A Fairfield Foundation
Lopez Sénéchal’s experience with Stags set the stage for her immediate impact with Huskies
Lou Lopez Sénéchal joined the UConn women's basketball team with a wealth of experience that has helped make her transition to the sport's highest level a fast success.
A sense of urgency hasn't hurt, either.
“She knows she's got one shot,” said Joe Frager, the former coach at Fairfield University, where Lopez Sénéchal developed into one of the finest mid-major players in America. “She's got one year to get it right there and to really make an impact
and contribute to what they're trying to accomplish.
“It's not like it's, ‘There's always next year.' There isn't. I think that adds to it, and she's elevated her game. That's a credit to Lou and a credit to the UConn coaching staff. And by virtue of being with and practicing with that level of player all the time, she's forced to elevate her game.”
At 24, Lopez Sénéchal is the Huskies' oldest player. Her amateur basketball and educational journey from France to Ireland to Fairfield and beyond has reached its final destination, Storrs, where she's fit in seamlessly as a graduate transfer and helped the Huskies gain great momentum out of the 2022-23 gate.
Lopez Sénéchal is averaging 16.6 points, second on the team to Azzi Fudd's 25.6, and shooting 53.2 percent from the field, including 45.2 percent on 3-pointers. The No. 3
Huskies are 5-0 with three victories over teams ranked in the top-10 at the time of the matchups.
And just like that, despite another wave of injuries and the preseason loss of Paige Bueckers to a torn ACL, UConn, as usual, looks like a team that should have Final Four and national championship aspirations.
Lopez Sénéchal is a big reason why, having proved that she is a capable, perhaps elite, player at any level after scoring 1,598 points in 99 games over four seasons with the
Stags. She averaged 19.5 a game last season, leading Fairfield to the MAAC championship, and was the conference's player of the year.
Lopez Sénéchal entered the transfer portal shortly after the Stags' first-round NCAA Tournament loss, knowing she'd be more likely to reach professional goals by proving herself at the high-major level. She committed to UConn in April, arrived on campus in June and went about fitting in from there.
It did not take long. She bonded with coach Geno Auriemma immediately. Lopez Sénéchal said over and again that she would embrace any role Auriemma envisioned for her. It has become a major one.
“I thought she had the right foundation to be successful there,” said Frager, who had announced he would retire before last season. “First of all, with the type of person she is. Obviously their roster is dotted with top-five recruits and people who represent their country in high-level international competition, but there is an overlap in philosophies in that we were a very detailed oriented team. One thing we always preached was being a good teammate, being coachable, being accountable. And I know that's a big part of their program.”
Lopez Sénéchal, first contacted and recruited by assistant coach Morgan Valley, understood that moving up a level meant moving over, in a sense. At Fairfield, Frager estimates, 75-80 percent of the Stags plays were run for Lopez Sénéchal. That would not be the case at UConn.
“Geno doesn't like kids with out-of-control egos,” Frager said. “He wants kids that fit into a bigger scheme and understand that the program is more important than they are. And the kid's a scorer. She can flat-out shoot it and she's worked very, very hard. You put someone like that on a team like UConn, where you've got an Azzi Fudd and all those other super talented players, there's no way she's going to be the primary focus of the opponent's defense all the time. I thought she'd really be able to contribute there. At what level, who knows? A lot goes into it. But I thought she was set up well.”
Fitting into UConn's system meant two things.
Lopez Sénéchal wouldn't carry such a possession-by-possession offensive burden.
And she wouldn't necessarily be the player that defenses are primarily concerned with.
So where there's a little less responsibility there is nearly as much opportunity.
“The type of shots she gets within their offense are similar to the shots she got with us,” Frager said. “The point guard, (Nika) Mühl, is just doing a great job in transition, finding people and doing a super job running that team. You've got three or four weapons out there at all times who can score. It's hard for anyone to concentrate on any one kid — and, characteristic of a UConn team, they share the ball really well.”
Frager has watched every UConn game, missing just part of one. Lopez Sénéchal's performance Nov. 20 against NC State stood out to him and spoke to the way she has developed.
Associate head coach Chris Dailey fainted before the game, a scary and emotional
scene for players, and Lopez Sénéchal was scoreless at halftime. She finished with 20 in UConn's 91-69 victory.
“There was a time in her game where she missed a few shots and she didn't want to keep shooting,” Frager said. “No. You need to keep shooting. It's not being selfish. There were times maybe as a sophomore where she'd get called for a foul she didn't like or miss some shots and you could see the frustration written all over her face. That went away. Now you see her, and she's so level. She's just workmanlike and goes about her business.
“I think she was pretty shaken up by what happened to Coach Dailey. She didn't play well in the first half. She didn't shoot well. And then she came on like gangbusters in the second. I don't know that two or three years ago she would have done that.”
Lopez Sénéchal was born in Mexico, raised primarily in France and spent a year at a basketball academy in Ireland before starting at Fairfield in 2018. With the support of her French mother and Mexican father, and important help from an American stepfather who was familiar with colleges in the U.S., she marketed herself to programs with highlight films and letters before Frager offered her a scholarship.
She blossomed with the Stags, averaging 11.8 points as a freshman, 15.5 as a sophomore and 16.9 as a junior. She really made a name for herself as a senior as Fairfield went 25-7.
Having gone out a winner, Frager is now watching basketball for reasons other than to prepare as a player or coach for the first time in nearly 50 years. When he watches UConn, he's seeing a player who made such great strides in his program making more strides in another.
Lopez Sénéchal's story has reached its final college chapter and it's quite a remarkable story, one about a player finding places to prove herself and doing so time and again. Her 2021-22 success under Frager was the springboard to what she's doing now and will try to do in the coming months.
“The thing about her and that year is, it was a confident group, but it was a group that maintained its humility, too,” Frager said. “It was a good balance. That's really what that kid is all about. She's confident, but she's humble and appreciative, and I think those three things kind of summarize a lot of what UConn basketball is all about — confidence, humility and appreciation. You don't get UConn kids acting like idiots. They do things the right way and I think she fits right in there.”