The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
JEFF JACOBS
Different paths lead to a special night for UConn
STORRS — The hugs came easy on this Senior Night, as easy as the baskets over the final 40 minutes to a 10th perfect regular season.
Kia Nurse and Gabby Williams hugged their UConn teammates. They hugged their families who had arrived from Canada and from Nevada. In pregame ceremonies, punctuated by a scoreboard video set to the song “Just the Two of Us,” they hugged their coach, Geno Auriemma.
It seemed so natural. It was so natural. It wasn’t that way in 2014.
“She was weird,” Nurse said of their first meeting. “She kind of walked by, looked in my room, said hi and she gave me a hug. She said she felt like she already knew me. I didn’t know who she was. There were four other freshmen. I had no idea what her name was.”
“Awkward,” Williams said breaking into a laugh. “And uncomfortable.”
OK. Let’s start over. Kia Nurse, of Hamilton, Ontario, meet Gabby Williams, of Sparks, Nev.
“Everybody kept telling us how we’d be great friends,” Williams said after UConn had crushed No. 20 South Florida 82-53 on Monday night to improve to 29-0. “I’m like, ‘I got to meet this girl.’ Everyone was right.”
From the awkward introduction, they went to lunch the next day and grew into best friends. It was a friendship started by Williams helping Nurse get her bed set up in the dorm room, nurtured by their love of Beyonce and cemented over 141 victories in 143 games and — so far — two national championships.
“We’ve gotten closer every day,” Williams said.
With the UConn women, there is always an air of finality on Senior Night without there being finality. There is still a conference tournament down the road at Mohegan Sun. After that, there is a return to Gampel Pavilion for the first two games of the NCAA Tournament.
The seniors are eased out, slowly but surely, as if it is too painful to say goodbye all at once. When the families come onto the court for Senior Night, Auriemma always makes sure to congratulate the parents. He wants them to celebrate their daughter’s maturation, of leaving home, of enduring the pressures of playing in the most successful program in college basketball history.
Nurse was a guard on
the Canadian national team, but Auriemma swears she couldn’t complete a pass into the post when she arrived. Then again, he said Canada never throws the ball into the post.
“She couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about,” Auriemma said. “But she became a much better passer. She wasn’t a great three-point shooter when she got here. She has become as good as anybody in the country.
“She knew exactly what she wasn’t good at and she became better at it. It’s always because of how hard she works at it.”
The 1,594 career points, the 246 threes, the 47 percent percentage outside the arc this year, the way she took it upon herself to be a terrific defender, it all makes sense to Auriemma now.
“From the time she walked on campus, Kia has been, if nothing else, an amazing competitor,” Auriemma said. “She didn’t start our first two games her freshman year. We lost one (to Stanford). She has only lost once since. Even when she didn’t know what she was doing, a freshman at Notre Dame, her first big, big game, she was probably scared out of her wits and she still played amazing. That’s the ways it has been, every single day. It doesn’t change.”
On this night the crowd of 9,115 got the full Gabby: 18 points on seven-of-11 shooting, nine assists, three steals.
“There just haven’t been a lot of players, and I’ve seen a lot of players, that can get a crowd excited the way she does. It’s not just one end of the floor. It’s a little bit of everything,” Auriemma said.
Auriemma compared Williams to a great college football player who goes to the NFL and never again plays the same position, but all the things they had done previously help them in a new spot.
Williams has amassed 1,495 points and 962 rebounds. She’s a 60 percent shooter and the only forward ever to lead a UConn team in assists. She is, in short, a stuffer of stat sheets.
“Kia played all the time as a freshman, played 30 minutes, Gabby had a completely different freshman year,” Auriemma said. “She was up and down, up and down, played some games, didn’t play hardly at all. It would have been easy for her to say what’s the point?
“She made herself into an All-American that hopefully Connecticut basketball is all about. It’s one thing to get Breanna Stewart in here, what a shocker, she was player of the year four times. No kidding. That’s what she was born to do. Gabby had to learn a whole new way of playing basketball after missing two years of high school (with injuries). That kid has really worked hard. She has come a long, long way.”
And as a first-team AllAmerican, Williams came all the way to having her banner unveiled pregame as a member of the Huskies of Honor.
“I looked right at my mom, looked at my family,” Williams said. “It was a moment I was so happy to share with them.”
While Auriemma was going on about how, despite the 29-0 record this was the most difficult season of the last five because of injuries and trying to incorporate so many young players who didn’t have a clue, Nurse
and Williams were content to tease each other.
Williams is a comic book and puzzle nerd, Nurse said. Nurse has an unhealthy love of ketchup, Williams said.
“Ketch on chips, steak, salmon, grilled cheese,” Nurse said. “Has to be Heinz ketchup though.”
Before the game, the UConn pep band also played the Canadian national anthem and here was Nurse singing at the top of her lungs.
“I was thinking maybe they’ll love me enough to play it,” Nurse said. “They did. Gabby sang the two lines she knew.”
Nurse’s cousin Sarah won the silver medal in the Olympics with the Canadian hockey team. Kia started watching the gold medal game in the lobby of UConn’s New Orleans hotel, but everybody thought she was an American. So she finished watching the game with Napheesa Collier and Williams. No, they didn’t give her a hard time when the U.S. won. They better not.
“I’m a prideful Canadian,” Nurse said.
“Every game Kia, for some reason, has to smack (an opponent),” Auriemma said. “You look at her and she gives you a look like she’ll smack you, too.”
With 3:44 left, Aueriemma took Nurse and Williams out. There were no smacks. Only hugs. It would be a great Senior Night.
“Even better when you get to do it with your best friend,” Nurse said. “Somebody who has always been at your side.”