UConn moves up to No. 3 in poll
The UConn women’s basketball team is already showing that the 2022-23 season is more about what the Huskies have than what they don’t.
Despite another wave of injuries, including the torn ACL that will keep Paige Bueckers on the bench and in street clothes for the year, UConn has built an impressive early-season resume.
The Huskies are ranked No. 3 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 national poll, released Monday, behind top-ranked South Carolina and second-ranked Stanford.
Ohio State and Iowa State round out the top five, followed by Indiana, Notre Dame, North Carolina, Iowa and Louisville.
UConn defeated Texas (then No. 3, now No. 19) last Monday and NC State (then No. 10, now No. 13) on Sunday, improving to 3-0. Azzi Fudd is averaging 30 points a game and has emerged as an early national player of the year candidate.
The top of the national landscape has already been shaken up like an Etch A Sketch. Six teams ranked in the preseason top 10 already have a loss.
South Carolina defeated Stanford in Sunday’s 1 vs. 2 showdown. Several ranked teams have lost to unranked teams, though, highlighting the sport’s growing parity.
“There’s fewer great teams, and a lot more good teams,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “So the next thing that happens is, those good teams start beating other good teams.”
Texas has lost three in a row, with losses to UConn, Marquette and Louisville. Louisville’s lone loss is to Gonzaga. Tennessee, which began the season at No. 5, has dropped to No. 23 after losses to Ohio State,
Indiana and UCLA.
This is not the normal pattern.
“If you’re a top-10 team but you have flaws, they’re going to show,” Auriemma said. “And this portal crap, this is going to happen more often.”
Auriemma’s point was that higher ranked teams see more players come and go from the transfer portal, therefore entering seasons with fewer returning players.
“That doesn’t effect [teams such as] Marquette, Gonzaga, that much,” Auriemma said. “They got their guys and they keep their guys, pretty much. The teams in the top 10, top 15, top 20, they have guys left and right, ‘This guy was supposed to be this, this guy is all this, all that,’ they get there, they don’t play, they’re off and running. Now you’re putting together a new team, it seems like, every year. And all of the sudden you play against a team that has three or four guys that have been together three or four years. This is going to keep happening. It’s a great sign for women’s basketball, I think, that now you can’t just walk into the gym and roll it out there and go, yeah, we’re a top-10 team in the country and we can just roll just because you’re unranked. I think those days are over.”
It’s been a wild November. Auriemma hopes this is a sign that the postseason will be more unpredictable.
“I love it,” he said. “I think it’s going to be great. I think, if this keeps up, that’s the kind of thing that’s made March Madness the madness that it is on the men’s sign. We need some of that madness on the women’s side. More of it. We’ve already had some. We need more of it.”