‘Going to grow a lot’
Huskies can learn from overwhelming loss to South Carolina
PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas — UConn wasn’t on vacation this week. The Huskies traveled 1,200 air miles for a version of self-exploration, which ended Monday afternoon with a beatdown on the beach.
It wasn’t pretty, the way a 73-57 loss to top-ranked South Carolina unfolded. The Battle 4 Atlantis championship game — the latter and decisive portion of it, anyway — became a sand-in-eyes, out-ofbreath, painful exercise in futility and frustration.
“They’re just better than us right now,” coach Geno Auriemma said.
That’s right. South Carolina was tougher, more efficient. They dominated the backboards and they dominated every aspect of the fourth quarter, holding UConn to one basket and three points in that frame, and sent the Huskies into an off day and toward a Connecticut return with plenty to ponder.
Such as, what’s fixable and what isn’t?
“Certainly a bunch of them are,” Auriemma said.
The calendar is relevant, remember. There are four months remaining in the season. UConn will play 30-plus more games before the ball is in the air with the 2021-22 season on the line. It is late-November and this is what the Huskies came to the Bahamas for — not to lose a high-profile matchup on national TV, but to put themselves out there, see what needs to be picked up and patched up, to establish a bottom line and building block.
They now have that.
“I don’t think Dawn left here feeling like they just won’t a national championship,” Auriemma said of South Carolina coach Dawn Staley. “And we’re not leaving here thinking we have no chance to win it.”
The Huskies (3-1) lost to a really good team and the Gamecocks (6-0) beat a really good team. They’ll meet again Jan. 27 in Columbia, S.C., and possibly at the Final Four in April or along the way in March.
UConn has plenty of problems to address, having been exposed by a lightning-quick Gamecocks team with strength and length that eventually could not be denied.
The fourth quarter was a complete disaster. The Huskies shot just 1-for-10 and were outscored 16-3. They were out-rebounded 42-25 overall, allowing 19 offensive rebounds. Aliyah Boston is such a force that UConn’s only hope on this day would have been to have her wear a backpack filled with bricks. She had 22 points and 15 rebounds, and UConn had only the occasional answer, stockpiling some glaring post-player problems.
South Carolina dictated just about everything — increasingly
over time, anyway. UConn zigged and zagged its way to a 13-point lead in the second quarter only to see it whittled to three at halftime. Paige Bueckers was swarmed and ineffective late, finishing with 19 points but just six in the second half, while South Carolina guards Zia Cooke (17 points) and Destanni Henderson (15) were better as the game went, riding opportunities created by the Gamecocks’ dominance near the basket.
“We’re going to grow a lot from this game,” senior guard Christyn Williams said. “To be honest, they punched us and we fell. We didn’t punch back. We had a heck of a first half. Things were flowing offensively and defensively. It was just the fourth quarter, really. They hit some big shots and we couldn’t get it going.”
UConn took just eight 3-pointers, making three. Azzi Fudd was a non-factor, attempting one shot in 10 minutes. Secondchance points: South Carolina 17, UConn 2. The Huskies were chasing something elusive and eventually just running around in circles and running out of gas, committing 19 turnovers.
Still, both of these teams are probably just shells of what they’ll become by the rematch in two months, certainly by the NCAA Tournament. UConn, for starters, just has more to figure out. South Carolina is more complete, more organized, deeper as it looks — today.
“It’s always every coach’s hope and prayer, that our team can keep changing every week and use every experience to build on,” Auriemma said. “And that’s generally how the season goes. This team? This team’s got some work to do if that’s going to happen. It’s not going to come easy for this team. Right now, the coaches have to do too much of the work.
“We need some of the players to help us do some of the work. Hopefully something like today lets the players see that we can’t be out on the floor with them when it’s happening. Hopefully having seen that is way different than having experienced that in practice. It would be terrible if the first time we experienced something like today would be in February, because then there may not be enough time. That’s why you play these games in November.”
That reality didn’t make this loss taste any less salty. It does make it easier to move on from. There’s mixed feelings to take away. Auriemma’s Tuesday off-day plans included, for example, going golfing and finding out “where the sharks are and go swimming there.”
After Sunday’s victory over South Florida, discussing players in general and teaching, he said, “I have no idea what they think or how they think or why they think what they think.”
Monday, asked how players were viewing were viewing the Battle 4 Atlantis, he said, “I think you walk out half and half. For a half, we were great. For half, we were lousy. So if you walk out thinking we’re lousy, that’s not right. If you walk out thinking everything’s fine, that’s not right. So it’s somewhere in between. The object is to win the game and we didn’t win, so that’s a bad thing. But this is a very stubborn group of players. Which I don’t understand. I’ve coached some of the most iconic players who ever played college basketball and they weren’t stubborn. Now I’ve got guys who can barely play a lick and they’re stubborn as (heck). It’s welcome to 2021, right? It’s like coaching the Holy Trinity. It’s a mystery.”
There’s a whole bunch of we’ll-see to this project. But at least UConn has identified some shortcomings prior to Thanksgiving and has the bulk of a season to iron those out. There’s nothing wrong with having to take a long look in the mirror. The Huskies might be the second-best team in the country. They were certainly the second-best team at the Battle 4 Atlantis. There’s four months to work toward closing that gap.
This is relevant, too, though: South Carolina will only get better with time. The Gamecocks already have victories over No. 5 N.C. State, No. 9 Oregon and now No. 2 UConn.
“They needed to be challenged,” Staley said. “We could schedule some cupcakes and possible get our younger players a little more playing time and experience, but you have to feed them. They want to play the very best teams in the country and they want to measure themselves and they want to prepare themselves for a long career in basketball. You do that playing the best teams.”