goals (four on average) in the second quarter.
In fact, the second quarter has been the lowest scoring period for the Huskies in seven of their 10 games against opponents currently ranked in the top 25 of the NCAA NET rankings. In one of the other three games, against Duke, Uconn put up a game-low 18 points in both the second and fourth quarters.
The other two instances speak to the fatigue factor Auriemma mentioned. One was in the second game of the season against Texas, when Uconn had 10 players available and played eight. Auriemma subbed in three players off the bench — Aubrey Griffin, Caroline Ducharme and Ayanna Patterson — in the final 3:45 of the first quarter, allowing his starters some key rest.
The other instance was when associate head coach Chris Dailey was leading the Huskies against Florida State on Dec. 18. Only seven players saw the court in that game, but Ducharme played 31 minutes off the bench, including key time over the last five minutes of the first quarter in which Dailey rotated Juhász, Aaliyah Edwards and Griffin out at different points so they could rest.
“I noticed that when we get tired, when fatigue sets in, we have no cohesion,” Auriemma said. “Guys aren’t thinking the same. I’m really tired, you’re not. I’m moving, I’m standing. I’m thinking ahead, you’re still thinking about the last play. So that cohesion tends to go away when you become mentally fatigued or you just can’t make that hard cut anymore. And I found that to be the case in some of the games that we played lately. So that’s something we have to guard against, and I don’t know how you guard against it. I don’t know how you guard against it.”
With only eight players available due to injuries across the roster and Uconn not getting much production from its bench as of late — one total point across the last four games — there hasn’t been as much flexibility to get starters rest throughout the course of games.
“We know the situation in which we are in that most of the starting five have to play 30 to 40 minutes,” Lopez Sénéchal said. “It’s something that we work on every day to try to get better and better with the people that we have and the people that are coming in for a few minutes. They’re ready to have whatever role that they are being asked to do and and try to step up as much as possible.”
Could Caroline Ducharme play?
The Huskies expect to get a boost on the bench to help solve some of those issues soon.
Ducharme has missed 11 games in row since suffering a concussion in practice on Jan. 2. The sophomore guard participated in warmups before the South Carolina game on Sunday and Auriemma provided optimism postgame that she could possibly return this week.
“It’s progressing to a point where if she can get through a couple practices in a row now in one piece, then either Wednesday or maybe next Saturday at Georgetown could possibly be a return for her,” Auriemma said. “It’s all a matter of how she responds after the workouts. During the workouts, it goes pretty good and then after sometimes it’s not so good, and sometimes it is good, so we’re trying to monitor that. And it’s really frustrating because you watch her out there and I mean, her range is even better than it’s ever been, her releases is even quicker than it’s ever been. And it’s just what are you gonna do? You feel sorry for her.”
As of midday Tuesday, a team spokesperson did not have any update on Ducharme’s status for the Marquette game.
Whenever the Huskies get Ducharme back, they’ll have nine players available for the first time since Dec. 21.