Top-seeded Huskies open conference tournament play against Providence
STORRS — Ashlynn Shade has followed the NCAA Tournament every March for as long as she can remember, but the Uconn women’s basketball freshman will get her first taste of playing in a college postseason at the Big East Tournament this weekend.
“I was even joking with my friends like, I’ve watched March Madness my whole life, made brackets and everything, and now I’m like, actually in it,” Shade said. “It’s super crazy, but I’m just going to focus game by game, and we’ll cross that road when it gets there.”
The No. 9 Huskies (26-5, 18-0 Big East) are the top overall seed and open the conference tournament against ninth-seeded Providence (13-19, 6-12) on Saturday at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, a quick turnaround after the teams last met exactly a week ago.
Uconn had an underwhelming offensive performance but still left Rhode Island with a 65-42 victory behind 17 points from star guard Paige Bueckers and 13 points with seven rebounds from Aaliyah Edwards. Both were named to the all-conference first team Thursday, and Bueckers earned her second career Big East Player of the Year honor.
However, Auriemma also sat Bueckers and Edwards for the entire fourth quarter last Saturday, an option he knows he probably will not have when the Huskies face the Friars for the third time in two months.
“They’re a really hard team to play against. They’re physical, and defensively I think they’re one of the best teams in our league,” Auriemma said. “Sometimes playing a game and getting it out of the way and getting your feet wet can be good against a team just coming in and playing their first game, so I don’t expect anything to be easy this weekend … We don’t have the privilege, the luxury of saying we’re going to save ourselves for
to board another flight for a while.
The next trip is to Providence, where the Huskies (27-3, 17-2 Big East) could set both the Big East record for conference wins and the program record for wins in the regular season.
“We're a staff and a roster of players filled with great competitors, so I think there's plenty of internal pride that we all have in winning and performing at a championship level every time we take the court. Plus, we know that we've got a chance to potentially post a historic number, both in Big East regular-season wins and (overall) regular-season wins,” Hurley said. “Doing historic things at a place like Uconn is like impossible, but we're certainly talking about that.
“It's part of a package of things that are motivating us right now to finish the regular season. We know what's ahead of us, the most exciting time of the year, but we're going for historic marks in-league and at Uconn.”
Providence has lost two of its last three games, though the Friars are still playing for a spot in the NCAA Tournament. ESPN'S Joe Lunardi currently projects them as the first team out of the field. A win over Uconn would put them on the other side of the bubble.
The Friars are led by Devin Carter, a candidate for Big East Player of the Year, and Josh Oduro, who's stepped up since star forward Bryce Hopkins went down with a knee injury in early January. The duo, both of whom Hurley implied he voted to all-league teams, combined for 40 points and 18 rebounds – 20 points and nine rebounds each – when the teams met Jan. 31 for what was a defensive battle and a foul fest in Storrs.
“Big East games are physical, they are the most physical team in the league. We were dragged into, obviously it wasn't a pretty game, it was very physical, very defensive, a lot of foul calls. It was an ugly game that we played the first time,” Hurley said. “We've got to be prepared for physicality, but it's also a basketball game. So we've got to be prepared to execute but then obviously be physically prepared for everything that goes into the way that they play.
Uconn hasn't won at the ever-hostile Amica Mutual Pavilion, where Providence is 45-6 over the last four seasons, since returning to the Big East. The Huskies could be the fourth team to win inside the building this year, however, after Villanova delivered a significant blow on March 2.
“It's the last environment that we will face like this,” Hurley said. “This has been a great, great season, and (we) just really want to try to finish (Saturday).”