From within, Uconn women summon grit
UNCASVILLE — There were moments during the morning shoot-around when even Geno Auriemma was almost ready to cry uncle, or words to that effect.
“I said, ‘we can't do this,‘” he said. “This is not going to be possible.' ‘Cause they were all looking at each other like, ‘what are we doing here?'”
Aaliyah Edwards would not be able to play a day after her nose was broken in the Big East quarterfinal, this added to five players already out for the season and another, Amari Deberry, still in concussion protocol. Sure, the Uconn women had won every conference game played this season, and beaten Marquette twice, both times decisively. But could they beat a 23-win opponent, ranked in the top 25 much of the season, a third time, now with seven healthy players?
And with only one true, but very much untested forward?
To borrow an old Churchillian phrase, as Auriemma eventually did, so many would have to ask so much of so few players in order for Uconn to advance to this Big East final.
Let's not get too deep into this before pointing out that one of those few healthy players was Paige Bueckers, or that the name on all of their jerseys was still Uconn.
“The thing that was talked about in the locker room,” Auriemma said, “was, ‘how often does a Connecticut team go into a game where you actually are the underdog? How can you possibly win with five players, missing an All-american? You know how fortunate you guys are? Connecticut players are never in that situation. But at the same time, we're not the underdog, because we're better then them. I don't want you to think we're the underdog. And if we play our A game we're going to win.'”
So the Huskies might have to play a little unorthodox, would have to avoid fouls. Willing to
try almost anything, they went ahead and let the 5-foot-11 Bueckers take the opening tip against her taller friend from Minnesota, and she won possession against Marquette's Liza Karlen, 6-2. Bueckers turned to her teammates and flexed her muscles, then scored the first points of the game.
“We wanted to start the game aggressive, sort of set the tone,” Bueckers said. “We talked about it in the huddle and in the locker room before the game, just how focused and locked in we were going to have to be.”
The tone was set, all right. What followed was something remarkable, even by Uconn
women's basketball standards. The Huskies played as if they, not their opponents, were the scrappers trying to win something for the first time. In the huddle, Auriemma finally concluded they should just go ahead and play their usual brand of defense and not worry about fouls, and the players around him nodded their heads. Yes, that's what they wanted to do. He trusted them to play both tenacious and smart.
What Bueckers and her teammates did was walk that tight rope for 40 minutes, pressing, diving, harassing, disrupting Marquette, doing it all with the discipline required in having zero margin for mistake. Marquette,
on its heels, missed its first 10 shots, the Huskies jumped out to a 7-0 lead and never let up.
When Bueckers beat the third-quarter buzzer with a long 3-pointer, Uconn led by 18 and Marquette was done. Done, as in, didn't-score-a-point-in-the-entire-fourth-quarter done. Final score was 58-29.
“That's why they're the best program in college basketball history,” Marquette coach Megan Duffy said. “Those kids are ready to step up. They've faced so much adversity this year.”
Ice Brady, the redshirt freshman stepping in for Edwards, played the entire 40 minutes, with 10 points, five rebounds, two assists. She played her role, staying in the middle, rather than trying to guard at the perimeter, and the other four played around her. Auruemma had a Plan B, probably going with five guards, but was glad Brady and Plan A held up
Bueckers scored 27 before coming out with 3:06 to go, or else she might've outscored Marquette all by herself.
“From the opening tip, you just felt the hunger, and the passion and the energy that we had,” Bueckers said. “It helped to get a strong start like that, but it continued the entire game because we knew coming in we had to play a full 40 minutes. To have the energy and passion we played with, it becomes contagious within each other.”
So the Huskies won a game that there was every reason to believe — yes, really believe this time — that they couldn't. They advance to play for yet another Big East tournament title, to face Creighton or Georgetown on Monday night, and Edwards probably will not play.
“I wish just this was Monday,” Auriemma said.
It could be chalked up to many things. Auriemma, in Year 39, hasn't lost his knack for pushing the right buttons before a game, and his staff can still develop a winning plan; one of the best players in the country, and the most versatile of the best players, did “Paige things.” Or it can be attributed to that certain mystique that no one in this conference has yet figured out.
Whatever it was, it was also a special brand of grit and determination.
“The way we carried each other was probably the most impressive thing for me,” Auriemma said. “We relied on each other so much. Obviously Paige did Paige things, but today was really a team triumph. It was pretty special to be a part of that. … To play that hard for that period of time without getting a chance to get a breather, to me, was about as impressive as anything we've done. It's been a long time since I've seen anything like this, when there was that much asked of so few players.”