The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Huskies’ crowded house
Geno eager to see how flush roster will take shape come next season
Geno Auriemma and the UConn staff are just starting to closely examine and tweak the blueprint for the 2021-22 season.
The obvious problem is a good problem. They’re going to have a heck of a time trying to divide up 200 available minutes every game.
“Those things always end up sorting themselves out,” Auriemma said.
Some years are more complicated than others. The great-onpaper Huskies, likely to be the preseason’s top-ranked team, return every key player and welcome a freshman class highlighted by the nation’s top recruit in Azzi Fudd. With some of last season’s newcomers having already played themselves into the rotation — Aaliyah Edwards and Nika Muhl in particular — the situation is crowded.
And it got more crowded Monday, when All-Big Ten forward Dorka Juhasz annouced she was transferring from Ohio State to UConn.
“Sometimes as a coach you have no control over that,” Auriemma said last week. “(Players) think coaches control your playing time. Actually, (players) do. I try to explain that to kids: Why wouldn’t we want to play you? If you could help us, why wouldn’t we want to play you? You think we like having six or seven guys? We’d like to have the ability to play nine — and then be deep enough to be in a decision where it’s, ‘That kid can really play but I don’t need her tonight.’ As opposed to, ‘I really need that kid but she can’t play.’ That’s the dilemma coaches find themselves in, not ‘I have too many good players and don’t know who to play.’ I hope that’s the case. I hope they’re all good as can be and I’ve got to make those decisions.”
Starters: Paige Bueckers, Fudd, Christyn Williams, Evina West
brook, Olivia Nelson-Ododa, Edwards, Juhasz.
See the issue? That’s seven players.
Two, of course, will come off the bench and all will play significant roles. Muhl, a sophomore guard, and Aubrey Griffin, a junior guard/forward, will be pushed for time by heralded freshmen Caroline Ducharme (guard) and Amari DeBerry (forward), and Saylor Poffenbarger, a forward who joined the team in January. Sophomores Mir McLean (guard/forward) and Piath Gabriel (forward) round out the roster.
The 2020-21 team was Bueckers’ bus to drive. She led the Huskies in scoring and assists and was named national player of the year. Fudd is considered just as talented as Bueckers. Given their different styles, with Bueckers more the playmaker and Fudd more the pure scorer, the UConn backcourt is loaded even before the conversation includes seniors Williams and Westbrook.
What kind of impact can Fudd have as a freshman?
“Who knows?” Auriemma said. “That’s the crazy thing about it. If somebody said to me the minute Paige signed that she’s going to win every award, I would have said you’re out of your mind. And she surprised me. She was better than I thought she was. I already thought she was going to be good. So you never know. But the one thing I know Azzi can do is make shots. So what else she’ll be able to do when she gets here, that will present itself. She’s a complete basketball player, don’t get me wrong. But the one thing I know, whoever passes the ball to Azzi next year when she’s open, she’s going to have a lot more assists.”
Bueckers averaged 20.8 points, 5.8 assists as a freshman. It is logical to expect fewer shots (she averaged 14.6 a game) and more assists.
“I don’t think Paige has ever seen the kind of attention paid to her like it was in the Baylor or Arizona game,” Auriemma said of the team’s final two NCAA Tournament games. “That’s the next step. If we don’t get a couple consistent scoring games, in the 20s probably, from other people, that’s not going to relieve the pressure on Paige. So we have to do a much better job of getting her opportunities and then we’ve got to have a couple other players that, because of the attention paid to Paige, can take advantage of the opportunities they’re going to get.”
Bueckers’ ceiling as a player is exceptionally high. Just 29 games into her college career, there is significant room for growth.
“Sometimes the changes a player has to make are huge,” Auriemma said. “Sometimes they’re subtle. Paige knows. She’s got to become a better defender on the ball. She’s a great defender off the ball. She’s got to work twice as hard than she ever did to get open. However hard she thinks she was guarded this year, she’s going to be guarded even harder next year. Paige is a ‘Wait for the game to come to me’ kind of player, then she’ll turn it on. That’s all well and good, but I want Paige to be ‘We win the tap and she’s in attack mode’ right from the beginning. These are things you learn as you go along. And she’s got to get stronger. People were knocking her around, beating her up. Her body took a toll.”
Rest will be key for Bueckers, who averaged 36.2 minutes. That shouldn’t be a problem, especially if Williams continues playing as a senior the way she did down the stretch as a junior. Williams averaged a careerhigh 16.3 points and embraced the role as the team’s top perimeter defender.
“I thought she was going to be the deciding factor in the Final Four,” Auriemma said. “But it didn’t play out that way.”
The Arizona game plan came undone by an inability to convert down low, with Nelson-Ododa shooting 0-for-7 from the field. She was 3-for-16 from the field for eight points over UConn’s final three games.
Nelson-Ododa started all 30 games as a junior, averaging 12 points, 7.8 rebounds, 26.1 minutes. Edwards, as a freshman, averaged 10.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and 21.8 minutes. Nelson-Ododa led the team with 53 blocks and Edwards was second with 29.
The 6-foot-4 Juhasz averaged 14.6 points and 11.1 rebounds as a junior. Juhasz, who is set to graduate from Ohio State this spring, will have two years of eligibility remaining and enters UConn as a graduate student.
Edwards, who moved into the starting lineup for good after Muhl was injured in the NCAA opener, was the better player as the season went on.
“I think Aaliyah made incredible progress from day one,” Auriemma said. “She’s really physical, she plays hard every possession, she competes for everything, she did a great job finishing around the basket, she offensive rebounded, which was crucial for us, and she defended. I could see her next year getting the bulk of the touches among all of the post players. I have incredibly high expectations for Aaliyah, and for where she’s going in the future.
And Liv is going to be a senior. If Liv stays the same, then it’s obviously going to be a difficult senior year for Liv. If Liv adds some things to her game and makes the adjustments she needs to make, she’s going to be a big factor and we’re going to be fine.”
Auriemma toyed with the idea of extending the Huskies’ style of play during the season, going more full court, but decided against it. Westbrook, who announced after the Final Four that she will return for her final season of eligibility, wasn’t 100 percent for much of the season after missing the summer while recovering from knee surgery. Also, Anna Makurat, the sophomore guard who has announced plans to transfer, missed 13 games with a stress fracture in her leg.
“Next year,” Auriemma said. “I won’t have that problem. I hope. We’re going to have an opportunity to play differently.”