Three questions the Huskies must answer before NCAA Tournament
Uconn women’s basketball senior Nika Muhl won the Big East Tournament in all four seasons as a Husky, but when the confetti fell after an 78-42 victory against Georgetown on Monday it was more vindicating than any of the previous three.
“Every time you win it’s a different story … but for me personally, this might be the most special one,” Muhl said after the game. “Not just because it’s my last but also because we’ve been dealt the worst cards ever, and we just never stopped believing in ourselves … We just fed off each other, and that’s because we trust each other and we have been put in bad situations so many times over and over again. I don’t think there’s anybody out there more prepared for situations like this than us.”
With the conference season now in the rearview mirror, No. 10 Uconn turns its attention to March Madness still uncertain where it stacks up in the national conversation. The Huskies have struggled all season to compete with the upper echelon, suffering all five of their losses by double digits to teams currently ranked in the top 11. Coach Geno Auriemma has been frank about Uconn’s chances in this year’s tournament: They’ve certainly looked better.
“I’m the most negative person in the world when it comes to trying to predict where we’re going to be, because I always assume the worst. Then I can be pleasantly surprised,” Auriemma joked at the end of the regular season. “Some years I would tell you I like our chances. Some years I would say we’d have to get really lucky. This year, we would have to get exceptionally lucky to go really deep in
this tournament.”
But Paige Bueckers looked like the best version of herself last weekend, and the last time she played in the NCAA Tournament she led 2-seed Uconn to the 2022 national championship game. She returned after missing 19 games while recovering from surgery on a tibial plateau fracture and led the Huskies on that run, which included improbable upsets of 1-seeds NC State and Stanford in the Elite Eight and Final Four respectively.
As Uconn waits anxiously to learn its bracket placement this week on Selection Sunday, these are the biggest questions the Huskies need to answer before the ‘madness' begins.
How many players will the Huskies have available?
Uconn's roster had finally found stability during Big East play after five players suffered season-ending injuries, but the Huskies' stunning streak of bad luck returned at the start of the conference tournament. Amari Deberry was hit in the head during practice in the final week of the regular season, so Uconn was already down to eight healthy players — though Deberry averages less than five minutes per game. The bigger blow came in the Huskies' quarterfinal game against Providence when Aaliyah Edwards broke her nose and ultimately missed the next two games.
“It's just been numbing for us to the point where there really wasn't much that you could say other than, ‘This is it. This is what we've got,'” Auriemma said. “We talked a lot about how these young guys have to grow up and they'd have to grow up fast, and they did. Sometimes you're put in a situation where you have no choice, which I kind of love. That brings out the best in all of us.”
The Huskies got through the Big East without Edwards, but the NCAA Tournament is a drastically different beast. Based on the selection committee's final top-16 ranking released Feb. 29, Uconn's bracket would include 2-seed UCLA and 3-seed Virginia Tech, which boast two of the best bigs in the country in Lauren Betts and Elizabeth Kitley.