UMass to Quinnipiac, Chau still in top spot
On a new team, in a new conference, Oliver Chau finds himself right where he finished last season: on the No. 1 team in men’s college hockey.
A national champion with UMass nine months ago, Chau and Quinnipiac are unbeaten in the past 16 games and moved into the top spot in both national polls this week.
“What I thought was really special about that group last year was maturity,” Chau said. “We had a lot of older guys who’d been on the team awhile. Even how mature the younger guys were, how quickly they got up to speed.
“Here, it’s an older team at Quinnipiac, with the grad transfers (he’s one of five) and seniors. Even the younger players, a credit to the culture, everybody’s very mature.”
The Bobcats’ only loss came in the back end of a split in Hamden with then-No. 6 North Dakota. That made them 3-1-1; they’re 17-1-3 now after Tuesday’s 9-0 win over Princeton heading into a road weekend at Colgate and No. 9/10 Cornell.
Chau has 21 points, a tiebreaker off Ethan de Jong’s team lead.
“As a person, I’d say he’s got A-plus character,” Bobcats coach Rand Pecknold said, adding later that Chau may have even exceeded the scouting report in that regard. “He’s a special human being. That obviously makes him a great teammate.
“As a player, he’s about as complete as any player I’ve ever had in terms of playing 200 feet. ... He always does the right thing, playing offense or defense.”
Pecknold began the year with Chau, Wyatt Bongiovanni and de Jong together on a loaded line.
“It was good, but it wasn’t great,” Pecknold said.
The Bobcats moved Chau to a line with Skyler Brind’Amour and Guus van Nes in late November.
“Brind’Amour and van Nes have been solid, but Chau elevated that line,” Pecknold said.
There was, Chau said, a transition period when he first ar
In Monday’s 72-59 loss at Oregon, Nelson-Ododa was 7-for-9 from the field and had 17 points, eight rebounds, six assists and three blocks in 33 minutes. She became the 50th UConn player to reach 1,000 career points. She has 746 rebounds and 236 blocks in her career.
“I’m definitely proud of that achievement, but at the same time there’s still work to be done,” Nelson-Ododa said. “It’s definitely a really cool achievement, just to see it at a program like this, where there are so many great players who have come before me, and just seeing what they’ve been able to accomplish. Pretty cool to see but we don’t have much time to focus on our personal achievements. It’s back to business. It’s back to what’s next.”
Immediately, that’s Seton Hall at home Friday at Gampel Pavilion and St. John’s on the road Sunday. Eventually, that’s the return of key players. Bueckers (knee) is out until at least early February. Fudd (foot)
has resumed individual workouts and there is no timetable. The earlier Williams (COVID protocols) will return is next Wednesday at top-ranked South Carolina.
Nelson-Ododa is averaging 10.1 points, shy of her career-high of 12.0 last season, when she was the Big East co-defensive player of the year, and 7.3 rebounds, below the 8.5 she averaged as a sophomore. She has a team-high 29 blocks, 2.2 per game, and is shooting a career-high 60.2 percent from the field.
In the past three games, she is 20-for-29 from the field for 47 points. She has 12 blocks in that span, including eight Saturday in a victory over Xavier.
“I don’t know that we can judge where anybody is going based on what’s happening right now because if people get healthy and come back — I mean, there’s a lot of shots to be had right now,” Auriemma said. “So somebody’s got to take them and Liv is taking advantage of some of the opportunities that are there. That doesn’t mean those same opportunities won’t be there in the future,
and we would count on Liv to have to be a little bit more efficient and be as aggressive as she was in the Oregon game, but there’s no reason why we can’t get 14-15 points from
Liv every night, 8-9 rebounds.”
Nelson-Ododa isn’t a surefire WNBA prospect like some players she teamed with as a freshman at UConn (Napheesa Collier
and Crystal Dangerfield, for instance, both WNBA rookies of the year). She has been projected as a late first-round selection and late secondround selection in various mock drafts.
“I think she’s improved in some area of the game each year that she’s been here,” Auriemma said. “You talk about taking some of the pressure off of guards — she can make plays for other people at times when she’s got it going. She and Paige had a great chemistry right away last year and you could see it, how many easy shots Paige got because of Liv.”
Auriemma thinks the key to Nelson-Ododa becoming a successful professional player is development of, and confidence in, her outside shot.
“She makes more in practice than she does in games,” he said. “I think she’s very comfortable taking that mid-range jump shot. I’ll see her at practice, 3s with our team during shooting drills, I’ll see her make 20 out of 25. Then in the game, she’s reluctant to shoot it. I think that’s an element of the game that, if she would add that, it would change her and would change our team.”