Huskies focus on staying prepared for close games
STORRS — Katie Lou Samuelson is ready. She’s ready because this year, more than any other during her time at UConn, has taught her to be ready.
“Conference play can sometimes get draining, but one thing about this year is we’re going to be ready for a close game no matter who we’re playing,” Samuelson, a senior, said Wednesday.
The ink is still fresh on UConn’s 107th straight victory in American Athletic Conference play — a
79-39 rout of SMU at Gampel Pavilion — yet Samuelson is already preparing for what’s ahead.
“We’ve had ups and downs this season,” she said. “It’s just part of this team dynamic that sometimes it is harder for us to break away from teams. Just knowing that and understanding that we need to be ready, I think that’s going to help us overall for the long run.”
On paper, this season appears to be progressing like many others under Geno Auriemma’s watch. The Huskies are 17-1 (6-0 in AAC play) and ranked No.
3 in the country, with their only blemish an 11-point loss at Baylor. Up next is a date Sunday in Hartford (4 p.m.) with resurgent UCF
(17-2, 6-0).
The reality, though, is that this season — despite what the record may indicate — is not like many others. This season is strangely different because it’s almost February and the Huskies still don’t have all their questions answered.
“Some years we start the season and by the end of November, we’ve got everything covered and there’s nothing that’s going to happen the next couple months that’s going to change that,” Auriemma said Wednesday. “This isn’t one of those years.
“Where are we going to be long-term? I’ll have to let you know long-term-wise, a long time from now.”
Auriemma, an 11-time national champion, isn’t looking ahead because he can’t. He’s too focused on fixing what’s ailing the Huskies now. “One of our problems is we’re such a lousy rebounding team, so I worry,” he said — to worry about what might ail them in March or, if they’re fortunate, April.
“There’s too many things we have to work on shortterm to think about where we’re going to be long-term. There’s a certain level that you have to be at come tournament time,” Auriemma said. “When the tournament starts, you’ve got to be playing at your best basketball. You’ve got to have pretty much everything covered by the time the tournament starts.”
To this point, the Huskies have had to endure a few wake-up calls — surprisingly close wins over St. John’s (65-55) and Oklahoma (72-63) where they needed to rally in the second half. Those are games that Samuelson said still reverberate with the Huskies.
“For us, as starters,” Samuelson said, “we can get into that mentality of, ‘Oh, we’ll just play, we’ll be out of the game,’ and we ended up playing a few games that were 40 minutes.”
Samuelson, who leads the Huskies in scoring
(19.0) and is second to only Crystal Dangerfield in minutes per game (33.2), has had to do a lot of heavy lifting. Same with Napheesa Collier, who is averaging
18.4 points and a team-best
10.1 rebounds, and, of course, Dangerfield.
The Huskies turned in arguably their most complete defensive effort of the season against SMU, forcing 24 turnovers and holding the Mustangs to 26.2 percent shooting.
“I was getting a lot of touches and blocks and things like that,” said Collier, who recorded a teamhigh 22 points, along with eight rebounds and six blocks. “I think, as a whole, we’re getting a bunch of those.”
The Huskies are still far from perfect, though. And, right now, that’s what concerns Auriemma.
“I think when I start seeing improvement, I’ll be enjoying it,” he said. “It certainly is a lot different from what we’re used to. Things are a little more challenging.
“Things that used to come easy, that you come to expect, are a little harder to get to.”